We all enjoy speculating idly on Rudy Giuliani's presidential prospects. Can this maverick mixture of iron-jawed security hawk, pie-eyed corpo-idealist, and shrug-shouldered values relativist reinvent the moribund notion of the Northeastern Republican as national hopeful? Does a Rudy candidacy mean a coalition-strafing turf war between don't-dread-on-me capitalists and tread-on-you moralists? Or is America's Mayor just the man to assure security moms and the dads who love them that the Republican Party isn't going off a cliff in clown car?

Rudy could create a new GOP or destroy the old one. Or like Shiva, perhaps he could do both.

Some on the right say he can win. Some aren't sure.

But it's time to get out of idle and shift into speculative overdrive. Giuliani — who regularly told audiences that his speeches were only in support of GOP candidates running in 2006 — is giving a speech after Election Day. In Pennsylvania. In the same town that George W. Bush and John Kerry ran to after the 2004 conventions.

So it looks like quixotic homeboy George Pataki has some company in his full-on, pretty-much-definite charge for the White House.