All Hail Dead Caesars, No Matter What They Said and Did

by Thomas A. Droleskey

A rogues gallery of pro-abortion politicians, many of them Catholics in perfectly good standing in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, to mourn the death of former New York Governor Hugh Leo Carey (D-Brooklyn). Look at the photograph that shows just a few members of the rogues gallery who were in attendance at the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service that is called a "Mass of Christian Burial" at the Cathedral of Saint Patrick in New York, New York yesterday, August 11, 2011:

 

Look at these aging caesars. Look at them all.

You can see the thrice-married pro-abort, pro-perversity former Mayor of the City of New York, Rudolph William Giuliani (see No Room for Christ at Saint Patrick's, No One Speaks for Christ the King, Common Ground for Rudy and Benny, A Creature of Their Own Making, We Must Never Betray the Cause of Christ the King, Public Scandal Is Never A Private Matter (2009), and March of the Midget Naturalists). The years haven't been good to Rudy, who could stand to lose a few pounds, it appears. Hey, Rudy, check out There Is No Shortcut to Cure This Condition: A Catholic Man's Lifelong Battle of the Bulge.

Also on prominent display are the Cuomos. There's Papa, Mario Matthew Cuomo, standing next to Sonny, Andrew Mark Cuomo. Do you need a review of their pro-abortion, pro-perversity credentials? All right, please see, among scores of articles, Mario Pilate, Pontius Cuomo, Fearing to Offend Men Rather Than God, So Much Confusion, So Little Time, Memo to Andrew Cuomo, So Much Confusion, So Little Time, Memo To Howard Hubbard: Public Scandal Is Never A Private Matter, Perverting the Month of the Most Sacred Heart, To Do The Will Of The People, Not Of God, and Still Little Word About God And His Law, None About His Justice or His Wrath.

The old pro-abort, pro-perversity George Elmer Pataki, who was a nominally "pro-life" state senator from Peekskill, New York, was there, towering over the others with his  who was convinced to switch his position from "pro-life" to "pro-choice" by the partly "pro-life" and partly pro-abortion former United States Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato (R-Island Park, New York) in order to be groomed for a chance to defeat Papa Cuomo's bid for a fourth term as New York Governor in 1994 (see Pinning The Tail On The Next Bob Dole, No Room In The Big Tent For Catholics and Bob Dole, part trois; for journalistic review of how Pataki was "made" by D'Amato, see Appendix A below).

Not to be forgotten in the photograph above is the pro-abortion, pro-perversity thirty-third degree Mason, the ethically challenged United States Representative Charles Bernard Rangel (D-Harlem), who has maintained his perfectly good standing in the conciliar structures despite supporting evils that cry out to Heaven for vengeance (see Becoming What They Once Opposed, Shamelessness of the Shamed, Criminalizing the Innocent, Indemnifying the Guilty and Memo to Patrick Quinn.)

Obscured by the baptismal candle (or is that an Easter candle) is to be found the pro-abortion, pro-perversity, nanny-state self-described "billionaire playboy" incumbent Mayor of the City of New York, New York, Michael Rubens Bloomberg (see Pope Saint Pius V and the Conversion of the Muslims), who has just imposed a policy of mandatory classroom instruction in matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments that will be the subject of a forthcoming article, perhaps as soon as tomorrow, Saturday, August 13, 2011.

Also in attendance but not pictured in the photograph above was the former New York City Mayor Edward Irving Koch, a pro-abort, pro-perversity adherent of Talmudism, whose presence at the Cathedral of Saint Patrick in the Borough of Manhattan, New York, New York, is legendary for its ubiquitousness (I saw him every time I was at the Christmas Midnight Novus Ordo service between 1984 and the time I said "no mas" in 1994 after John "Cardinal" O'Connor praised the alleged Scripture scholar, Father John Meier, who is also a favorite of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI (see Coloring Everything He Says and Does, part one). Koch's successor, former Mayor David N. Dinkins, who defeated him in the Democratic Party mayoral primary in 1989 as he sought a fourth term as the city's "How I'm doin'" mayor.

