Posted on 02/21/2007 2:44:52 PM PST by don-o
Rudy Giuliani now comes in a new package. Social conservatives still aren’t buying it.
“It’s a sleight of hand,” said Bob Barr, a former Georgia Congressman and champion of small government. “On issues that I consider extremely important to conservatives, such as respect for the Second Amendment, he is nowhere near even remotely in the ballpark of a conservative philosophy.”
The famously resolute, plain-spoken and uncompromising former Mayor has unveiled new shades of nuance to go along with his historically liberal positions on abortion, gun control and gay marriage, which pose the major obstacles to his pursuit of the Republican nomination for President in 2008.
(Excerpt) Read more at observer.com ...
Dear Vicomt13,
"Well, those rape and incest exceptions really vitiate much of the pro-life argument, don't they?"
Nah. Not at all.
If I can get 96% of what I want on the first go round, I usually chalk that up as at least a modest victory.
If laws can be passed that ban 96% of abortions, that's not a bad start.
sitetest
My logic is pretty simple: abortion is morally wrong, but the majority of Americans want the convenience of that moral wrong.
So, if the issue of whether a candidate can be the Republican nominee or not comes down, I believe, to whether or not the majority of people voting in Republican primaries across the United States are SO committed to the pro-life position that they will refuse to vote for Giuliani in favor of an until-recently pro-choice Mormon (Romney) or a pro-stem cell funding McCain. None of the three big Republican contenders is pure on the pro-life position, so how does one choose between three pro-choicers?
Giuliani has made the pragmatic strict constructionist judges promise, which is the horsetrade he's offering the conservative pro-lifers: I personally support abortion, but I'll give you judges who probably won't support Roe, because they'll do other things I support.
To pro-lifers who will not compromise, there's NO Republican to vote for at all, and they may not vote for anybody. I have been in this camp myself. I have said over and over again that I do not vote for pro-death Republicans, period. This has been my absolutist stance for a long time, and this time it looks like the Republicans are going to force me into either making good on my beliefs, or deciding that abortion is not SO critical to me after all.
Pro-gun folks will face the same quandary if Giuliani is the nominee. Are guns SO important to their worldview that they'll let an anti-gun Hillary win rather than an anti-gun Giuliani?
I don't know. Nobody does. I assume that the primaries will feature McCain, Romney and Giuliani. Those will be the choices. Each is flawed in many ways. So, who does one pick from that bunch? Given that people WILL vote in the Republican primary, even if all the pro-lifers and pro-gun folks stay home, one of those three will be the nominee.
I'd say that hand's down if LIBERAL Republicans are picking, it'd be Giuliani. If CONSERVATIVE Republicans were picking, then by all rights it ought to be McCain. He is QUITE conservative compared to the other two. But Conservatives seem to harbor an irrational hatred for McCain. They may have their reasons, but he's certainly the most pro-life (stem cell issues excepted).
Given three flawed candidates, will conservatives vote for McCain? Or will they just sit out the primaries, or dissipate their votes on secondary candidates?
Meanwhile, liberals and pro-choice Republicans will very probably vote for Giuliani, and when you add up the states' delegates he'll win, he'll probably be the nominee.
Abortion must be criminalized because it is an attack on the basic right on which all of our other rights are founded. The right to life is God given and inalienable, according to the Declaration of Independence.
I wonder if anyone has ever asked Giuliani what is the source of an American's rights?
Pass the mustard?
"If laws can be passed that ban 96% of abortions, that's not a bad start."
I doubt very seriously that it's a start.
I think it's the end.
Most people want those rape and incest exceptions.
If you've gotten rid of the rest of abortions, then the volume will be gone, and you'll never get the momentum to save the rest. If you don't save them all at once, holding the rest of the agenda hostile to those most exposed few babies, then you will sacrifice those few most exposed babies forever in order to get most of what you want.
The only real answer in a democracy is to protect all the babies by judicial activism, because the people and the legislatures will never do the right thing here: it's too hard, too emotional. So, you either impose the right answer on them undemocratically (the morally right answer, in this case, because we're talking about the lives of babies), or you allow democracy to trump human life and discard the rape- and incest-babies into the maw of death, forever. Get abortion outlawed in the main, you'll never overcome those exceptions.
OR his opinions about homosexual marriage, OR his opinions about anti-arms, OR...........(his liberalism is without end.)
If he gets the nomination, the MSM will destroy him over his questionable personal and financial dealings.
They won't vote, or they'll vote for a Conservative of a third party and hope the moderate Republicans and libertarians will join them.
Why would a Conservative, either fiscal or social, vote for Rudy?
Sure.
But remember: your choices are Giuliani, Romney or McCain.
It's not Giuliani, Romney or Reagan.
It's liberal, tough, pro-war Republican, or until-recently liberal vacillating Republican, or conservative Republican who drives the GOP right bat-shit.
Obviously conservatives OUGHT to vote for McCain, if pro-gun is their issue. Compared to the OTHER TWO (which is all you get to choose between), McCain's a conservative saint!
But conservatives hate him. They hate him with a passion. They hate him worse than they hate the LIBERAL Giuliani. Why? It's not linear or rational. It's because McCain wasn't a team player with Bush when they loved Bush. Now Bush has turned into a sow's ear, and McCain might have been the better choice in 2000 after all, but all of those years of hating McCain for not toeing the line are still there.
Conservatives' hate McCain irrationally. He's no more liberal than Bush on any issue, and he's more sensible than Bush on the war: McCain would have gone with a heavier troop footprint from the get-go, which was the right thing to do.
