This is what Rudy Giuliani and John McCain offer the GOP:
Posted on 09/06/2006 9:13:55 AM PDT by Reagan Man
Rudolph Giuliani has repeatedly extended the hand of friendship to Christian conservatives in recent months. But a leading member of a think tank closely associated with the former Mayor has just delivered a powerful jab to the face of the same constituency.
Mr. Giuliani, long viewed with suspicion by the religious right because of his pro-choice, pro-civil-union positions, went so far as to campaign for former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed back in May. The move was widely seen as an attempt to curry favor with a voting bloc that will play a crucial role in electing the Republican Presidential candidate in 2008.
But last month, Heather Mac Donald—a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, the organization that served as a semi-official brain trust to Mr. Giuliani during his time in Gracie Mansion—mounted a brazen frontal assault on the politics of piety. Moreover, she chose Pat Buchanan’s magazine, The American Conservative, as the unlikely platform from which to do so.
Ms. Mac Donald is a heroine to many in the conservative movement, in part because of her robust attacks on everything from feminist ideology (“lunacy”) to The New York Times (“a national security threat”).
She is also, not incidentally, a self-described nonbeliever.
“Skeptical conservatives—one of the Right’s less celebrated subcultures—are conservatives because of their skepticism, not in spite of it,” she wrote in the Aug. 28 issue of The American Conservative. “They ground their ideas in rational thinking and (nonreligious) moral argument. And the conservative movement is crippling itself by leaning too heavily on religion to the exclusion of these temperamentally compatible allies.”
The article ignited a firestorm that continues to sweep across conservative opinion journals and Web sites. Pundits including John Podhoretz, Ramesh Ponnuru and Jonah Goldberg have, to varying extents, made their disagreement plain. Philosophy professor (and Opus Dei member) Michael Pakaluk has complained that Ms. Mac Donald’s “mockery of common religious sensibilities … is so unfeeling as to border on the inhuman.”
Asked about the timing of her article, Ms. Mac Donald suggested that her exasperation with the religiosity of present-day conservatism had simply reached a boiling point.
“I’ve just been impatient over the last six years,” she told The Observer. “I don’t remember anything like this current assumption that candidates should talk about their relationship with God. What is that supposed to tell citizens?”
There is no suggestion that the Manhattan Institute fellow is doing Mr. Giuliani’s bidding in making the controversial case for secular conservatism. On the contrary, Ms. Mac Donald’s argument is more likely to be met with consternation by allies of the former Mayor, for fear that it could dynamite the bridges to the religious right that they have been so assiduously trying to build.
Baruch College political-science professor Gerald De Maio, who teaches a course on religion and politics, believes that the debates about a Giuliani candidacy—and about the issues raised by Ms. Mac Donald’s article—are manifestations of the longstanding divide in the G.O.P. between social conservatives and libertarians.
The libertarian wing, he said, “is muted. They count for much less than they used to. In many ways, Gerald Ford was the last President to represent that tendency. Now, one of the questions is: Could Rudy Giuliani get the nomination as a social liberal? I can’t see how social conservatives in the heartland can back him.”
Ms. Mac Donald admiringly told The Observer that the former Mayor “never invoked God, but transformed this city in ways that couldn’t have been imagined.” But she insisted that her main concern wasn’t electoral politics. She was, she said, more interested in the need for “a sound philosophical basis for conservative argument.”
That may sound like a nebulous aim. But it is also an honorable one.
When the President names Jesus Christ as his favorite political philosopher, uses a sly phrase like “wonder-working power” during a manifestly political occasion like a State of the Union address or invokes God in support of his decisions in Iraq, he seeks, at the minimum, to give his agenda a religious veneer.
The invocation of religion in support of political beliefs is, above all else, a dangerously effective tool for foreclosing debate, discouraging scrutiny and suggesting that one’s opponents lack moral fiber.
The battle of ideas should be fought with the weapons of reason and logic alone.
That is not an intrinsically liberal idea. There is much to support in Ms. Mac Donald’s contention that conservatism is strong enough to prosper without being propped up by the language of religious piety.
But as Mr. Giuliani already seems to have demonstrated by his actions, many conservatives will never see things that way.