Presiding over the Novus Ordo service of "Christian burial" for the late Governor Hugh Leo Carey, who died at the age of ninety-two on Monday, August 8, 2011, was none other than the happy "bishop", Timothy Dolan, the conciliar "Archbishop" of New York, who has distinguished himself in the past twenty-eight months now as a man who has tried to Everyone Happy Except God Himself. "Archbishop" Dolan has also said that one can all use Whatever Name You Want and he permitted a Novus Ordo service of "Christian burial" for the late, unrepentant pro-abort former United States Representative Geraldine Anne Ferraro-Zaccaro (see To Fall Into The Hands of the Living God and Just Another Ordinary Outrage Permitted by a Conciliar "Ordinary").

However, it was not "Archbishop" Dolan who gave the "homily" at Hugh Carey's funeral service yesterday at Saint Patrick's Cathedral. No, the "homily" was given by Dolan's predecessor as the conciliar "archbishop" of New York, Edward Michael "Cardinal" Egan, about whom I wrote the following ten years (five years before I came to realize the true state of the Church Militant in this era. of apostasy and betrayal) ago in the printed pages of Christ or Chaos when he said that it was then Governor George Pataki's "right as an American" to be "pro-choice":

Enter Edward Cardinal Egan. The Archbishop of New York has had two good opportunities recently to admonish the pro-abortion Governor Pataki and the pro-abortion Mayor Giuliani. He dropped the ball on both occasions, thereby distinguishing himself from the early days of his predecessor, the late John Cardinal O’Connor, who picked some very public fights in 1984 with Governor Mario Cuomo and Rep. Geraldine Ferraro. (Yes, Cardinal O’Connor did apologize to Ferraro, saying that he did not mean to criticize his “good friend.” Well, she wasn’t his friend, good or otherwise. And he was absolutely right to criticize her. The late cardinal had a penchant for a Hamlet-like angst over his public comments about elected officials. And he himself gave Pataki and Giuliani a free pass on their pro-abortion stands.) Recently Cardinal Egan met privately with Pataki in Albany and came out saying that he had not discussed the issue of abortion with the governor. His Eminence said he looked forward to the “happy day” when Pataki would review his pro-abortion position. However, he stressed that Pataki was exercising his right as an American to be “pro-choice.” Only a few days later, Cardinal Egan warmly embraced Giuliani at New York’s annual Saint Patrick’s Day Parade, whose grand marshal was a pro-abortion Catholic politician from Staten Island.

“His right as an American?” The heresy of Americanism thus continues to influence the minds of highly intelligent princes of the Church. No one has the right to do evil. Human beings have the free will to choose between good and evil. However, we are only morally free to choose the good. No one has the “right” to choose to do that which is wrong. There is a distinction between having the authority to do something and having the ability to do it.

As I noted in “Get a Grip on Reality” in January, words have meaning. A Catholic — especially one who is a cardinal and is known to be a serious man of the mind — has the obligation to make all of the necessary distinctions required by Catholic moral theology. It is a grave dereliction of duty to speak in sloppy, Americanist terms that reaffirm the belief of ignorant people (Catholic and non-Catholic alike) that one really does have a “right” to support abortion. No one has the right to sin. And abortion is one of the four crimes that cry out to Heaven for vengeance. (The other three are the sin of Sodom, defrauding a widow, and withholding the wages from a day laborer.)

Words and actions speak very loudly. The average Catholic sees the warm reception accorded Giuliani, who doesn’t even make a pretense of opposing partial-birth abortion, and the affirmation that Pataki has a “right” to support baby-killing. Why should a pro-abortion Catholic in the pew reassess his uncritical acceptance of our culture of death when a Cardinal Archbishop of a major metropolitan see fails to communicate the fact that abortion is a grave crime against both the Church and the State? Why should a woman who is suffering the effects of post-abortion syndrome consider reconciling herself to the Father through the Son in Spirit and in Truth in the Sacrament of Penance when a Cardinal Archbishop speaks of support for abortion as being an exercise of an American “right”? Does not Cardinal Egan see that a woman can easily come to the conclusion that she was (or is) justified in seeking an abortion, if it is a matter of American rights? How can it not be a “right” for a woman to choose to have an abortion if Pataki has the “right” to choose to support it?

