Giuliani: I Am Conservatives' 80 Percent Ally

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today has been the marquee day here at the 34th annual Conservative Political Action Conference, as two out of the three top-tier candidates for the Republican nomination in 2008 stopped by to make their pitches to the party's base.

Mayor Giuliani, with a wide lead over his rivals in the polls, quoted Reagan in making his case for why a twice-divorced, pro-choice, pro-gay-rights New Yorker should be the Republican Party's nominee for president. "My 80 percent ally is not my 20 percent enemy," Mr. Giuliani cited the Gipper as having said. "We don't all see eye-to-eye on everything. You and I have a lot of common beliefs that are the same, and we have some that are different … The point of a presidential election is to figure out who do you believe the most, and what do you think are the most important things for this country at a particular time."

The crowd, for its part, seemed more than open to Mr. Giuliani's pitch, despite carping from speakers yesterday about the unacceptability of the current presidential field. As George F. Will, the dean of conservative commentary, introduced "a man for whom pugnacity is a political philosophy," the crowd exploded with applause and greeted the former mayor with a 40-second-plus standing ovation.

In his speech, Mr. Giuliani emphasized those "common beliefs" he felt he and hard-core conservatives share: law and order, welfare reform, education reform, tax cuts, and staying on the offensive in the War on Terror. Though, he submitted, "Maybe we made a mistake in calling this the War on Terror. This is not our war on them, this is their war on us. … This war is over when they stop planning to come here and kill us."

If Mr. Giuliani wants to be conservatives' 80 percent ally, however, the former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, who trails badly in the polls, was dead set on showing that he is conservatives' 100 percent ally.

Introduced by longtime conservative anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, Mr. Romney announced that he would be the first candidate to sign the anti-tax pledge sponsored by Mr. Norquist's group, Americans for Tax Reform. He also announced during his speech that he would pledge to hold increases in non-defense discretionary spending to a rate below that of inflation.

If Mr. Giuliani's appearance was well received, Mr. Romney's speech, by its end, turned into something of a barn burner — especially when he turned to the social issues so near and dear the hearts of CPACers. "It is the people who are sovereign in America, not a few folks in black robes," Mr. Romney thundered, railing against his state's highest court's decision to institute gay marriage. Mr. Romney also pledged to fight to repeal the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance-regulation bill and to fight the McCain-Kennedy immigration reform bill.

Notice how both bills carry the name of Mr. Romney's other primary opponent.

Sen. McCain of Arizona, indeed, has fared worst today, skipping entirely a chance to address the conservative faithful and make peace with a group that does not regard him well.

"I doubt that I'll support McCain," one attendee who watched Mr. Giuliani's speech, Mary Hall of Maryland, said afterwards. "I think it was very important for him to come here and address the conservative people and to give us his take, and he hasn't done that."

Asked whether she was troubled by Mr. Giuliani's views on social issues, Ms. Hall, who identified herself as pro-life, said no. "I think terror and our education system, things like that, are more important," she said. "I am against abortion, but I think these other issues are more important right now."

Ms. Hall's is the reaction on which Mr. Giuliani is counting. But if Mr. Romney can convince conservatives that he's the right man for the War on Terror and also truly with them on social issues (despite a history of convenient flip flops) — well, they might just be forced to weigh electability against orthodoxy.

Mr. Sager is the online editor of The New York Sun. He can be reached at rsager@nysun.com.