So, if McCain's out because conservatives are too proud to change their minds and vote for him, who does that leave? The Liberal Giuliani? Or the until-just-last-week liberal, Romney?
Interesting choices.
McCain's the OBVIOUS choice for conservatives among those three. But the hatred's too great.
So, there's NO choice for conservatives. The embittered will stay home or vote for some non-entity, and Giuliani will win the nomination, then probably the election.
Bottom line: if you want to save the conservative movement, McCain is by far the most conservative. You have to vote for him. That's the linear answer. Conservatives, however, are non-linear about McCain.
Interesting times.
Dear Vicomte13,
"I doubt very seriously that it's a start.
"I think it's the end."
Oh, you're just a pessimist! ;-)
I'm much more hopeful.
"Most people want those rape and incest exceptions."
Certainly. In fact, most people have trouble imagining a world without at least modest access to abortion.
That's just a failure of imagination.
My own belief is that the country, shorn of the straitjacket of Roe, will move in a pro-life direction.
This was actually happening in the early 1970s before Roe was handed down. The late 1960s saw significant movement toward a liberal abortion law regime. I think about 20 states legalized it to one degree or other by 1970.
But then, things started to turn around. Between 1970 and 1973, something like 30 efforts to liberalize abortion laws failed. Not a single law liberalizing abortion passed in any state after 1970.
The New York State legislature actually voted to REPEAL its liberal abortion law, just two years after passing it. Unfortunately, Gov. Rockefeller vetoed the repeal.
Once folks see that a little pro-life doesn't kill 'em, they'll take a little more. And then some more. Eventually, I think that folks will start to see the very contradiction that you're pointing out - if it's murder, it's murder no matter HOW the baby was conceived.
And eventually, people will come to accept even more restrictions. They'll demand 'em.
I think that it's possible that eventually, we'd be able to pass a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the rights of the unborn.
The difficulty is that for all of us, it's hard to imagine a time when this might be.
But I'll bet it was difficult for folks to imagine the South without slavery in, say, 1856.
Remember, with God, all things are possible.
sitetest
we are in the primary season not the election.
The objective is to eliminate the left wing rinos like rudy.
Why? Because those are the candidates the liberal press has chosen for us?
I'm hoping Newt jumps in this September. We should draft him.
"Pro-gun folks will face the same quandary if Giuliani is the nominee. Are guns SO important to their worldview that they'll let an anti-gun Hillary win rather than an anti-gun Giuliani? "
Yes, Gun rights are that important and the gun voters will refuse to vote for any worthless POS that wants to take those rights away.
I've had it with the Republican Party. Maybe they'll get it if they start losing their base.
What's the difference between Hillary and Rudy? Not that much. Just a letter of the alphabet. One is a (D/L). The other a (R/L). They're both far left.
On a summer day in the month of May a burly bum came hiking
Down a shady lane through the sugar cane, he was looking for his liking.
As he roamed along he sang a song of the land of milk and honey
Where a bum can stay for many a day, and he won't need any money
Oh the buzzin' of the bees in the cigarette trees near the soda water fountain,
At the lemonade springs where the bluebird sings on the Big Rock Candy Mountains
There's a lake of gin we can both jump in, and the handouts grow on bushes
In the new-mown hay we can sleep all day, and the bars all have free lunches
Where the mail train stops and there ain't no cops, and the folks are tender-hearted
Where you never change your socks and you never throw rocks, And your hair is never parted
Oh the buzzin' of the bees in the cigarette trees near the soda water fountain,
At the lemonade springs where the bluebird sings on the Big Rock Candy Mountains
Oh, a farmer and his son, they were on the run, to the hay field they were bounding
Said the bum to the son, "Why don't you come to the big rock candy mountains?"
So the very next day they hiked away, the mileposts they were counting
But they never arrived at the lemonade tide, on the Big Rock Candy Mountains
Oh the buzzin' of the bees in the cigarette trees near the soda water fountain,
At the lemonade springs where the bluebird sings on the Big Rock Candy Mountains
One evening as the sun went down and the jungle fires were burning,
Down the track came a hobo hiking, and he said "Boys, I'm not turning."
"I'm heading for a land that's far away beside the crystal fountains;"
"So come with me, we'll go and see the Big Rock Candy Mountains."
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains, there's a land that's fair and bright,
The handouts grow on bushes and you sleep out every night
Where the boxcars all are empty and the sun shines every day
On the birds and the bees and the cigarete trees,
The lemonade springs where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains, all the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth and the hens lay soft-boiled eggs
The farmer's trees are full of fruit and the barns are full of hay
Oh I'm bound to go where there ain't no snow
Where the rain don't fall, the wind don't blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains, you never change your socks
And little streams of alcohol come a-trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats and the railroad bulls are blind
There's a lake of stew and of whiskey too
And you can paddle all around 'em in a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains the jails are made of tin,
And you can walk right out again as soon as you are in
There ain't no short-handled shovels, no axes, saws or picks,
I'm a-goin' to stay where you sleep all day
Where they hung the jerk that invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
I'll see you all this comin' fall in the Big Rock Candy Mountains!
Guiliani is counting on the Clinton Democrats to put him in office.
He has the typical DOJ mentality when it comes to individual rights. IOW no rights.
Sorry but he was just plain in the right space at the right time on 9/11.
Despite the viral advertising workers here on FR, this is not the general election. This is the primary and Guiliani would do far better in the Democrat primary than as a RINO.
Remember DINO trumps RINO. Rudy has no chance agaist a DINO.
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