Recently Cardinal Egan rightly stated, from his pulpit at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, that the Brooklyn Museum deliberately displays blasphemous, anti-Catholic “works of art” that either are created by minorities or feature minorities as a subject. His Eminence courageously declared that the curators of the Brooklyn Museum were trying to immunize themselves from criticism by creating a “race card” that they could play if Catholics took offense to elephant dung on an alleged painting of the Blessed Mother or to a naked black woman posing as our Lord in a photograph attempting to recreate the Last Supper. Cardinal Egan was very right to point all of that out. Indeed, his remarks were masterly.

As horrible as blasphemous works of art are, however, abortion is a far greater crime. There are hierarchies of evil. Thus, while it is nice to support the sanctity of innocent human babies in abstract terms in one’s preaching, it is also necessary to communicate the seriousness of supporting the death of such babies by withholding handshakes and photo opportunities from Catholics of any political party who seek to capitalize on their Catholic identity while betraying the Fifth Commandment. Is it too much to hope and pray that the day will soon come when the bishops of the United States will excommunicate Catholics in public life who support the mystical destruction under cover of law of Jesus Christ in the person of unborn children in their mothers’ womb?

There was a lot of fuss recently over Ted Turner’s referring to employees wearing ashes on Ash Wednesday as “Jesus freaks.” Once more Turner put his bigotry on display for all to see. However, Turner is what he is: an ignorant bigot who feels safe in shooting off his mouth because of his enormous fortune. And after all, it is his “American right” to do so, isn’t it?

It is a teaching of the Church that no one has the right to blaspheme. No one has the “right” to use our Lord’s Holy Name in vain. No one has the “right” to produce blasphemous or pornographic works of “art” or motion pictures or magazines or books or TV programs or music or sex-instruction programs. But if Ted Turner is denounced for his anti-Catholicism, what of those Catholics considered officially to be in good standing within the Church who are not denounced for their anti-Catholic, anti-Theistic embrace of abortion?

In 1907 Pope Saint Pius X said in Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907, that Modernism sought to divorce the Church from the State and the Catholic from the citizen. Americanism (which exalts all things American: religious indifferentism, cultural pluralism, the secular Republic, separation of Church and State, absolute freedom of speech and press) is but one of the many expressions of Modernism. Affirming a politician in the fallacious belief that Americans have a “right” to choose to support or do evil just feeds the Modernist notions decried so eloquently by Pope Saint Pius X (and by Popes Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Saint Pius X). Although it gets one good press and avoids a short-term controversy, feeding the Americanist notion of “rights” ultimately helps to perpetuate the culture of death, especially in our own co-religionists. (Christ or Chaos, April, 2001.)

 

Well, Egan outdid himself yesterday while praising former Governor Hugh Carey, praising him as follows:

“After some years on the opposite side, he became an uncompromising defender of the innocent child in the mother’s womb.” (Carey Stance on Abortion Praised by Cardinal Egan.)

 

These conciliarists live in imaginary worlds at all times, it appears. They are incapable of stating the truth plainly or speaking with any degree of relationship to actual facts. Here is the truth about Hugh Leo Carey's record when he was the Governor of the State of New York.

