"It's becoming ever more clear that Rudy Giuliani suffers from John Kerry syndrome."

While Obama is speaking to religious groups that presumably already agree with him and using his religion to reinforce his politics, Giuliani has to explain to social conservatives why his religion and his politics don't match up.

Archbishop John J. Myers of Newark said: “I think he’s being illogical, as are all of those who take the stand that ‘I’m personally opposed to abortion but this is my public responsibility to permit it.’ To violate human life is always and everywhere wrong. In fact, we don’t think it’s a matter of church teaching, but a matter of the way God made the world, and it applies to everyone.”

The presidential campaign of John Kerry, a Democrat, suffered in 2004 when about a dozen of the nation’s more than 200 bishops declared that they would deny him communion because of his abortion stance....

“It’s becoming ever more clear that Rudy Giuliani suffers from John Kerry syndrome,” said Joseph Cella, president of Fidelis, a Catholic advocacy group in Chelsea, Mich. “It’s just a matter of time before more bishops step up, because he shares the identical position on abortion as John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.”

There's far more support out there for the merger of politics and religion than the separation of politics and religion. And yet, Giuliani is popular. So was Kerry (up to a point). What's different about Giuliani is that the disjunct between his religion and his politics is also a disjunct between his politics and his political party.