Wait. Did I really just say that?
Yeah. In case you missed it, Republican frontrunner Rudy Giuliani decided this week that he is going to run as a pro-choice Republican:
After months of conflicting signals on abortion, Rudolph W. Giuliani is planning to offer a forthright affirmation of his support for abortion rights in public forums, television appearances and interviews in the coming days, despite the potential for bad consequences among some conservative voters already wary of his views, aides said yesterday.
“Ultimately,” Giuliani said, “there has to be a right to choose.”
I cannot emphasize enough how significant this is. For thirty years now, the fight for a woman’s right to choose has been largely waged on partisan grounds (which means that even if you personally disagree with Ben Nelson, ultimately the fact that he’s a Democrat helps women’s rights considerably). Republicans have been “pro-life,” while Democrats have been “pro-choice.” And to run against that in your own party, particularly for the Presidential nomination, is very nearly political suicide. Jerome Armstrong at MyDD has a great analysis of what this is going to do to the debate on the Republican side.
For a while, it looked like the war would be a central division in the Republican electorate, but the Cult of Bush has remained strong. It may still happen, particularly if Hagel gets into the race, but for now, the central issue for Republicans is going to be choice. And at every opportunity, Giuliani is going to be hammered by the other Republican contenders.
This isn’t The West Wing, folks. If Giuliani’s really going to seek the nomination of the Republican Party as a pro-choice candidate, he can kiss any chance he has of winning goodbye. They’ll all flock to Fred Thompson, or whoever the hell they think is the second coming of St. Ronnie today.
But this is going to radically shift the debate about choice in a direction that favors women’s rights. The frontrunner for the Republican nomination is saying that we have to recognize a woman’s right to choose. That’s significant. If he ultimately ends up winning, the religious right’s influence on the Republican Party could be dead. Now, I don’t think that’s going to happen, in fact quite the opposite, but they’re welcome to drive their party further to the right and alienate everyone who recognizes the need for sane, reasonable policy when it comes to reproductive health.
Keep an eye on the Republican Presidential race, is all I’m saying. It’s going to be entertaining.
(Any takers on when the first “Rudy: Baby Killer” ad is coming?)
Rudy, like most Republicans, has no scruples. He simply realized that this position would get him the most votes in the early primaries with New York, California and Florida.
You would think… But no, actually, the Republicans in California aren’t any more reasonable than the Republicans here. There’s just a greater percentage of them here. I mean, for God’s sake, Duncan Hunter’s a California Republican!
They might place less of an emphasis on “social” issues, but trust me, there’s a considerable presence of religious conservatives in each of those states - especially in Florida.
I don’t think there’s enough “moderate” Republicans to make this a politically safe move for Giuliani. But given his previous stance on abortion, it was the only move he had left to make.
Can Giuliani win the Republican nomination not only without the support of the evangelical wing, but indeed, with their active opposition? Time will tell.
It will be interesting to see what happens in the general election if the GOP really nominates Guilliani. A lot of folks vote Republican because pro-life issues are the most important to them but otherwise hold fairly liberal views. If the social issues are neutralized, who wins: the economic liberals or the economic conservatives?
I think this is indicative of how the “values issues” - Neocon newspeak for governmental coercion to produce social outcomes they subjectively feel are desirable (and which people wouldn’t voluntarily choose), based on “values” cherry-picked from an arcane religious text - are rapidly becoming less and less relevant. That’s not to say that the neocons by-and-large don’t still support those positions, it’s just that the public has begun to realize how asinine issues like gay marriage really are. I mean, Canada legalized gay marriage a few years back and just look at the barbarian hordes at the gates of Toronto. This is directly related to the waning influence of the South and the increaing influence of the libertarian-leaning West in national politics, in my opinion.