Really, Rudy? That's the Way You're Going To Play This?

New Yorkers have gotten used to Rudy Giuliani's repudiation of his work in The City. To gain the acceptance of conservatives, he has campaigned largely on a rewritten account of his mayorality that includes new, improved stances on Republican favorites like immigration and gun control and a "nuanced" (to use a campaign spin word) take on abortion.

By and large, we've been pretty happy to let him spew whatever lies he chose. Everyone in New York knows that Giuliani is running on his record from 9/11/01 to 12/31/01, not his record from 01/01/94 to 9/10/01. Its ok for us to hear that he was ardently opposed to illegal immigrants when he was getting them jobs and benefits, or that his law suit against the gun industry in 2000 has no bearing on his current support for the NRA. New Yorkers are just happy he's not our problem any more. He's not so bad that liberal New York wouldn't wish him on its worst enemies, but just bad enough that it would. Take that, Republicans. No give backs.

Everything was fine until Rudy crossed the sports rivalry Mason/Dixon line.

Now he's gone and done it.

Listen Rudy: You grew up in New York, so you know the drill. Yanks/Sox is an either/or situation with no exceptions. None. You also know how seriously New Yorkers take baseball, so if you wanted us to sit back and remain silent while you made up stories about our time together, you should have at least kept this one thing sacred.

I might be going out on a limb here, but it seems like he's trying to ingratiate himself to the voters of New Hampshire, who will soon help decide his fate. Even still, any primary voter who cared enough about his stance on the World Series 1) already knows he's a Yankees fan and 2) would be pissed off at this blatant example of sports bigamy. I never understood why politicians can't just choose a team and stick with it. Aren't voters looking for decisive leaders anyway? Don't the candidates realize that pandering for the sake of pandering is offensive?

I'm not going to go all New York Post on hizzoner, but I do want to give all future candidates for elected office a primer on playoff loyalty so that this never happens again. Follow these pander-proof steps to avoid awkward situations such as this:

Step 1. Root For Your Favorite Team:

This means you must have a clearly stated favorite team. You can not have a favorite team for every city you've ever lived in (I'm looking at you here, Hillary) and you can not wait until election time to choose one.

Step 2. Root Against Your Favorite Team's Arch Enemy:

This one pretty much speaks for itself. If you have trouble determining who the bad guys are, ask someone or read a local paper.

Step 3. Anything Else is Pretty Much OK:

This includes rooting for a league, a city, or a team with which you have had a passing fascination. Some people like to apply this rule by rooting for the team that beat theirs, figuring that it hurts less to be beaten by the best. Others like to wish death upon that team. Whatever. So long as you follow rules one and two, you have a lot of lattitude with rule three.

So I'm personally going to give Rudy a pass on this one. He violated an unwritten rule which has now been written. It could have happened to any politician looking for political gain at the expense of his long held beliefs. Besides, I'm a Mets fan.

But seriously, Rudy, this is your last chance. I want to see more ownership of your actual stances and accomplishments as Mayor of New York. If not, I think New Yorkers have every right to tell the Republicans of Iowa and New Hampshire the truth: that your ideal constituent is a gay, heavily taxed illegal immigrant without a gun who may not have had an abortion, but definitely could have if she wanted to.

Also, we'll show them this: