Can't ever imagine Giuliani getting a standing ovation at a major Republican event full of conservatives.
Posted on 02/06/2007 10:43:27 AM PST by ElkGroveDan
“Murder and graffiti are two vastly different crimes,” Rudy Giuliani once said. “But they are part of the same continuum, and a climate that tolerates one is more likely to tolerate the other.”
Good point, Rudy.
Now, what about a climate — not to mention a Republican presidential candidate — that not only tolerates, but allows unelected judges to legalize the practice of delivering a child until only its head remains within its mothers womb so the child can be killed by sucking out its brains?
What about a climate where same-sex couples are given the same legal status as married couples, whether the resulting arrangements are candidly called “same-sex marriages,” or are semantically papered-over with terms such as “civil unions” or “domestic partnerships”?
Apply the Giuliani Continuum to fundamental issues such as marriage and the right to life, and where does it lead?
Not where conservatives want America to be.
Rudy Giuliani’s observation about the “continuum” running from graffiti to murder was quoted in a piece in the winter edition of City Journal by Steven Malanga. The title of Malanga’s piece neatly encapsulates his argument: “Yes, Rudy is a Conservative — and an electable one at that.”
I believe Malanga is wrong on both counts. Rudy is neither conservative, nor electable — at least, not as a Republican presidential candidate.
As Malanga seems to define it, a politician dedicated to good police work and free-market economics qualifies as a conservative. “Far from being a liberal,” Malanga writes of Giuliani, “he ran New York with a conservative’s priorities: government exists above all to keep people safe in their homes and in the streets, he said, not to redistribute income, run a welfare state, or perform social engineering. The private economy, not government, creates opportunity, he argued; government should just deliver basic services well and then get out of the private sector’s way.”
But that’s not enough. While advocating law and order, self-reliance, and capitalism is laudable, it does not entitle a politician to a free pass for advocating other causes that are deeply destructive of American society.
While it is always wrong to take an innocent human life — whether on a New York sidewalk or in a mother’s womb — Giuliani is highly selective in applying this principle. In 1999, when he was pondering a run for the U.S. Senate, he was asked whether he supported banning partial-birth abortion. “No, I have not supported that,” he said, “and I don’t see my position on that changing.”
“I'm pro-gay rights,” he also said. Indeed, his position is so radical in this area that as New York City mayor he promoted a city ordinance that removed the distinctions in municipal law between married and unmarried couples, regardless of their gender.
“What it really is doing is preventing discrimination against people who have different sexual orientations, or make different preferences in which they want to lead their lives,” Giuliani said, explaining the ordinance to the New York Times. “Domestic partnerships not only affect gays and lesbians, but they also affect heterosexuals who choose to lead their lives in different ways.”
In other words, preserving a legal order that prefers traditional marriage and traditional families is “discrimination.”
Giuliani’s positions on abortion and marriage disqualify him as a conservative because they annihilate the link between the natural law and man-made laws. Indeed, they use man-made law to promote and protect acts that violate the natural law.
Given his argument that there is a “continuum” between graffiti and murder, you would think that Giuliani would understand the importance of the link between the natural law and the laws of New York City, let alone the laws of the United States. At the heart of Rudy’s “continuum” argument, is the realization that when society refuses to enforce a just law it teaches people to disrespect the moral principles underlying just laws.
The late Russell Kirk argued in The Conservative Mind that the first canon of conservatism is “[b]elief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience. Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems. … True politics is the art of apprehending and applying the Justice which ought to prevail in a community of souls.”
It is simply not justice to take the life of an unborn child. Nor is it justice to codify same-sex relationships so that, by design of the state itself, a child can be denied a mother or a father from birth, which is one thing legalized same-sex unions would do.
By advocating abortion on demand and same-sex unions, Rudy is doing something far more egregious than, say, defacing a New York subway train. He is defacing the institution that forms the foundation of human civilization.
That is not conservative.
Rudy will not win the Republican nomination because enough of the people who vote in Republican caucuses and primaries still respect life and marriage, and are not ready to give up on them — or on the Republican party as an agent for protecting them.
If Rudy wins the Republican primary, then I'm voting either third party or write-in. I wish that I could take both of my votes for Bush back; I'm ashamed that I voted for him twice.
"It's a bit disingenuous for some on this forum to throw around the term "Republican In Name Only" when many of them aren't even "Republican In Name.""
SPLA-DOW!! The exact reason you will never hear me use the term "RINO".
Then you might as well vote for Hillary - you will only have yourself to blame for that !!!
Well said.
Rudy is strong enough (and I amaze myself saying this, b/c it wasn't long ago that I wasn't all that convinced about a Guiliani candidacy) even to pick a VP that is not the product of the dreaded "consensus." IOW, he has the political capital to go outside the box a little; he's not going to be a Calculator.
Can't ever imagine Giuliani getting a standing ovation at a major Republican event full of conservatives.
DITTOS
" Pro-abortion, pro-gun control, pro-gay marriage" You call these core values, but they are all really states rights issues. There are rightful federal issues.
Are you an actual member of the Republican Party?
You know, I read stuff like that and I actually get excited about a Rudy candidacy, and hopeful for the country if we obtained a Rudy presidency.
And golly, the contrast between him and MRS BILL CLINTON, for instance, is breath-taking.
MSM will do Hillary's bidding while remaining silent about her transgressions. The double standard is alive and well and besides it would be in bad taste to attack a woman.
You'll know well before primary voting time whether or not Duncan Hunter can get traction. If he can't, vote for Rudy then!
Amen!
He'll certainly bring out all the Dems.
With all due respect, methinks it is you who learned nothing in 2006.
Any American citizen who professes love of country and adherence to conservatism who would "rather have Hillary" under ANY circumstances is beyond the pale. Sorry.
The GOP would nominate Hitler if they thought he could win.
Absolutely, since my primary is not until after Super Tuesday. We have a year to get Duncan's name out there.
"Republicanism is a political philosophy, not a morality or theology."
The greatest Republican President of the last century would disagree with you that Republicanims is just about poliitics and not morality:
Hardly a day goes by that I’m not told—sometimes in letters and sometimes by people I meet—that they’re praying for me. It’s a warm but humbling feeling. Sometimes I answer when someone says that; I feel I have to say something. And I tell them that if they ever get a busy signal, it’s because I’m in there ahead of them. I grew up in a home where I was taught to believe in intercessory prayer. I know it’s those prayers, and millions like them, that are building high and strong this cathedral of freedom that we call America; those prayers, and millions like them, that will always keep our country secure and make her a force for good in these too troubled times. And that’s why as a nation we must embrace our faith, for as long as we endeavor to do good—and we must believe that will be always—we will find our strength, our hope, and our true happiness in prayer and in the Lord’s will.” —RONALD REAGAN
Will Rudy "endeavor to do good," when he won't even oppose infanticide, which is what PBA is?
I can only speak for myself. Rudy doesn't make me nervous. I just don't think he's representative of the Republican Party.
There hasn't been a single vote in a single primary.
Why are some so anxious to prematurely dump their principles? Is it you who are nervous, perhaps?
That's an unbecoming and not helpful response.
And BTW, how safe do you think the babies will be if some Quixotic effort to elect the "perfect conservative" actually elects MRS BILL CLINTON?
Cute. I would have applauded the guy too. That doesn't mean I want him to be my President.
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