I suppose they’ll be calling for live televised executions next

It’s amazing what politicians will do to pander to potential voters or to powerful factions in a party.

In New York, two moderate Republicans – one seeking the nomination to be the candidate for governor, the other for state attorney general – appeared before the state’s Conservative Party convention, and each went nauseatingly out of their way to appeal to this far right wing group of Neanderthals.

The Conservative party, which is far to the right of the state GOP, is a powerful force in New York Republican politics; it’s endorsement and practice of occasionally giving some Republican candidates its line on the ballot, can mean the difference between a win and loss for a GOP candidate in statewide offices. They say no Republican has ever won the U.S. Senate seat unless he also had the conservative endorsement.

So there was Bill Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts, who has moved home to New York and is seeking to run as the Republican candidate for governor, assuring the cons that he would ban gay marriage.

Now, Weld is one of those old-fashioned Rockefeller Republicans, moderate in just about all areas, from abortion rights on. As in New York, a Republican candidate in Massachusetts has to be that way.

But Weld told the convention he would “veto any bill to legalize same-sex marriage in this state.” From his history, that’s an issue you can bet he really doesn’t care about, that it wouldn’t really bother him if two guys want to get married. But, for this crowd he goes out of his way to be intolerant and sneer that likely Democratic candidate Elliot Spitzer “has announced on his first day as governor he would file legislation to legalize same-sex marriage.”

Meanwhile, groveling before the same convention, Jeanine Pirro, seeking to get the nod to run for state attorney general (after her disastrous attempt to be the candidate who will get whomped by Hillary in the Senate race) bragged about her gun collection.

Pirro, another moderate on issues like choice, went out of her way to tell the cavemen of the cons that she has not just one or two guns, but three.

Coming in the immediate aftermath of Dick Cheney shooting a guy in the face, I don’t know if bragging about having multiple guns is the most sensitive topic - but for that crowd, I suppose it works.

Pathetic.