Posted on 01/30/2008 11:15:55 AM PST by Clemenza
The collapse of Rudy Giulianis presidential bid is surely one of the most striking developments of the 2008 campaign. Strategic mistake? I dont think so. Rudy lost because he dissed social conservatives. In fact, the reason Giuliani missed those early primaries is because he dissed social conservatives. Giulianis attempt to take apart and reconstitute Ronald Reagans winning political coalition was his original sin. And Rudys primal transgression continues to shape the dynamics of 2008s Republican presidential race. With Reagans erstwhile coalition now cast out of the garden of amity, only recognizing and understanding Rudys fault will allow us to find our way back.
Im not saying Giulianis social liberalism doomed him to failure. On the contrary, I remember talking to a socially conservative state legislator from the midwest early in the campaign and finding, to my surprise, a genuine willingness to support Giuliani, while being fully aware of Rudys social liberalism. There was a conventional wisdom among knowledgeable conservatives during the campaigns early stages that Giulianis support would collapse when the Republican base discovered his social liberalism. Yet to everyones amazement, Rudy kept rising in the polls. The broader public including social conservatives respected and admired the hero of 9/11, and wanted to back a winner in the general election. The problem is not that Giulianis personal social liberalism was unacceptable. The problem was Rudys failure to meet social conservatives halfway.
Without caring much about social issues one way or the other, plenty of Rudys most enthusiastic backers supported him for his tough stand in the war on terror and his record of governing New York City. Yet a significant number of Rudys key supporters backed him precisely because of his social liberalism. Their hope was that a national victory for Rudy, powered by socially liberal Republicans and moderates, would break the Reagan coalition and leave social conservatives out in the cold. Although he would never have spoken so baldly, Giuliani gave far too many indications of belonging to this group himself.
Rudys initial campaign forays were marked by a series of awkward and ill-informed statements on the abortion issue. At a minimum, this betrayed a cavalier attitude toward a significant portion of the Reagan coalition. As time went on, however, it became clear that something more was at work. Rudy could have said that while his personal views on abortion were more liberal than many other Republicans, he nonetheless recognized some significant problems in the Supreme Courts abortion jurisprudence. A stance like that might have come close to winning Giuliani the nomination early on. Instead, in a bold and controversial move, Rudy pointedly refused to shift right on abortion. Despite his subsequent efforts to assure conservatives about Supreme Court nominations, and despite his very general condemnations of judicial activism, Rudys fundamental unwillingness to more openly compromise with social conservatives on life issues split the party and doomed his campaign.
On the marriage issue, Rudy could also have done a good deal more, without in any way giving up his basic stance of accepting civil unions while opposing same-sex marriage. With a pro-same-sex-marriage court decision in Iowa so legally shaky that even some prominent gay-marriage activists hesitated to embrace it, Giuliani could have personally denounced the ruling as a prime example of judicial activism. Instead, Rudy refused to take up social issues in a way that showed his willingness to play even a modest leadership role. So, no matter who Giulinai put on his judicial selection committee, the overall message was: Ill take your votes, but I dont like your issues, and I wont pay them attention.
This is the context in which we have to understand what followed. The use of false or mistaken reports to stir up scandal over Giulianis personal life might have been received very differently had Giuliani taken steps long before to reassure social conservatives. He ought to shown social conservatives by his actions that, despite his relative liberalism on these issues, they would have at least a respected place at the table in a Giuliani administration. Instead, the message of the campaign was that victory for Giuliani meant defeat for social conservatives. This is what powered the rise of Mike Huckabee, the next major candidate to attempt to reshape rather than lead the Reagan coalition (this time by shorting business and foreign policy conservatives).
So why did Rudy hold back from contesting the initial primaries? Chiefly because he himself had created the conditions for his own rejection in the early states. Had Giuliani moved to meet social conservatives halfway, Huckabee would likely have remained an also-ran and Rudy could have contested Iowa. Instead, Giuliani had to shun this socially conservative state, now catching fire for a rival whose campaign he himself had helped to jump-start.
With Huckabees triumph weakening Giuliani further in New Hampshire, Rudy decided on strategic retreat to Florida as his best option. Perhaps in retrospect Giuliani could and should have made a bolder stand in New Hampshire. But Rudys early decisions on how to handle social conservatives underpin his logic of retreat. South Carolina was another socially conservative state where Rudy was profoundly handicapped. Had Giuliani coopted at least a significant group of social conservatives back when he was seen as the partys savior, Huckabee would not have been able to take so many of South Carolinas evangelicals, and McCain would have had to fight a viable Rudy for South Carolinas hawks.
Did the success of the surge and the consequent decline of the war as an issue do Giuliani in? Not really. Rudy was always much more than the 9/11 candidate. Giulianis executive experience and his famous turn-around of New York city gave him a huge edge over McCain in executive leadership, and easily made him a match for Romney in that category. The dynamic in which Giuliani alienated a surprisingly receptive social conservative base and helped give rise to the Huckabee phenomenon in reaction is what controlled the critical early phases of the race, and set the stage for all that followed. National-security matters remain a huge concern for Republicans. Had Rudy handled social conservatives differently from the start, he and not John McCain would now be benefiting from ongoing Republican hawkishness.
