Pat Robertson endorses Giuliani

[Saguaro]

WASHINGTON - Televangelist Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, endorsed Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday.

"It is my pleasure to announce my support for America's Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, a proven leader who is not afraid of what lies ahead and who will cast a hopeful vision for all Americans," Robertson said during a news conference with Giuliani in Washington.

The former New York mayor backs abortion rights and gay rights, positions that put him in conflict with conservative GOP orthodoxy, and has been trying to persuade evangelical conservatives like Robertson to overlook their differences on those issues.

Evangelicals have split in their support for the leading Republican candidates. Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, a favorite of Christian conservatives who dropped out of the race last month, on Wednesday endorsed fellow Sen. John McCain of Arizona. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney recently announced that Paul Weyrich and Bob Jones III were on board with his candidacy.

Asked about the Robertson endorsement, McCain, at a news conference with Brownback in Dubuque, Iowa, said: "Every once in a while, I'm left speechless. This is one of those times."

Giuliani is best known for leading New York in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Shortly after 9/11, Robertson released a statement in which he said the attacks occurred because Americans had insulted God and lost the protection of heaven by allowing abortion and "rampant Internet pornography."

Robertson made no mention of his differences with Giuliani on social issues in Wednesday's statement.

"Rudy Giuliani took a city that was in decline and considered ungovernable and reduced its violent crime, revitalized its core, dramatically lowered its taxes, cut through a welter of bureaucratic regulations, and did so in the spirit of bipartisanship which is so urgently needed in Washington today," Robertson said.

Robertson, who unsuccessfully ran for president in 1988, founded the Christian Broadcasting Network, the Christian Coalition and Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va.

Giuliani said Wednesday he got to know Robertson well on a flight from Israel.

"I came away from it with a better understanding of Pat, what he's all about, what he's trying to accomplish," he said. "And I think he came away with a different impression of me, as well. We see the world, in many ways, the same way. Doesn't mean we agree on everything."

Also Wednesday, Giuliani said he asked two GOP friends in Congress, Reps. Peter King of New York and Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas, to introduce bills to keep states from giving driver's licenses or similar identification to illegal immigrants.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071108/ap_on_el_pr/giuliani_robertson;_ylt=AmgQRrdCp0enpw3.47EXqJis0N UE

[Yellowdogtexan]

Another group of religious righters have a very good question for rudy http://tpmelectioncentral.com/2007/11/top_conservative_group_wants_to_know_does_rudy_agr ee_with_robertson_on_911.phpRudy's willingness to accept Pat Robertson's endorsement -- despite his agreement that America "deserved" to be attacked on 9/11 -- is discomfiting at least one major social conservative group that disagreed with Robertson over his interpretation of the disaster.

In an interview with Election Central, a top official at the Family Research Council, one of the most prominent religious-conservative groups in the country, suggested that Rudy's acceptance of Robertson's endorsement should make one wonder whether Rudy agrees with Robertson's interpretation of the event that killed nearly 3,000 of Rudy's constitutents and now forms the basis of his campaign.

"9/11 is what Rudy's campaign is fundamentally based on," Charmaine Yoest, a vice president at Family Research Council Action, told us. "This does beg the question -- does Rudy agree with Robertson's comments about 9/11?"

Yoest also added that it should be asked whether Rudy agrees with Robertson on a whole host of other issues, such as Robertson's defense of China's one-child policy.

Good questions. Will anyone else ask them?Given that rudy is running sept. 11 as his entire platform, it would be fun to find out if rudy agrees with Robertson on whether the US deserved to be attacked on Sept. 11

[Semantics]

Given that rudy is running sept. 11 as his entire platform, it would be fun to find out if rudy agrees with Robertson on whether the US deserved to be attacked on Sept. 11

Really :lol


Giuliani just alienated a lot of moderate, rationally thinking people. :kurtz


I guess what remains to be seen is whether or not he gained enough support from Robertson's followers. It's hard to tell at this point because the once powerful conservative Christian voting block is all over the place right now.

Maybe Robertson had another one of his premonitions and God told him ahead of time that Giuliani wins the race. :lol

[Wabash]

I'm not voting for him anyway...I don't really care...

[Yellowdogtexan]

Giuliani just alienated a lot of moderate, rationally thinking people. :kurtz But none of those people are republicans and so this will not hurt him

[Wabash]

But none of those people are republicans and so this will not hurt him

Yo Mama!

[Semantics]

But none of those people are republicans and so this will not hurt him

:lmao

[AYFR]

But none of those people are republicans and so this will not hurt him
Stereotyping is not the sign of a smart person
Yo Mama!
:roll you really are proving his point Wabby

[Trueblue]

But none of those people are republicans and so this will not hurt him

:lol

[issac the dragon]

Don't confuse him.

[issac the dragon]

Back in mid-2001, when Mayor Rudy Giuliani was busy committing adultery, lurching into his divorce and third marriage and rooming with a gay couple he promised to marry as soon as the law allowed, who among us would have imagined that one day he would be endorsed for president by Pat Robertson?

