Well, This Should Be Interesting

It's been brutal watching Rudy try to finesse the issue, and since he's not going to run as pro-choice and anti-Roe, maybe this is as good a strategy as any:

After months of conflicting signals on abortion, Rudolph W. Giuliani is planning to offer a forthright affirmation of his support for abortion rights in public forums, television appearances and interviews in the coming days, despite the potential for bad consequences among some conservative voters already wary of his views, aides said yesterday.

I doubt that he can win the nomination like this, but it's not entirely out of the question, particularly in a frontloaded primary season where his weaker rivals may not have time to accept defeat, drop out, and allow the anti-Rudy vote to coalesce around a single candidate. (Though a brokered convention - the dream of pundits everywhere - might be a more likely outcome in that scenario.)

The larger question is whether winning the GOP nomination as a down-the-line pro-choicer might prove to be a poisoned chalice. Frankly, if Giuliani being the Republican nominee doesn't prompt a third-party run by a pro-life candidate that cuts into his general-election support, then social conservatives ought to retire from politics out of sheer embarrassment.

Comments

If anyone...McCain, Gilmore, Huckabee, Hunter, Tancredo could run a 3rd party candidacy on abortion....my liberal heart would stop bleeding and be immensely joyful. Ross, I know you love talking about reforming the GOP and Republicanism, but isn't the CW about the GOP being a "top down" party basically mean a third party challenge from the explicit right (as opposed to on something like immigration - which there seems to be a left-right populist alliance on) almost impossible. There's been nothing close to even nader levels of support for this type of thing before.

Posted by matt z | May 10, 2007 2:39 AM

"There's been nothing close to even nader levels of support for this type of thing before."

But one reason for this is that all GOP presidential candidates from Reagan onward have been pro-life, though some of them had rather convenient "conversions" to this position. (Even Ford in 1976 wanted to leave it to the states.) Rudy would be the first pro-choice GOP presidential candidate in the decades since Roe. So I'm not sure whether the poor showing of right-wing third party candidates (after George Wallace) such as Pat Buchanan in 2000 is relevant here.

Posted by David T | May 10, 2007 2:52 AM

I was just thinking about when (if) Roe is eventually overturned, the country at that point would likely be liberal enough that most if not all states would allow abortion, and how funny that would be. Not abortion, just the idea of "really? after all that?"

Posted by Ben | May 10, 2007 3:44 AM

As far as Rudy goes, this strategy would have appealed to me if he had done it from the beginning and hadn't spent the last few months hemming and hawing on the issue. It's like they're saying, "it's too bad if the base doesn't like it, I have my convictions and I'm going to stand by them, dammit!...starting now."

Posted by Ben | May 10, 2007 3:52 AM

Rudy's lack of clarity on abortion has as much to do with his position on Roe and judges as it does with abortion itself. Is the new Rudy going to be unambiguously pro-Roe? If so, what does this do to his position on appointing strict constructionist judges? If he planning on saying that he now favors appointing judges who would uphold Roe, then he might as well quit now and save himself (and the rest of us) a lot of trouble.

Posted by Blackadder | May 10, 2007 1:35 PM

"I was just thinking about when (if) Roe is eventually overturned, the country at that point would likely be liberal enough that most if not all states would allow abortion, and how funny that would be. Not abortion, just the idea of 'really? after all that?'"

Nearly all states would allow abortion during the first, say 10 weeks. Nearly all states would ban abortion thereafter except in the case of the life of the mother or extreme health issues. In other words, the US would come into line with most other Western democracies (France, Britain, etc.). This would be a workable compromise, in my opinion.

It's funny (not ha-ha funny, but weird funny) that the US is the least secular and is nearly alone with abortion on demand from conception to birth.

Posted by Brian | May 10, 2007 3:03 PM

If there were a third party challenge to a Giuliani nomination, I don't think it would get anywhere. Pains me to say it (as a liberal Democrat), but Rudy has tremendous crossover appeal, no matter how crazy and authoritarian the guy is. There are a lot of pro-choice voters who align with Republicans on other issues and would love to cross over and vote for a pro-choicer who would cut their taxes.

Meanwhile, most social conservatives LOVE the war on terror, and would LOVE Giuliani despite his support of abortion rights, especially if opposing him meant electing Hillary Clinton but also if it meant electing Obama or another Democrat.

Indeed, Rudy Giuliani is probably the only Republican candidate who can beat the Dems in '08. And even though I don't want that to happen, what a great precedent it would set! American politicians would no longer have to genuflect to people who want to force everyone else to live according to their disputed moral theories.

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 10, 2007 3:25 PM

I know that this may sound like a hair brain idea and it has the potential for backfiring royally if it seems pollitically opportunistic but I think that Pope Benedict's visit to New York if it occurs this Spring could be timed perfectly for a repentant Rudy. Guiliani could request a private meeting with the pontiff in his home town and emerge 'convinced' that abortion is a sin. This would then immediately precipitate a very public conversion to the Pro-Life fold. He would be functionally 'born again' to Evangelicals and would solidify his identification with Roman Catholics all in one fell swoop.

Posted by TH | May 10, 2007 6:34 PM

It's still not clear to me that Giuliani, avowed pro-choicer that he is, must necessarily support the nationalization of abortion policy mandated by Roe.

I appreciate Rudy's candor, and, while at long last I don't see any circumstances that could arise whereby my conscience could permit me to support his candidacy at the primary stage, it's not like it's probable that the Democrats will nominate a prolifer. And given a choice over who I'd prefer to have choosing federal judges, I'd just as soon have Giuliani as Clinton or Obama.

Thing is, though, it still seems like Rudy's almost going out of his way to antagonize voters like me. I'm pretty close to an absolutist on the issue of abortion, but even I could pull the level for a pro-choicer if that pro choicer happened to believe that Roe was a badly reasoned decision, and that social policy in general is best decided by voters (not by courts) and their representatives at the state level.

So, I wonder, as the pre-primary season rolls on, will Rudy's new frankness on abortion policy extend beyond a defense of the concept of abortion rights to a defense of the concept that abortion is a right guaranteed by the federal constitution as deemed by Roe? We shall see. I think the jig's up, and it's basically pretty clear now that Rudy's a Margaret Sanger lovin', fetus hatin' extremist, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

Posted by Jasper | May 10, 2007 9:11 PM

The number of people who a) are pro-choice, b) think the war in Iraq was a great idea, but c) won't vote for a Republican if he is pro-life is vanishingly small. There are, however, quite a few voters who are economically liberal and/or have soured on Iraq, but who typically vote Republican because of the life issue. They are disproportionately to be found in midwestern that swing states that hold the key to the next election. Add to that the prospect of a third party candidate taking away 10% of the Republican vote, and it's hard to see how Giuliani is a particularly electable candidate.

Posted by Blackadder | May 10, 2007 9:37 PM

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