Will Hillary and Rudy Even Put On the Gloves?

When drama-hungry campaign lovers (namely the media) tire of the scramble for the center among presidential candidates, they need look no further than the race to fill Daniel Patrick Moynihan's soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat. While the White House hopefuls are still trying to make nice with their intra-party "friends" competing for the same nomination, this Broadway battle is bubbling over between the woman Newt Gingrich's mom described as something that "rhymes with witch" and the title character of the Ed Koch book "Giuliani: Nasty Man." By Tuesday, just two days after Clinton announced her Democratic candidacy (Giuliani has yet to announce his bid for the Republican nod), the two camps defined the chasm between them in the area that most sharply divides their parties: religion.

The blowup stemmed from an October fund-raising letter made public Tuesday, in which Giuliani, commenting on his well-publicized attempt to remove city funding from the Brooklyn Museum because of an art exhibit he found to be religiously offensive, said: "In the minds of left-wing activists like Hillary Clinton, I guess it's OK to use taxpayer funds to subsidize religious expression so long as it involves the desecration of religious symbols." Hillary quickly retaliated, labeling the letter the latest in a long line of the mayor's "hate-filled appeals to the far right." The skirmish is already overshadowing the candidates' specific policy stances. Clinton scheduled a press conference upstate Wednesday to unveil a proposal for increased federal investment in teacher training and recruitment — one of the most politically salient issues of the day — but found herself pressed to address the mayor's comments. In quick moves to re-center themselves, Clinton said her faith is central to her life Wednesday, while Giuliani said his religious practices were private and none of anyone's business. Still, compared to the McCain-Bush and Gore-Bradley catfights, this is war, and America will be watching.