Posted on 04/06/2007 10:20:13 AM PDT by Kuksool
When Rudolph Giuliani announced his entry into the race for president, we noted that there were reasons to find his candidacy both compelling and problematic. In the latter category fell, above all, his denial that unborn children have a right to life. Even on that issue, however, we held out hope that Giuliani would try to meet pro-life conservatives halfway. He had already come around on partial-birth abortion, even if he had not come up with a good explanation for his shift. He had said that he favors “strict constructionist” judges, who attempt to determine what the law is rather than to make it what they think it should be. We hoped that he would go further: for example, by joining President Bush in declaring Roe v. Wade a bad decision as a matter of constitutional law, or even by joining Sen. John McCain in calling for its overturning.
Instead, we are sorry to say, he has mostly gone into reverse. Since his announcement, he has said that, in his mind, a strict constructionist judge could as easily rule to keep Roe as to scrap it. He has continued to misrepresent pro-lifers as seeking to throw pregnant women “in jail.” He has refused to rule out signing federal legislation codifying Roe should it be presented to him as president. And, most troublingly, has reiterated his longstanding support for taxpayer funding for abortion.
This is not a moderate position. We are already almost alone in the developed world in having such liberal abortion laws: Thanks to some of the little-known implications of Roe, abortion is legal at any stage of pregnancy for essentially any reason. Giuliani favors, in principle, making that regime more liberal still. Economist Michael New has studied the effect of various policies on abortion rates and concluded that nothing has reduced them more than cutoffs in public funding. We can therefore assume that an America with Giuliani’s favored policies would be a country with more abortion—probably reversing the 15-year trend of decline, including the decline in New York City for which he takes dubious credit.
The last Republican president to favor legal abortion was the late Gerald Ford, and even he did not support taxpayer funding. Every Republican president and presidential nominee since then has favored legal protection for unborn life. Neither morality nor opinion polls suggest any reason to do a 180-degree turn now. Support for taxpayer funding of abortion is a minority position. Seventeen states provide taxpayer funding for abortion, all but four of them under judicial compulsion.
The mayor’s rationale for abortion funding is bizarre. Putting his statements together and reading them as charitably as possible, his argument is that so long as the Supreme Court says abortion is a constitutional right state governments have an obligation to help poor women afford it.
Note that governments have no such legal obligation: The Supreme Court, in a series of cases from 1977, ruled that they do not. So Giuliani must (we again assume charitably) be positing some kind of moral obligation to carry out the Supreme Court’s work beyond its writ. Combine this view with Giuliani’s other constitutional musings, and the results get stranger still. Giuliani has said in the past that people should have to show good character and get federal licenses before buying guns. Now he says, without repudiating those past statements, that the courts should read the Second Amendment to protect an individual right to own guns. So should states spend money to let poor people pack heat? Or will women need to show good character and get federal licenses before they have abortions?
Mayor Giuliani has tied himself in knots. His position makes neither logical, moral, nor political sense. Many conservatives are disappointed, and hope that their disappointment is not going to grow as the campaign wears on.
Me 2!
I personally don’t care about polls until primary time (that’s why I despise all of these opinion polls that are supposed to be a representation of the entire country when they poll only 1,000 people out of over 150,000,000 adults). Come winter, I’ll be putting more stock into them; by that time, people will be more educated about the candidates and their positions.
But for the time being, I don’t really care. It’s all name recognition and celebrity factor.
they are an accurate reflection of Republican opinion a yr+ out from a primary, when the rank and file voters are not really focusing on the election, or on the relative positions of the candidates. that is what the polls represent.
SOURCE FR Thread—Barone: The Changing Republican Race.
Thanks!
After clarifying his clarifications, Rudy Giuliani has finally decided he’s in favor of legal abortion, a decision that will be viewed as either sensible, sad, cynical or opportunistic…. Is no one concerned about parental consent, allowing 13-year-old girls to have abortions without even telling their parents? Is no one concerned about millions of taxpayer dollars being used to fund abortions?
Is no voter concerned that the American birth rate has fallen, that we are not even reproducing ourselves because 25 million Americans have been destroyed in the womb since 1973, when abortion was made legal?
For these voters, Rudy Giuliani once seemed to offer an alternative to the full-speed-ahead Democrats, but now that hope has vanished. Rudy has joined the crowd, so there’s no debate on the greatest issue of the day, and that makes all of us losers. It may yet make Rudy a loser, too. Why change for more of the same?
It is sad. Rudy has rejected the truth. His talents go towards evil.
Only if all of you who insisted that "Rudy is the only one who can beat Hillary" will stop that tiresome nonsense, too. :-P
Nope. It is arrogance. A downfall for the “so called” intelligent.
It just getsya, you know?
Great article, great post. Totally nails Giuliani’s ass to the wall.
Quite right. For consistency’s sake, I’m still waiting for him to apply that same rationale to a right that is actually enumerated in the Constitution: the right to keep and bear arms.
Critical mass, maybe? One thing after another...
Watch what happens when Rudy drops out or starts losing in the GOP primaries.
He's going to start lashing out at "the extreme right" for holding the Republican party "hostage" or something. The MSM is going to carry his water, and they'll drag out Hagel or even McCain to denounce the "extreme right" as well (and play a clip from the 1992 GOP Convention).
So legal = moral? Is that what you are saying?
The truth about Rudy is coming out. Republicans are starting to become aware of Rudy’s positions on things. They are seeing he is more pro-abortion than some Democrats and his views on homosexual rights, gun rights, and immigration differ widely from those of conservatives. Rudy is a flaming liberal and just because the Roe vs. Wade currently is permitting abortion in this country, it doesn’t mean it has to be funded. Like the article mentions, the Second Amendment permits guns, but you won’t see Rudy funding guns. Rudy is making it more and more clear his judges will support abortion. We just need one more judge to get some change in this country. Rudy could throw off the process for years. We must keep spreading the word to watch Rudy plummet. The Republican Party must remeber its conservative base. It’s time for a strong conservative candidate to step in.
Well, to be honest, I was actually a Rudy supporter up until about a month ago.
What happened?
N-i-c-e take-—thanks.
His convoluted statement explaining that the 2nd Amendment is for hunting, and his refusal to denounce abortion pretty much sealed it for me. I was ready to give him the benefit of the doubt, hoping that as the campaign wore on, he'd move to the right on the social issues.
I just felt that a President had no credibility or moral character if he openly supported abortion.
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