Rudy Giuliani is the kind of candidate who doesn't display self-confidence so much as he oozes it from every pore.

So noted a recent Wall Street Journal Online article. And that, in a nutshell is why Rudy Giuliani will be the next President of the United States. He is not the philosophical first choice of many Republicans. Fred Thompson is the conservative in the race. But one worries about Fred's killer instinct. It is not the MSM's "laziness" rap. It's just that he may be a bit too laid back and folksy. Mitt Romney, for all his (excessive) polish, seems too programmed. There is something a little Stepford-wifeish about him. McCain+immigration reform=toast. No one else in this field has a real chance.

Republicans have to go back quite a few years to recall a candidate whom they could not wait to have unleashed in a debate against the Democrat. From Bush 41 to Dole to Bush 43, there was always this underlying dread, hesitation, and "If he can just get through this without blowing it, we may have a chance," mentality. Rudy is the biggest rhetorical fangs-out Republican in 20 years. He's got a full grasp of the issues and wields them like clubs. Recall this piece by John Podhoretz, which is a great article:

Rudy may call himself pro-choice. He may have signed legislation mandating benefits to gay couples. He may have been a supporter of gun control. He may even have endorsed Mario Cuomo for governor in 1994. These are all things he's going to have to explain and answer for in Republican debates and the like.

But more than any other candidate in the race, Rudy Giuliani is a liberal-slayer. When he rejects liberal orthodoxy, which he does often, he doesn't just oppose it. He goes to war with it - total, unconditional war.

He spent his political career chewing up liberal orthodoxy and spitting it out - and I think that somehow, in some way, voters in Oklahoma and Kansas get that about him even without knowing the specifics.

His success in turning New York around wasn't merely a matter of changing policies. He had to sustain those policies when they came under deliberate, systematic and unrelenting assault by the city's liberal elite.

In case after case, he refused to accept the veto of liberal public opinion. He drove porn shops out of residential neighborhoods, even though his administration had to fight more than 30 lawsuits on the matter. He crusaded against bilingual education, a disastrous policy that had gone unquestioned in this city for decades.

And most important, he stood up for the police department against any and all attacks - which were incessant and incredibly unjust. The race baiters and their shills at the Not-So-Great Grey Lady talked as though the NYPD was engaging in genocide when the opposite was the case - many thousand of people are alive today who would have died if the NYPD hadn't taken on its newly aggressive posture under Giuliani.

And that was before 9/11.

It is that charisma and vigor that people want in a post 9/11 world. No world leader, not one, will intimidate Rudy. Americans understand that in their gut.

But, you will say, what about all the social conservatives who will steadfastly never vote for a pro-choice candidate. While true, the argument is too simple to carry the day. What about those staunch social conservatives who would be more horrified at a Hillary Clinton presidency, and decide to pull the lever for Giuliani? It wouldn't be the first lesser-of-two-evils votes in a presidential election. What about pro-life leaders like Pat Robertson who could be assumed to be in the never-gonna-vote-for-him crowd? Robertson endorsed Rudy for president last week. His reasons?

At yesterday’s announcement, held at the National Press Club in Washington, Robertson said he chose to support Giuliani because the social issues with which he, Robertson, was mostly closely associated in the past are not the top issues facing Americans in the 2008 election. “To me, the overriding issue before the American people is the defense of our population from the bloodlust of Islamic terrorism,” Robertson told reporters. The second-most important issue, Robertson said, is fiscal discipline. Only after that, he suggested, are the social issues, with the overriding priority being the makeup of the federal courts. “Uppermost in the mind of social conservatives is the selection of Supreme Court justices,” Robertson said, and Giuliani “has assured the American people that his choices for judicial appointments will be men and women who share the judicial philosophy of John Roberts and Antonin Scalia.”

In a similar vein

"It's all about leadership," says Scott Reed, a Republican strategist who ran Bob Dole's 1996 campaign but is unaffiliated this time around. "It's all about him being a tough guy who won't take c--- from anyone. Social conservatives have embraced this and have overlooked the traditional issues of life, marriage and the Second Amendment for the guy," Mr. Reed adds.

Similarly, some conservatives seem to have changed their top priority from social issues to fighting terrorism. They may well view Islamic extremists as a bigger threat than abortionists to the future of Judeo-Christian society, and nobody looks like a better foe of extremists than the former New York mayor who stood strong amid the rubble of 9/11.