Rudolph Giuliani has an evangelical problem.

He is strong on national defense. He is strong on taxes. He appears to be electable. Well, it’s just that the 9/11 mayor thinks that, at least in some circumstances, abortion should be legal and doesn’t want to outlaw man-on-man marriage. He’s a New Yorker running inside an anti-New York party.

Hence Reverend James Dobson on September 30 in Salt Lake City met with some 45 like-minded social conservatives to discuss the prospect of supporting a third-party alternative if Mr. Giuliani wins the Republican nomination. Can you blame them? Back in April, Mr. Giuliani told CNN’s Dana Bash that he would still favor federal subsidy for abortion, so long as it was legal.

To understand how what is probably the largest plurality within the Republican party feels about that, replace the word “abortion” in that last sentence with “infanticide.” Like slavery for the abolitionists or women’s voting for the suffragists, there is no compromise for all of those Americans who became political activists to protect the life of the unborn.

A former Republican candidate, Gary Bauer, who participated by telephone in the Salt Lake City meeting, called the federal subsidy remark a “colossal mistake.” “First of all, to understand evangelical voters you have to understand the weight they put on the life issue; that is the reason they got into politics,” he said. “It’s like telling economic conservatives, ‘I am right on everything except taxes.'”

Mr. Bauer does not favor making the life voters a conservative version of the Nader Raiders for 2008. “I think the great hope is that these voters aren’t faced with the Giuliani versus Hillary option,” he said. “But if he gets the nomination a lot of people will try to get from him commitments that will make it clear to him that he would be better than Hillary on life.”

In some ways, they already are. Mr. Giuliani has talked recently in Iowa, where some polls have him in fourth place, about encouraging adoption. But it goes without saying that the mayor is not doing enough. If he was, he wouldn’t have people like James Dobson talking about running a third-party candidate if he won the nomination.

Mr. Giuliani should take a page from the playbook of his nemesis, Hillary Clinton. Like Rudy, Hillary has a problem with elements of her base, namely the one in five Democrats who think the world would be better off if America lost the war for Iraq, those voters who favor an immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

Faced with the angry anti-war left, Mrs. Clinton knows she is not going to get their vote. But at the least she can win their neutrality and get them not to actively hate her. So she shows up at the Yearly Kos convention, refuses to condemn MoveOn.org and buffers her vote for a hawkish Iran resolution by sponsoring another resolution that demands the president to ask for Congress’s permission if he chooses to bomb Iran.

All the while, Mrs. Clinton’s positions on national security are several ticks to the right of the base, but she associates herself symbolically with these angry voters, and is hoping she gets a pass.

Mr. Giuliani needs to do something like that with the life and marriage set. To start he can go on the 700 Club with Pat Robertson, a major evangelical leader who was not at the Salt Lake City confab, and clarify those subsidized abortion remarks. “When I said I would favor federal subsidies, I meant I would oppose federal subsidies for abortion.” Something like that.

He also could speak, as a lawyer, of his fondness for the judicial philosophy of Justice Scalia, and of how when he is president he hopes to clone Mr. Scalia so he may serve in as many courts as possible.

Mr. Giuliani should begin to remind the voters of his own record against the moral degradation of our culture. The Giuliani campaign could run an ad reminding Iowans of his campaign against the pornographers in Times Square.

The former mayor could give speeches reminding voters of how he stood up to the Brooklyn Museum of Art when it displayed Chris Ofili’s “Holy Virgin Mary,” depicting Mary surrounded by cherubim and seraphim in elephant dung and close-up photos of women’s genitalia.

“I have a message to the artists who want federal grants for urinating on the crucifix,” he could say on the stump.”Your days on the dole are over when I’m president.” The mayor will barely be able to hear the condemnation from NPR over the applause of the primary voters.

Finally, Mr. Giuliani needs to turn his greatest strength — his moral clarity on the war — into a values issue.

President Bush has been loath to emphasize our enemy’s fanatical and violent devotion to an extremist form of Islam, but Mr. Giuliani need not shy away from the subject. He can always qualify his remarks by repeating that he is not talking about most Muslims, only those that consider it appropriate to murder the rest of us Catholics, Christians, and Jews.

It doesn’t hurt that Mr. Giuliani’s skepticism about a Palestinian state adheres closely with the evangelical voters as well.

None of this is going to win James Dobson or Gary Bauer over to the Giuliani camp. But there is a chance they won’t actively sabotage him. With a little luck, the anti-abortion vote will split between the newcomer to the cause, Mitt Romney, and the newcomer to the race, Fred Thompson.

elake@nysun.com