Hugh Leo Carey was, along with United States Senators Edward Moore Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) and Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. (D-Delaware), one of the first Catholics in public life to champion and then mouth the "I'm personally opposed to abortion, but cannot 'impose' my religious beliefs upon others" canard that is still being mouthed to this very day, a sophistic canard that Pope Leo XIII heard variations of in his own day one-hundred twenty-six years ago when he exposed it for what it was in these few words, found in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:

Hence, lest concord be broken by rash charges, let this be understood by all, that the integrity of Catholic faith cannot be reconciled with opinions verging on naturalism or rationalism, the essence of which is utterly to do away with Christian institutions and to install in society the supremacy of man to the exclusion of God. Further, it is unlawful to follow one line of conduct in private life and another in public, respecting privately the authority of the Church, but publicly rejecting it; for this would amount to joining together good and evil, and to putting man in conflict with himself; whereas he ought always to be consistent, and never in the least point nor in any condition of life to swerve from Christian virtue. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

 

 

Hugh Leo Carey did more than mouth this slogan. He helped to make it more possible for others in both major organized crime families of naturalism here in the United States of America to mouth this slogan and to help to further institutionalize chemical and surgical baby-killing under the cover of the civil law. Sure, this "legalized" criminality has its proximate root causes in the Protestant Revolution against the Divine Plan that God Himself instituted to effect man's return to Him through His Catholic Church. Granted. This does not mean, however, that those who have supported the slaughter of the innocent under cover of the civil law and who have helped to convince others to do so in their public lives are not responsible for their words and actions. And one of those who took Carey's advice to heart was a man in attendance at the Novus Ordo service yesterday, a man named Mario Matthew Cuomo.

Yes, you see, then private attorney Mario Matthew Cuomo was then United States Representative Hugh Leo Carey's choice to be his lieutenant governor running mate in 1974. Cuomo debated two other Catholics, New York State Assemblyman Anthony Olivieri and New York State Senator Mary Ann Krupsak, who were vying for the Democratic Party's nomination for that position, in Albany, New York, on August 25, 1974. Olivieri and Krupsak were both fully in support of the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, January 22, 1973. Cuomo was not, saying in response to a question that he would not have voted for the law that passed the New York State legislature in 1970 that "legalized" abortion in the first twenty-four weeks of a woman's pregnancy.

It was after Cuomo's defeat in the primary to Mary Ann Krupsak, who became Carey's first-term lieutenant governor before she became so frustrated by her role that she unsuccessfully challenged Carey in a Democratic Party primary in 1978, that Carey appointed him as the state's Secretary of State in early 1975. Carey's advice to Cuomo was simple: just say you are personally opposed to abortion, but can't impose your beliefs." Cuomo took the advice. The man who had once been called upon by officials in the chancery office of the Diocese of Brooklyn to speak in opposition to abortion under cover of the civil law to Catholic groups in the late-1960s and early-1970s. Cuomo learned the lessons that his political mentor, Hugh Leo Carey, who was thirteen years his senior and also an alumnus of the Saint John's University School of Law (graduating five years ahead of Cuomo as a result of Carey's military service in World War II), quite well, mouthing the "I'm personally opposed" line when he ran for Mayor of the City of New York in a 1977 Democratic Party primary and then in the general election as the nominee of the Liberal Party. And Cuomo has run with that line ever since, helping his eldest son, who was born on December 6, 1957, to champion the pro-abortion cause in his own hideous way, going Papa Cuomo one better by "pioneering" the "movement for 'marriage equality'" in the Empire State.

This is part of Hugh Leo Carey's legacy.

Another part of Hugh Leo Carey's legacy is written in the blood of the innocent preborn whose murders he facilitated by supporting Medicaid funding for abortion in the State of New York, which is one of the reasons that my native state is the surgical abortion capital of the world.

Yes, the late Governor Hugh Leo Carey did publicly apologize in 1989 for having supported abortion. He told me when I spoke with him after a Novus Ordo service at Saint Patrick's Cathedral about a year later that he had only done his duty by speaking up as he did, saying that he had a lot for which to make reparation, something that gave me great encouragement at the time.