Probably Rudy himself, and certainly a significant number of his core supporters, saw the Giuliani campaign as a test of whether Republicans might be able to win without social conservatives. Well, the test is over and the results are in. A candidate who effectively cuts out any key element of the Reagan coalition be it social conservatives, business conservatives, or national-security conservatives is doomed to failure. Its fitting, therefore, that both Giuliani and Huckabee seem to be passing from the scene at the same time. Their campaigns are historically linked reverse mirror images. Like interdependent parts that fall useless if not united, these factions of the coalition only work when they work together.
Some folks believe that over time, say by 2012 or 2016, social conservatives will cease to be a necessary element of a winning Republican coalition. I have my doubts about that, but the point to keep in mind here is that this is 2008. At the moment, social conservatives clearly remain an indispensable component of any winning Republican coalition, and any attempt to cut them out is proven folly. Arguably, if Rudy had compromised with social conservatives and won, he could have done far more to effectively keep the coalition hospitable to people with a wide range of views on social issues. But by giving so little, Rudy was left with nothing.
Ive said that Rudys was the original sin, but what about John McCain, whose positions on a range of issues also threaten to push important segments of the Republican coalition out into the cold? The McCain problem is real, yet it doesnt quite rise to the level of ejecting one of the three key wings of the coalition. For all the controversies, McCain offers something important to social conservatives, economic conservatives, and national-security conservatives alike. The most serious barrier is immigration, where McCains position puts him at odds with a major and deeply committed party constituency. This reflects a problem internal to the coalition itself the split between business conservatives and critics of uncontrolled immigration. Its far from unprecedented, since were already struggling with the issue under President Bush.
The key lesson of the Giuliani campaign is that the Republican coalition as it is (and not as some might wish it to be) must be attended to. The public social conservatives very much included is far less doctrinaire than the usual stereotypes hold. The base is willing to compromise with our leaders for the sake of unity and victory, but our leaders have to be willing to compromise with the coalition as well. Rudys mistake was to take early poll support from social conservatives as a free pass. Those poll numbers were actually an invitation to a discerning leader to show some ability to compromise. Rudy missed the boat. Will John McCain get it, or will arrogance push him to repeat Rudys mistakes? Mitt Romney clearly does get it, and its time we gave him more credit than we have up to now for respecting the coalition he aspires to lead.
Ping!
Therefore, if the word Sin is replaced with Mistake in this article, then the Argument is what was his first mistake politically?
But Rudy did try to make a stand in NH. He was here, in the spring and summer, often. And he ran TV ads. He was doing poorly, and then scaled back his effort.
Almost every report on the demise of Julie Annie has swallowed his campaign's line that he did not compete in NH. He did, the liberal politician got pulverized.
i think NRO has it - the Guliani campaign collapse - just right; while the main line being delivered up in the traitorous media is that voters disagreed with his strong anti-terrorism pitch. They didn’t disagree with it, it just wasn’t enough.
http://www.liberalparty.org/Feb94Page1.html
He tried to get people to focus only on 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, but the head fake failed. People who didn't know him realized he has a liberal agenda: anti 2A, pro-abortion, pro gay rights agenda, etc.
Plus, his bizarre personal life makes Clinton's look almost normal.
Someone commented in the American Spectator some time ago about Rudy’s “weirdness” factor.
Yeah. He is out there. I happen to know about him pretty well, because I lived in NY during his term.
His photos in drag used to appear in the local newspapers. A real Republican cannot possibly get elected in NYC. Impossible.
Rooty got backing and money to run b/c he knelt in obeisance to his backers’ fervent desire to takeover the Repub Party——to religiously cleanse the party and to kick so/cons to the curb.
Many astute Repub conservatives saw this evolve—— Repubs were winning bigtime. RINO types were itching to come over and squat in the party to get some of that power BUT THEY DETEST SO/CONS.
The dumbo squatters never factored in that Repubs CANNOT AND WILL NOT WIN without so/cons.
RINO Rooty’s flop proved that in spades.
High five Liz!
It happens.
The center of American population is south and west of St. Louis. And moving southern and western every year.
Yeah man-—REALLY high. LOL.
There shouldn’t be anything called a ‘so/con’. Only conservatives and RINO’s.
Using so/con is the same as giving ground to Rudy and his like.
For me, it was all over for Rudy when he pulled the phony “phone call from the wife” routine while speaking before the NRA.
Rooty's plan is to kick Conservatives to the curb.
Now to work on RINO McInsane, and in less than one week. That'll be a bit tougher - but I think we FReepers can do it ;-)
(on the upside I can now dump all my Rooty files, pics, gifs and articles, and free up some Hard Drive space)
Rudy is strictly BiCoastal, and joining a Houston law firm did nothing to change that.
I wonder precisely how much Rudy raised in funds, versus how much he actually spent on the campaign? In other words, how much went into his own pockets?
Exactly. That is THE reason Giuliani lost.
An atrocious record on social issues is also why Willard Romney will not be nominee.
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