Let's Make a Deal - Social conservatives, Rudy Giuliani, and the end of the litmus test.

The Weekly Standard ^ | March 12, 2007 | Noemie Emery

[gpapa]

Next year may see the party of the Sunbelt and Reagan, based in the South and in Protestant churches, nominate its first presidential candidate who is Catholic, urban, and ethnic--and socially liberal on a cluster of issues that set him at odds with the party's base. As a result, it may also see the end of the social issues litmus test in the Republican party, done in not by the party's left wing, which is shrunken and powerless, but by a fairly large cadre of social conservatives convinced that, in a time of national peril, the test is a luxury they cannot afford.

[WhistlingPastTheGraveyard]

Damn, you beat me to the betting thing.

[Hydroshock]

I kow what I will do, not vote for Rino Rudy.

[Al Simmons]

This is a BRILLIANT article which explains to some of y'all why many FIRE_EATING conservatives (like, well, MOI), have come over to Rudy's side.

Get this quote from the article:

"Giuliani is that very rare animal, a pro-choice Republican who is also the furthest thing possible from a liberal on a wide range of issues (law and order among them). "In case after case, he refused to accept the veto of liberal public opinion," writes John Podhoretz in his New York Post column. "More than any other candidate in the race, Rudy Giuliani is a liberal slayer. When he rejects liberal orthodoxy, which he does often, he doesn't just oppose it. He goes to war with it--total, unconditional war." If you believe that the enemy of your enemy must be your friend, conservatives have no better friend than the mayor, bête noire and scourge of the limousine liberals, the race hustlers, the friends of identity politics, the opponents of capital punishment, the municipal unions, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the New York Times. Some will want him to be president, if only to annoy all these people--a temptation too big to resist."

[Al Simmons]

This is a BRILLIANT article which explains to some of y'all why many FIRE_EATING conservatives (like, well, MOI), have come over to Rudy's side.

Get this quote from the article:

"Giuliani is that very rare animal, a pro-choice Republican who is also the furthest thing possible from a liberal on a wide range of issues (law and order among them). "In case after case, he refused to accept the veto of liberal public opinion," writes John Podhoretz in his New York Post column. "More than any other candidate in the race, Rudy Giuliani is a liberal slayer. When he rejects liberal orthodoxy, which he does often, he doesn't just oppose it. He goes to war with it--total, unconditional war." If you believe that the enemy of your enemy must be your friend, conservatives have no better friend than the mayor, bête noire and scourge of the limousine liberals, the race hustlers, the friends of identity politics, the opponents of capital punishment, the municipal unions, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the New York Times. Some will want him to be president, if only to annoy all these people--a temptation too big to resist."

[youngjim]

You wound me, sir.

I fixed it below

[BearArms]

Dreams of outlawing abortion on the one hand, or, on the other, of seeing it funded, legitimized, and enshrined as an unassailable civil right, have faded in the face of a large and so-far unswayable public opinion that is conflicted, ambivalent, and inclined to punish any political figure it sees as too rigid, too strident, or too eager to go to extremes.

Here she's apparently trying to convince pro-lifers that there is currently a "stalemate" on abortion. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. In America today, abortion is funded, legitimized, and enshrined as an unassailable civil right (where has she been holed up that she's missed this?). The pro-choice movement has almost everything it wants and it has been so since Roe V. Wade was decided three decades ago. Pro-lifers have achieved only marginal victories in that time.

Despite attempts by some Rudy supporters to argue otherwise, there is no reason to believe that Rudy will appoint justices who will overrule Roe. He has recently stated himself that he wishes Roe to be upheld, if modified to allow popular restrictions like the PBA ban (which will not prevent one abortion, by the way). The man has given emphatic pro-choice speeches to NARAL and stated that he would pay for his daughter's abortion. All indications are that he is ideologically committed to the pro-choice movement. But now, for some reason, social conservatives are being sold a bill of goods by supposedly conservative commentators who apparently couldn't care less about abortion and other social issues where Rudy is at odds with conservative orthodoxy. I think what is being exposed in all this is the fact that a much larger number of conservative intellectuals than I had estimated are ready to surrender the culture war, or were never really interested in winning it to begin with.