Unfortunately, however, Carey's public apology did not translate into the realm of electoral politics. He almost invariably endorsed pro-abortion Democrats running for public office thereafter. It was in 2006 that Carey, who didn't have to endorse anyone for any reason if he did not want to do so, endorsed the completely despicable New York State Attorney General, Elliot Spitzer, who had cut his political eye-teeth in that office by continuing the persecution against crisis pregnancy centers that one of his predecessors, Robert Abrams, had launched in the early-1990s. Spitzer? Elliot Spitzer (see Darkened Souls Can Be Made White As Snow)? How can it be said that a man had become "an uncompromising defender of the innocent child in the mother’s womb" when he helped to advance the careers of men who made war upon those innocent babies and who made war upon those trying to convince mothers not to kill their children? "An uncompromising defender of the innocent child in the mothers's womb."

It gets worse.

Guess who Hugh Leo Carey, then eighty-nine years of age, endorsed for the Presidency of the United States of America in 2008? You got it. United States Senator Barack Hussein Obama (D-Illinois).

"An uncompromising defender of the innocent child in his mother's womb"?

No, "Cardinal" Egan. One cannot be termed a defender of innocent preborn children in their mothers' wombs who helped to elect those who have been their mortal enemies.

As much as Hugh Leo Carey professed love and fealty to what he thought was the Catholic Church, his true "church" was the Democratic Party, outside of which it appears he believed that there could be no just social order. In this regard, of course, Governor Carey was but yet Another Victim of Americanism, believing that the path to social order rested in a loyal adherence to the political party that was responsible in the Nineteenth Century for making possible the social ascent of Catholics in the United States of America when all other avenues of advancement were closed because of rank anti-Catholic bigotry that expressed itself in any manner of ways, including in various legal enactments passed by the demigods known was state legislatures (see God's Rights or States Rights?) and outbreaks of overt, lawless violence that went almost entirely unpunished by the civil authorities, some of whom were known on occasions to have participated in that violence.

The devil laid many traps in the Nineteenth Century to convince Catholics that partisan politics was their means of "advancement," and that all they had to do was to be "accepted" by the majority over the course of time before they could exercise "power" themselves and thus be part of the social "mainstream." Behold the results. Behold the results. (This is one of the themes that is explored in the book on Americanism that I am writing, "Conversion in Reverse.") That Catholics who have sought to blunt the growth of the statist policies and moral evils that have been advanced by the true "secular church" of the late Hugh Leo Carey, the Democratic Party, by adhering slavishly to the organized crime family that is said to be of the naturalist "right," the Republican Party, is simply part of the trap diabolical trap as both the "left" and the "right" believe that the Catholic Faith is a matter of complete indifference to personal and social order, that men can chart their own course in the without absent a due subordination to the Deposit of Faith that Christ the King entrusted exclusively to His Catholic Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication and a firm belief in and reliance upon the Sanctifying and Actual Graces that Our King won for us on the wood of the Holy Cross by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood. The believe that there are "major differences" between the two organized crime families of naturalism is an illusion created by the adversary, and it can never be any more than that.

Although I will pray for Hugh Carey's immortal soul as the Particular Judgment that has been rendered upon it is known only to God, it is very sad to have seen him lionized after death as all of the earthly accomplishments attributed to him while he was alive can never undo his promotion of abortion in public life and of the careers in public life who followed his early example whom he deemed worthy nevertheless of his political endorsement. The praise heaped upon him yesterday for having become that which he wasn't, "an uncompromising defender of the innocent preborn children in the mother's womb,  might actually have wound up heaping more coals upon him in Purgatory if he has been the beneficiary of God's mercy.

Few of these alleged "conversions" in the conciliar structures have any real substance to them at all, something that means nothing to Edward Egan or Timothy Dolan as the rubrics of their false sect's General Instruction to the Roman Missal get violated right in front of their noses as eulogies by family members are given. Not even the false church's own liturgical rubrics matter.

