Posted on 05/11/2007 12:39:35 AM PDT by Aussie Dasher
"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 coming days," writes The New York Times.
If true, it marks either the beginning of the end of the Giuliani campaign -- or the beginning of the end of the Party of Ronald Reagan.
For Reagan's party was a pro-life party. Life defined the man. Life defined the movement he led. It was Reagan who insisted that his speechwriters include mention of the life issue in every State of the Union. At one lunch with senior staff, Reagan choked up as he read a letter from a woman who said she daily thanked God she had not had an abortion 45 years before, as she had considered doing, as now the son she had borne was taking care of her in her old age.
Since Reagan, whatever GOP nominees have believed privately, they ran as pro-life candidates.
If Rudy were to be nominated as a pro-choice Republican, millions would stay home or vote third party. For it was the life issue that brought them into the party, or kept them there when they disagreed with the party on almost everything else.
Nor is Rudy's embrace of the pro-choice position going to stop the questions -- like the ones he kicked all over the stage at the Reagan Library.
Asked if he would like to see Roe v. Wade overturned, Rudy allowed as how it would be "OK" with him if it was and OK with him if it wasn't. Though he "hated" abortion, he had funded it in New York. If others don't want to fund it, that's OK with Rudy, too.
Rudy, in short, is treating the issue like a ban on smoking in bars.
A Rudy nomination would bring the culture war right down onto the floor of the Republican convention. For Rudy is not only pro-choice on abortion, he has supported affirmative action, favored amnesty for illegals, turned New York into a sanctuary city where the NYPD was forbidden to ask arrestees their immigration status, has championed gay rights, marched in gay pride parades -- once not all that far behind the big float of the North American Man/Boy Love Association.
He is thrice married, and he used to bring his main squeeze into Gracie Mansion while still married to the mother of his son. When she threw him out, he was taken in by a couple of gay friends.
And Rudy is now suiting up to lead the family values party into battle? Dr. Dobson, call you office.
Rudy's cover on the abortion issue has been his promise to appoint strict constructionists to the Supreme Court, like Antonin Scalia, John Roberts, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, a crucial commitment that would be a huge factor in 2008. For the court is on a knife's edge, and the replacement of the octogenarian John Paul Stevens with a Scalia type could mean the end of Roe v. Wade.
But Rudy's commitment, welcome as it is, raises a question. What does Rudy Giuliani really believe?
If Rudy is honestly pro-choice, how can he name justices certain to overturn Roe v. Wade, thereby restricting choice to millions of women? And if he intends to nominate justices like Roberts and Scalia, why would any pro-choicers vote for him?
Rudy's pro-choice, pro-Scalia stance seems intellectually incoherent and politically inexplicable. He loses part of the pro-life vote and all the pro-choice vote? This is smart politics?
Moreover, simply because Rudy declares himself pro-choice does not mean the issue goes away. Rudy's opponents will bring it up again and again in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. The press will go straight to the contradiction between supporting "a woman's right to choose" and supporting justices who would abolish a woman's right to choose.
And, now, His Holiness has weighed in. Angered over a vote by Mexico to permit first-trimester abortions, Benedict XVI said on his flight to Brazil that the Catholic legislators who had voted to legalize abortion had excommunicated themselves and should be denied Holy Communion.
This suggests the Vatican will not be silent on Rudy's bid to become the first Catholic Republican president. Nor will Cardinal Edward Egan of New York or Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington -- if the latter has any interest in a cardinal's hat.
With the national press trailing candidate Rudy to church every Sunday, quizzing the parish priest and local bishop as to whether Rudy will be denied communion, this should bring the religious issue back to presidential politics as it has not been since 1928, when Democrats nominated another New York Catholic named Al Smith.
Somewhere, Mitt Romney is smiling.
Its like when you smell the dinner mom’s making, then finally after like an hour you get to eat it. Food’s much better.
If he does, we can kiss the White House goodbye!
There's a big huge bell curve out there - the vast majority of voters take up the middle. Straddle this segment, and one can afford to lose voters on either side.
The key is emotion - how to get dems to vote for the GOP. Arnie did it with passion aroused from the recall. Rudy will have to come up with a similar trick, otherwise he'll not only lose the right, but also the moderate left he's counting on to make up the difference.
Weird column considering how Pat has been agitating for a US, Presidential, and, Republiblican defeat on MSNBC for 5 years now.
He is being paid by propagandists who aid and abet our enemy everyday. And promote a far left takeover of government.
Reagan would be so proud, not!
Wow. What’s Buchanan’s freeper name? Great analysis of the Giuliani candidacy by Pat.
So he is worried that Rudy will get the nomination, and beat his Hillary?
Hilarious!
Rudy aside could someone please explain this to me? I always thought that Roe v Wade effectively required ALL states to make abortion legal. Its overturning would not make abortion ILLEGAL, rather it would allow the states to chose i.e. Being against R v W is actually being pro-choice. In other words, New Yorkers and Californicators would still have this right while Kansiacs and Texanators would probably not.
Is that wrong or does the press just simplify everything like we are all 5-year-olds?
Fred says Roe is bad law. Rudy has praised Roe.
Giuliani has already defined the type of SC Justice he would nominate.
He said he'd nominate strict constructionists. But twice he says a strict constructionist could uphold Roe as precedent. Which turns the concept on its ear.
Rudy is telling us that he's pro-abort. Loud and clear. You just don't want to hear it.
I’m kind of sorry all the rudy people got banned, because it would be fun to tell them all “we told you so”.
In the interest of accuracy, the check was written by his wife, it was $150, it was in 1994, and it was to Planned Parenthood. He has since donated $15,000 to a pro-life organization.
They are easy to find ... all in one spot miserable little spot on the web. You could sign up and tell them that we told them so, and your post would probably last all of thirty seconds.
On the other hand, we could just say it here because they can't help but lurk. I have no doubt that "they" are still here. Hi guys!!!
“He has since donated $15,000 to a pro-life organization.”
Of course he has. He’s gotta pretend to be a pro-life conservative doesn’t he.
After years of being fervently and passionantly pro-infanticide, Mitt does the whopper of flip-flops and passes off the story of his “conversion” during the embryonic stem cell debate.
Utterly laughable.
So now when the revelation of his donation to Planned Parenthood comes out, he hides behind a woman’s skirt.
“MY WIFE DID IT!”
It’ll be interesting to find out if Mr. AND Mrs. Mittster took a tax deduction in 1995 on that contribution to Abortion, Inc.
Unless something happens soon that requires Rootie to withdraw.
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