PREVARICATION CONSULTANTS. National Review continues to give lying lessons to St. Rudy. The latest seminar comes from Rich Lowry, and contains several corkers -- this is my favorite:

Giuliani apparently thinks that saying he hates abortion is enough. But pro-lifers will want to know why he hates abortion. Because it’s taken the lives of 48 million unborn babies since Roe? Giuliani’s “hate” line rings so false because, temperamentally, he is not one to hate something without outlawing or attempting to discourage it.

That last bit is lovely and accurate. Mayor Giuliani, fellow citizens will recall, actually cracked down on dancing in bars, availing a disused Prohibition-era law. There is some dispute as to whether he did this as part of a crusade against underage drinking, or just because he's a miserable son of a bitch. But yeah, Giuliani does indeed seem to believe that what he doesn't like should be banned. That's why he would be a disastrous President.

Lowry closes that, if the insufficiently insincere Giuliani would only attend their lying lessons, "[his] position would still be a contrivance, but at least it would be a coherent and shrewd one." That's a winning strategy! Vote Giuliani -- he may be full of shit, but it's our shit!

UPDATE. New spin from Ace O. Spades:

I wonder if Giuliani could have cast his [abortion] flip-flop as simply deferring to the wishes of the city he wanted to manage... wouldn't it have been better for him to have announced he was "functionally pro-life," but had to make strong assurances of defending abortion rights to NYCers in order to get accomplished what needed to be accomplished?

In other words, he nobly lied because otherwise we wouldn't have voted for him, thereby depriving New York of his much-needed leadership.

How unselfish of him! If only I'd thought of this tactic at key moments in my own life: "Honey, if you'd found out that I was cheating on you, you would have broken up with me -- and I just couldn't let you make that mistake!"