Let's put it to you this way: Saint Paul did not only stop killing Catholics when he was converted by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, on his way to Damascus to preside over the persecution of even more Catholics after having presided over the stoning of Saint Stephen the Protomartyr. He also did not continue supporting the Jewish persecutors of his new Faith. He did more than simply refuse to support his fellow Jews: he denounced and opposed their persecutions, exhorting one and all to convert. How could the same be said of Hugh Leo Carey, no less that he be called an "uncompromising defender of innocent life in the mother's womb"?

Yes, all hail dead caesars--no matter what they said and did while alive here on the face of this earth. It matters not whether a Catholic in public life dies as an open pro-abort or after having abjured his support for abortion while continuing to support pro-abortion candidates for public office. Dead caesars get hailed by the ever "compassionate" leaders of the counterfeit church of conciliarism no matter what those caesars did and said that have brought down upon us more and more chastisements from the hand of God.

Then again, this is pretty much old hat when one considers the simple fact that Truth Himself, Christ the King, is under attack every day by these false shepherds and by their false church's advancement of liturgical services that are abominable in the sight of God. Yes, this is pretty much old hat when one considers the number of false doctrine advanced by these false shepherds that are alien to the Catholic Faith and thus to the good of both personal and social order. 

You see, my friends, conciliarism, which has made its accommodation to the principles of 1776 and 1787 and 1789, deals with modern civil potentates in most, although not all, instances, in exactly the opposite way of the great saints of the Catholic Church, taking its cue from the likes of the Americanist bishops who paved the way for conciliarism prior to the "Second" Vatican Council, something that will be explored in a book length manuscript that I must take some time in the next few weeks to write.

Yes, we are being visited with a Chastisement, and there is no stopping this chastisement short of the fulfillment of Our Lady's Fatima Message by a true pope with all of the world's true bishops as Russia is at last consecrated to her Immaculate Heart. We must suffer this Chastisement well in reparation for our sins and those of the whole world as we consider it a singular privilege to be alive at a time when our very liberty and our lives might be demanded of us. To quote the words used so frequently by Saint Francis of Assisi, "Deo gratias! Thanks be to God we are alive in this time. Thanks be to God! Deo gratias!

Today is the Feast of Saint Clare of Assisi, who was the first spiritual daughter of Saint Francis of Assisi. Like her master, Saint Clare of Assisi loved Lady Poverty. She eschewed the riches and glories of this world to live in the poverty of the Holy Family in order to seek the conversion of wayward souls back to the practice of the true Faith and to seek the conversion of the lukewarm to the heights of spiritual fervor. Saint Clare spent countless hours before her Beloved, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, in His Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament, and it was while she held a monstrance containing the Most Blessed Sacrament that she was able to turn back the Saracens as they threatened the Convent of San Damiano in 1239, as recorded in the Breviary readings for today:

 

 

 

 

When the Saracens attacked Assisi, and were fain to break into Clare's monastery, she being sick, caused herself to be carried to the door, and likewise the vessel in which was held the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, and there she prayed, saying : O Lord, deliver not unto beasts the souls of them that praise thee, but preserve thine handmaids whom thou hast redeemed with the Precious Blood.  Whereupon a voice was heard which said : I will always preserve you.  Some of the Saracens took to flight, and others who had mounted the wall became blind and fell down headlong.  (First Nocturn)

 

Imitating Saint Clare and her love of Holy Poverty, we must be detached from the things, people, and places of this world as we seek to do reparation for our sins and those of the whole world, spending much time in fervent prayer before Our Lord's Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament and as we pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit. Saint Clare, who was canonized just two years after her death in 1253 at the age of fifty-nine, knows full well in Heaven the power of the Rosary and the importance of True Devotion to Mary. We must ask Saint Clare to be poor enough in spirit that we can be rich unto all eternity by accepting all of the penances sent to us in this passing, mortal vale of tears as opportunities to console the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Vivat Christus Rex!

