PALM SPRINGS — Rudolph W. Giuliani is married to his third wife, his kids barely talk to him and he's comfortable with leaving intact the national policy permitting abortion.
Oh -- and he's the former mayor of New York City, a modern Gomorrah to many here at the biennial conference of the National Federation of Republican Women.
You'd think that Giuliani would get little more than a polite round of applause from the mostly conservative crowd of 2,000 women. But as the only Republican presidential candidate to travel to the desert this weekend to address the group, Giuliani scored some solid points with -- and a few standing ovations from -- a key constituency, the women activists within his own party.
"We're the worker bees," said Cathy Philips, a delegate from Lakeland, Fla., after Giuliani spoke She added that many attendees were disappointed that other Republican contenders skipped the conference of the group, a 100,000-member grass-roots organization that dates to 1938. "I heard some women say last night they felt offended, almost, that all the others didn't see fit to come."
"That's a kick in the head, isn't it?" said Evelyn Blume, 83, of San Carlos, in San Diego County. "It's a shame too, because we don't have a clear front-runner."
Maybe not, but Giuliani -- ahead in nearly all the polls -- has been trying to act like a front-runner.
Saturday morning, he resumed his harsh criticism of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York -- the Democratic front-runner -- as though they were already squaring off in a general election. Giuliani criticized Clinton for what he said was her failure in Wednesday's Democratic debate to promise to stop nuclear armaments in Iran and for what he described as a shifting position on how and when she would end the war in Iraq.
"If people vote for me, or if they don't, they should know this," Giuliani said, drawing a raucous ovation in the cavernous Palm Springs Convention Center. "Here's what I believe will end . . . the battle in Iraq: victory for the United States of America."
Giuliani's mostly warm reception here marked something of a shift. A Times poll in June found Giuliani saddled with a gender gap -- support from 35% of Republican men nationwide, but only 21% of Republican women. Former Sen. Fred Thompson -- not in the race at that time -- had a similar split, with support from 33% of men and 15% of women. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney had a gap in the other direction:14% of women favored him compared with 5% of men.
