Ellis Henican: Convenient conversions

So Rudy Giuliani’s a gun lover after all.

How much you want to bet the ambitious ex-mayor also turns out to be an ardent right-to-lifer, a staunch gay-rights opponent and a real immigration hawk before the Republican primary season is done?

It’s amazing, isn’t it – how an election can magically align a candidate’s deeply held views with those of the party base?

Almost as amazing as Hillary Clinton’s newfound appreciation for MoveOn.org. Seems like just a month ago the fence-sitting New York senator was keeping her distance from the pugnacious anti-war group.

Now the race is heating up. Why alienate potential voters?

Every pol can spell P-A-N-D-E-R!

These dramatic intellectual conversions keep happening at the most opportune times imaginable.

Rudy didn’t turn into a rah-rah NRA’er, of course, when he was seeking re-election as mayor of gun-leery New York.

In his mayor days, he’d had a firm anti-gun stance, even suing big gun-makers.

But standing before the National Rifle Association on Friday, he traded his James Brady applause lines for some red-meat Ted Nugent.

“It’s people that commit crimes, not guns,” he assured the crowd.

What a happy coincidence!

Rudy and Hillary aren’t this year’s only convenient converts.

And the just-in-time epiphanies cut across all party lines.

Mitt Romney, the former pro-choice Massachusetts governor, is a late-blooming abortion foe. Who’d have ever predicted?

John Edwards turned on the war in Iraq at the very moment that became politically expedient. Barack Obama sure sounds a whole lot more opposed to the war than when he was just an Illinois senator.

And please, remind me again why John McCain started cozying up to the televangelists. Could it have anything to do with how faithfully their faithful vote?

One of these days, some politician will actually flip-flop against public opinion at a politically dangerous time.

One of these days.