[Luke21]

Thank you. You expressed everything I feel about the GOP. It's nine to one I stay home next year.

[the Real fifi]

Well--and this may be a surprise--I am not going to kiss your feet to get you to change. I will sit back and laugh when you moan about Hillary!It's a big country, you have to compromise or sit it out and take the consequences.
And for the poster who said atholics will never vote for Giuliani, I want to know who is electing horse behinds like Kerry and Kennedy (all of the Kennedys actually) and Pelosi.

[Hydroshock]

Voting for Rino Rudy is not compromising, it is capitulating. He is so liberal that the biggest difference between him and Hitlary is he looks better in a dress.

[Elyse]

Nearly all pro-Giuliani Freepers have qualms about some of Giuliani's stands on social issues, but are looking at 2008 from a Big Picture perspective.

I think it's just the opposite - they are so focused on one issue, WOT, that they are not seeing the Big Picture.

[WhistlingPastTheGraveyard]

I'll take a misplaced comma over a CAPSLOCK sentence any day of the week. I'm having AOL flashbacks over here.

[WhistlingPastTheGraveyard]

That's exactly right. They've become the single-issue voters they've condemned for years.

[Luke21]

And you are doing the same. Shoving your moderate left wing politics down the throats of people who have had it with these tactics and accusations.

The national GOP came into my district last year and backed a moderate in the congressional primary against my candidate, who won anyway. Then they refused to give him money in the general election and he lost. I had moderates on this site tell me they preferred the ACLU liberal Democrat over my conservative guy in the general election. I've been watching the moderates throw their tantrums since 1964, when they backed Johnson over Goldwater. But they always project the things they do onto us. Just like you are currently doing.

You must be a social lib, a feminist, a gay lover, or something to the left, or you would have no problem with the agenda of social conservatives. They just want to live their lives and hate big government. What's so bad about that?

Nobody on the right has the power or ability to impose anything on this society. The power is all on the left. Most of us just swim against the tide, believe in our God, raise our families, and ask to be left alone. But the supporters of open borders, political correctness, political parasitism, feminism, gay rights, gun control, and anti-Christianity and anti-Judaism want to impose their lack of scruples and morals on me.

This party and many in it are almost indistinguishable from Democrats. We already have the Democrat party. Why have two of them?

[The Spirit Of Allegiance]

Got Litmus?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1794527/posts

[flashbunny]

how can you call rudy 'law and order' when he fought against the feds to maintain NY city as a 'sanctuary city' for illegal aliens?

Or was it ok for him to break that one law?

And remember, if rudy is the president, he's in charge of all the agencies that oversee immigration enforcement in this country. I don't want the US turned into a "sanctuary country" for illegal aliens.

[The Spirit Of Allegiance]

"What are you going to do if Hunter drops out and endorses Giuliani?"

---

When all else fails, read the instructions.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1794527/posts

Do you agree with those principles?

[The Spirit Of Allegiance]

The Ultimate Big Picture?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1793613/posts?page=387#387

[the Real fifi]

The country is overwhelmingly moderate--more to the right socially than the Dems but less there than the social conservatives; more supportive of the war and fighting terrorism than the Dems but not to the extent of wanting to turn the ME into a glass parking lot.


They will respect those demands of yours for tolerance of your views but you have to understand that not a single candidate who meets your moral standards and shares your every view will ever be elected president in 2008.

I am a conservative in the middle of D.C. and I am well familiar w/ the views of the blue staters which you need to win.

[org.whodat]

her point is well-taken.

I know what her point is and what your point is and I'm not drinking the cool-aide.

[airborne]

I pray that day never comes, because if Rudy is the nominee, Hillary is President and the Republican Party is irreparably damaged and the country is over as we know it.