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints

Appendix A

An Excerpt from An Article Detailing How Alfonse M. D'Amato Wanted a Catholic Pro-Abort to Run for Governor of New York in 1994

 

But he wasn't on his own. D'Amato and Powers had quietly commissioned a survey that had produced a rather specific profile of what a successful G.O.P. candidate should look like: A pro-choice, anti-tax Catholic with suburban appeal. Pataki fit the bill. Before formally bowing out himself, D'Amato began talking up Pataki, who entered the race almost immediately after D'Amato exited it. It wasn't apparent immediately, but the skids were greased.

D'Amato used his money and muscle to prop up Pataki and to marginalize rival candidates. When Tom Gulotta, the Nassau's county executive and a logical statewide candidate, tried to enter the race, he was blocked repeatedly by Mondello, his county chairman and a D'Amato ally. At D'Amato's urging, a key local leader in Suffolk County provided an early Pataki endorsement, guaranteeing that the county's formidable organization wouldn't fully unite behind any other candidate. D'Amato even poured his own cash—nearly $500,000, raised the previous year when he'd been pretending to run for governor—into Pataki's treasury.

And when it all started to look too cute—and when the other candidates, and the press, began deriding Pataki as a D'Amato puppet—D'Amato mischievously leaked word that he and Powers would conduct a search for a new "mystery" candidate who might unite the party. It was an empty gesture that allowed Pataki to claim he was now on his own. When the state convention arrived in May '94, D'Amato was back on board.

By that point, the official G.O.P. endorsement was in the bag. The main suspense was over whether Pataki could also win the Conservative line, or whether Mike Long's party would once again nominate London. Like all of Pataki's G.O.P. foes, London was publicly railing against the heavy-handedness of D'Amato and Powers. Just before the G.O.P. convention, he even took out a full-page newspaper ad that declared, "D'Amato wants to take away your right to vote." If London could at least qualify for the primary ballot at the convention, he'd have a strong case to make for the Conservative line.

He almost made it. In the convention's weighted balloting, Pataki grabbed 73 percent on the first ballot. But London secured 22 percent, just three points shy of the threshold for automatic primary-ballot access. When the totals were announced, the chairman of the Manhattan delegation—state Senator Roy Goodman—attempted to switch his delegation’s support from Green (who had garnered 3 percent) to London. He was shot down by the presiding officer, who declared the tally final. A deal was quickly brokered with London, who was offered the G.O.P.'s nomination for comptroller in exchange for endorsing Pataki. He agreed, making it possible for another deal to be struck, this time with the Conservative Party, which happily agreed to endorse a Pataki-led G.O.P. ticket that included London.

From there, Pataki's path to the general election was easy. In the September primaries, he crushed Rosenbaum (who had petitioned his way onto the ballot) on the G.O.P. side and a token opponent on the Conservative side. Meanwhile, Cuomo's standing was still deteriorating and the resolve of swing voters to boot him from office was only strengthened by a national climate that was poisonous to all Democrats. Not even an October surprise—a late endorsement from D'Amato's nemesis, Rudy Giuliani—could save Cuomo, who lost to Pataki by 3.5 points.

Maybe another politician would have made more of this break. Sure, he'd only won because of D'Amato, but to most Republicans in New York and across America, Pataki was a hero: the guy who'd somehow defeated one of the most famous Democrats in America. But even though he ended up winning two more elections and serving 12 years as governor, he never managed to transcend his star-making moment. (That championship season: George Pataki is still trying to run for President. You see, my good and relatively few readers and almost complete invisible financial supporters, there were good reasons why I, then believing that elections could provide a "forum" to present Catholic truth, chose to accede to requests to run against D'Amato in the New York State Right to Life Party senatorial primary in 1998. How can anyone call himself "pro-life" when, apart from supporting the chemical assassination of children by means of Title X "family planning" programs and the the surgical slicing and dicing of little babies in the so-called "hard cases," one goes out of his way to choose candidates to run for office because they support abortion in all instances without exception? Pataki was proud to support baby-killing and perversity. He still is. That's just one of the reasons that I ran, although I am "cured" of such an affliction, thank you very much.)

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