Actually, Robertson, the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, has had peculiar positions on the terror attack. He once said it was nowhere near as big a deal as the problem of judicial activism, and on another occasion he explained that the destruction of the World Trade Center was God’s punishment for abortion and “rampant secularism” on television. It’s hard to understand what drew the two men together. Rudy has hedged his positions on quite a few issues lately — but he has yet to suggest that New York had it coming.

It’s been quite a busy time for Giuliani, who recently tried to establish himself as the toughest dude on the anti-terror block by making fun of torture victims, drawing the wrath of John (Actually Tortured) McCain. Let it be known that nothing, including the extensive evidence that prisoners being tortured confess to things that aren’t true, is going to stop a President Giuliani from wringing every last drop of inaccurate information out of the evildoers.

“They talk about sleep deprivation. I mean on that theory, I’m getting tortured running for president of the United States. That’s plain silly,” he said at a town hall meeting in Iowa. You would really think after all the trouble Mitt Romney got for equating life in the Mitt Mobile with service in Iraq, people would be a little careful about comparing the perils of the campaign trail with military service. It also gave McCain the opportunity to remind the nation that Rudy got a deferral from serving in Vietnam by convincing his boss, a federal judge, to pull strings and have him declared an “essential” civilian employee for his critical work as a law clerk.

But we digress.

Robertson’s backing will surely give Giuliani a leg up among voters who believe that God sends natural disasters to punish Americans whose school board members believe in the theory of evolution, or who have the bad luck to live near an inclusive amusement park. (He warned Orlando that when Disney World welcomed gay patrons it was letting them in for terrorist attacks, “earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor.”)

Yesterday, Robertson said that America’s Mayor had won him over because “to me, the overriding issue before the American people is the defense of our population from the bloodlust of Islamic terrorists.” (So much for judicial activism.) “Our second goal should be the control of massive government waste and crushing federal deficits.”

Now this is the part that I have never been able to get. When did government spending become part of the divine agenda? Is there something in the Bible about smiting down federal bureaucrats?

Even within the ranks of the social conservatives, Robertson is regarded as a tad over the top. Who among us will forget the time he claimed that the special protein shake he was marketing had enabled him to leg-press 2,000 pounds? Or the time he said God had given Ariel Sharon a massive stroke because he let the Palestinians run Gaza? (He did apologize for saying the United States should assassinate the president of Venezuela.)

Still, the endorsement must have been a blow to Mitt Romney. He has gotten a couple of social conservatives on his side. But given the way he’s prostrated himself before the right wing, renouncing every position he’s ever held, all the way down to stem cells, you’d think he’d do better. It’s a mystery why even someone as loopy as Robertson would pass up the exhaustingly virtuous family man for a longtime hound dog like Rudy, who has been qualifying his liberal social positions but never really retracting them.

“Persuasion is an important part of politics. It may be for some leaders, Giuliani is more persuasive, particularly in private,” suggested John Green, who studies conservative religious movements for the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

It does seem true that miraculous things happen when conservative leaders meet with Giuliani behind closed doors. Maybe they just find Mitt Romney extremely irritating. Maybe Rudy has a secret grip, like the Vulcan mind-meld or one of those sleeper holds they used to have in professional wrestling, that fills his victims with an irrational degree of trust. Or maybe his leadership is so powerful that people exposed to it find it impossible to doubt the sincerity of his every word.

In which case I’ve got a protein shake I’d like to sell you. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/08/opinion/08collins.html?ref=opinion

•I just love it. Pat Robertson. I'd want him on my side. Uh-huh.

[patriotsblade]

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa70/patriotsblade/rudy_endorsement.jpg

[Yellowdogtexan]

Some satire from Andy Borowitz is appropirate here Pat Robertson Says Giuliani Presidency Appears in Book of Revelation

Rudy Would Usher in Biblical ‘End Days,’ Evangelist Says

One day after endorsing former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani for president, televangelist Pat Robertson explained his decision, saying that a Giuliani presidency features prominently in the Book of Revelation.

In his endorsement announcement the day before, Rev. Robertson had made reference to Mr. Giuliani’s tenure as “America’s Mayor,” but did not indicate that the Republican frontrunner was a key player in the Bible’s most apocalyptic book.

In his statement today, however, the televangelist made it clear that “in order for the Second Coming to occur, the world needs to end, and Rudy Giuliani is just the man for that job.”

Rev. Robertson said that he was “confident” that within weeks of his inauguration, Mr. Giuliani would usher in the “end days” that are a staple of Bible prophecy.

In praising Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Robertson had critical words for the current resident of the White House, President George W. Bush: “President Bush got us on the road to Armageddon, but it’s taking too darn long -- Rudy Giuliani will put us in the express lane.”

While the Giuliani camp initially welcomed the endorsement of the influential evangelist, the former New York mayor seemed less enthusiastic today about being identified as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

When asked by a reporter in Iowa about Mr. Robertson’s comments today, Mr. Giuliani replied, “9/11.”

Elsewhere, former Beatle Paul McCartney confirmed that he is dating a Metropolitan Transportation Authority board member, explaining, “Since my divorce from Heather, I’ve had to start taking the subway.”

[Lone Laugher]

I'm not voting for him anyway...I don't really care...

Now THAT is the kind of insightful commentary that we've been waiting for Wabadabbadoo! Exactly why we shudder in fear at the mere thought of your next explosive post.