REPUBLICAN PYGMIES BOW TO PRESSURE AND RESCHEDULE YOU TUBE DEBATE-- AND RUDY CHANGES HIS MIND ON THE GAYS: HE'S AGAINST THEM

So the decisive Republicans who would like to be the personification of Bush's 3rd term, have rethought their Luddite disdain of technology and their reflexive anti-democratic instincts to backtrack on their attempt to nix the You Tube debate. Except Flip Flop Mitt. But, given his record for flippin' and floppin' one would have to assume that by November 28 he will have changed his mind as many times as he's changed his Mormon underwear; yes, he'll be there too. And Fred Thompson? He can take Tommy Thompson's podium.

Romney may be the ultimate flip flopper and the ultimate empty suit but he's also the ultimate conformist. If everybody else shows up, Willard Mitt Romney shows up. And both Republicans who shunned this weekend's Ames carnival-- Giuliani and McCain-- have declared the You Tube thing is on. Romney will not miss a chance to brandish his newly manufactured far right credentials-- especially not when Giuliani has been so busy re-inventing himself so that people confuse his authoritarianism with legitimate conservatism.

Example: today he came out of the closet as the homophobe everyone but his gay best friends and drag queen buddies always knew he was. "Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani continues to discard the moderate and liberal positions of his past. The latest is civil unions for same-sex couples, which the Republican presidential candidate has been backing away from in recent months."

"It's really disappointing he's stepped back from his position on civil unions," said Joe Tarver, spokesman for the Empire State Pride Alliance, a group that advocates for gay rights in New York state that worked with and against Giuliani on a number of issues during his eight years as mayor.

Calling the former mayor's shifting stance "pretty un-Giuliani-like," Tarver said: "It's quite obvious he's playing to the people whose votes he needs to get the Republican nomination."

Tarver has company. Representatives of New York groups who advocate for abortion rights, gun control, and rights for immigrants, also said Giuliani's actions on the presidential trail, presenting himself to a more conservative GOP electorate, bears little resemblance to the man they knew as the stand-up mayor of Gotham in the 1990s who was open to moderate and liberal arguments.

More than any candidate in the Republican presidential field, rival Mitt Romney has been tagged with the flip-flopper label. But Giuliani, with late shifts on civil unions and federal campaign finance laws, is a political makeover in progress.