Giuliani at Houston
by Ryan Sager
Sat, 12 May 2007 at 9:46 AM
updated Sat, 12 May 2007 at 9:50 AM
I don't think it would be too much to say that Rudy Giuliani's speech at Houston was a historic moment for the Republican Party — whether or not one believes the former mayor, and current frontrunner, should be the GOP's nominee for president.
While his position on abortion during this campain hasn't actually changed (at least in a binary sense, it's been pro-choice and not pro-life, despite some flopping around on how to "explain" things), his newfound forthrightness on the issue gives Republicans a clear choice: If abortion alone is enough to disqualify Mr. Giuliani with some voters, so be it; if it's not, let's discuss everything else on the national agenda and see where we end up.
Or, as Mr. Giuliani put it: "You have a right to evaluate this in figuring out if you can support me, and at what level you can support me. ... Everybody's got to make a choice. How important are the differences and then how important are the other issues that are involved in this election?"
In the modern conservative era of the Republican Party, we've never had a frontrunning candidate offer such a choice to the base. But, in many ways, the disaster of the Bush years has ended the modern conservative era. Is this the beginning of a new one?
Mr. Giuliani is, of course, being attacked by all the usual suspects for his new stance.
"The mayor's position on abortion couldn't be more repugnant to pro-lifers," said Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, according to the New York Times. "It shows a moral obtuseness that is stunning."
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, sent an e-mail to supporters Friday afternoon saying that "When people hear Rudy Giuliani speak about taxpayer funded abortions, gay 'rights' and gun control, they don't hear a choice, they hear an echo of Hillary Clinton."
But these folks were never going to support Mr. Giuliani anyway.
At least by being forthright, Mr. Giuliani won't look like a flip-flopper (see: Romney, Mitt) and risk alienating ... well, everyone. He also stands a better chance of simply putting the issue behind him. How many times can he be forced to talk about his position on abortion if it's just pro-choice?
Look at it this way: There's no way this can hurt Rudy; everyone already knows he's pro-choice, any voters voting just on that are already gone. It can, however, put a nettlesome issue in his rearview mirror.
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