It wasn’t just that Giuliani showed up at the Values Voter Summit to address the religious conservatives that he’s mostly ignored till now that God-o-Meter is raising his rating. It’s that he made it seem like he really wanted to be here. A Family Research Council aide griped afterward that he went 15 minutes over his allotted time for his speech, which God-o-Meter will take as evidence that he took his appearance seriously; Giuliani political director Mark Campbell told God-o-Meter afterward that the Mayor had reworked much of this speech himself, marking up his copy with lots of last-minute additions and deletions.

The address was rife with personal moments, including this laugh-inducing number about attending parochial schools his whole life: “The first time I attended a class where prayer didn’t begin the class was my first day of class at NYU law school. I was so confused that I made the sign of the cross. And I realized people were looking at me.”
You can get the particulars of Giuliani’s speech elsewhere–big applause lines were his support for religion in the public square (“We need to stand up to those who try to drive religion out of public life”), school choice, home-schooling, decreasing abortion through increasing adoption, cracking down on pornography, and constructionist judges–but here’s a bit more from Campbell:
“This was not about pandering, but about allowing people to look into his heart and soul and allow him to take the measure of the man.”
“That fact that he was interrupted 3 dozen times by applause spoke to the fact that he connected with the audience. You saw a different side of Rudy today.”
Campbell also hinted that Giuliani might do more religious outreach in the future, saying, “Today was a defining moment in the campaign moving forward.”
Which leaves God-o-Meter to wonder: was this is one-time stop-in for Giuliani among social conservatives, or a new phase of his campaign? GOM will be watching.

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