The Rudy Giuliani and John McCain supporters here at FR would have us think that these issues are not important any more. The southern Republicans will be hard pressed to vote for men who support illegal immigration/invasion, homosexual marriages, or view the religious right as the enemy. Both Giuliani and McCain detest the religious right.
That's true. Lot's of things I don't like about Rudy, but I admit the oft repeated fact that he employed a gay or wore a dress isn't among them. Nor do I consider him in the control of the neverending war people. Not suggesting you do, just repeating some of the complaints I've seen most frequently voiced. His position on gun control is a very legitimate concern.
Shocking news- it's the Republican Party
Social Conservatives need to face a truism.
It is not Conservatives that win nationwide elections- it is Republicans.
Conservatives help Republicans win.
If Conservatives went off on their own they would be insignificant. Maybe some House seats and several Senate seats at best.
If Republicans had to adjust to life without the Social Conservatives, they would appeal more to Independents and could become unbeatable. Because the Democrats get crazier by the day.
Bottom line is that Social Conservatives need Republicans more then Republicans need Social Conservatives.
If Giuliani is similar to Bush, if there is no social conservative who can win in 2008- and there isn't- social conservatives should get some concessions from Giuliani and then throw their arms around him....because the alternative is very unpleasant for social conservative, other conservatives, Republicans, Independents, anyone who realizes what scum so many Democrats are.
They could offer up a viable candidate once in awhile too.
I read the transcript and that was the case. But when the question was put to W it was asked "Governor Bush, a philosopher thinker and why."
Yep.
Without "social conservatives" the Republican Party is nothing but "Democratic Party-lite".
IOW, useless.
Social conservatives will NEVER embrace Giuliani. Live with it.
I can't vote for the next few years, I must rearrange my stero wires.
:-) And I think I may be getting a haircut.
The point is, we don't really know who is running yet...
We do not. Rudy is. Gingrich is. Two month ago FR said Condi was a shoein. The rest of the field will surprise us. Hope there's a conservative in there to surprise me.
Nobody has formally announced... any discussion here is fueled strictly by who the leftists in the media want to limit Republicans to and I trust nothing from them.
Newt Gingrich would be more than acceptable to me.
If the war on terror is the premier issue, then someone who is not adverse to, or does not betray Mosiac Law would be the only logical choice.
It is no coincidence Islamic pagans hate Israel, Jews, Christians and Western Civilization. The entire basis of Western Civilization is Mosaic Law, something both the Neo-Pagan Left and the pagan Islamic thugs cannot abide and wish to destroy.
We are in a civilizational struggle that involves more than just bullets and bombs.
I agree with you about Rudy, but what do we do if he and Hillary are the two candidates? Do we really want Hillary more than Rudy?
What if? Sorry---I don't deal in "what if's."
Conservatives---who can make or break an election---are not buying Rudy. Rudy's humpers are a very tiny glib, gullible elite who are contemptuous of conservatives, trying vainly to makeover their boy. He's already bombed in Georgia when he had the temerity to try to con conservatives. Rudy'll never get past the primaries where "real people" live.
As for Hillary's candidacy, she has opponents surfacing everyday. As JimRob wisely stated----"First Hillary has to get by us on FR."
I hope you're right.
Uhhh, yeah. It's called the 2nd Amendment, pal. What other parts of the Constitution do you advocate ignoring?
You want to play?
Absolute? No restriction whatsoever.
US citizen John Smith has an absolute right to own the weapon(s) of his choice, strap and conceal as many as fit to every inch of his body, and go anywhere in these United States.
John Smith just converted to Islam. Exercising his absolute Constitutional free speech right he has some nice things to say about Osama and suicide bombers.
Same absolute right to any weapon anywhere?
Fact of the matter is there is no strong GOP Conservative candidate for 2008.
Gingrich: Would ensure Hillary's election, if voters are forced to relive the 1990s theyll choose the Clintons over Gingrich anyday
Allen: May not even win his Senate seat
Brownback: haha
McCain: Has enraged the base one too many times
Tancredo: Isnt running at this time
I see no strong candiadte for the GOP in 2008
What is worse is the GOP has like 24 Seante seats to defend in 2008, if GOP turn out is poor, it will ensure Hillary has a DEM congress as an ally
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