What’s not to like about Rudy Giuliani? After all, he’s got
charisma, style, name recognition and now apparently, even sex
appeal. He’s from New York City, where he cut taxes and cleaned up
the mobsters and petty crime. He’s tough on terror; he told that
Arab sheik where to get off when he offered $10 million to NYC
after 9/11 and he even kicked Yasser Arafat out of a Lincoln Center
bash. So what’s not to like?
Well, if you’re a mainstream media type or one of their beloved
independent voters, nothing. The man is everything that liberals
love in a Republican. He’s a gun-grabbing, pro-abortion,
gay-rights-supporting, cross-dressing, thrice-married Catholic.
When asked about his differences with the Church on
issues like abortion, he dutifully gives the answer that makes
left-wing hearts sing: “I oppose it. I don’t like it. I hate it. I
think abortion is something that, as a personal matter, I would
advise somebody against. However, I believe in a woman’s right to
choose.”
Let’s face it. The man has been in the Northeast long enough to
know the code words. Take his stance on the Partial Birth Abortion
Ban Act: “[I]f it doesn’t have a provision for the life of the
mother, then I wouldn’t support the legislation. If it has
provision for the life of the mother, then I would support it.” As
anyone who opposes the grisly murder of nearly born children knows,
the “life of the mother” clause remains loophole language, even
though the 2003 Act is an improvement on its 1995 predecessor.
More straightforward though, is he on the issue of gay rights.
He openly professes that inalienable ‘rights’ should be accorded to
those whose claim on this special protection is based solely on
sexual proclivities. Add to this his record on guns—remember, he
and his Constitution-busting Attorney General Elliot Spitzer
brought the first-in-the-nation lawsuits against gun manufacturers
— and you’d think that his candidacy as a Republican would have
nary a chance.
Yet shockingly, in the face of these stances and the attendant
liberal love heaped upon him, Rudy may be the choice of some
Republicans. The reasons for this vary; some supporters pooh-pooh
the effect his social liberalism would have at the presidential
level, others believe his claim that he will appoint originalist
justices to the Supreme Court, while many of his backers think that
his tough stance on terrorism trumps all else. And besides, they
ask, what other “name” candidate is there who can be counted on to
“win”?
This kind of thinking plays right into the hands of the
opposition. Those who buy into the notion that his support of
abortion, for instance, will be a kind of benign, non-event are as
gullible as the media believe them to be. Ask yourselves, who
vetoed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act in 1995 and who signed it
into law in 2003? In the same vein, what was the subject of
President Bush’s first and only veto?
While trying to appeal to the conservative base of the
Republican Party, Rudy has claimed he would appoint originalist judges to
the Supreme Court because he has, “a very, very strong view that
for this country to work, for our freedoms to be protected, judges
have to interpret not invent the Constitution.” This would seem
just a tad at odds with someone who supports a right to abortion
which is decidedly not in the Constitution, and infringing on the
right to keep and bear arms, which certainly is.
While his liberal social agenda is disturbing, it is his status
as another high-profile “cafeteria Catholic” that troubles me most.
Although he doesn’t try and make his faith an issue — as do Joe
Biden and John Kerry, whose similar “I’m personally against
abortion but…” statements have been ridiculed by conservatives
for years—the bottom line is this: How can anyone trust a man who
freely admits that he leaves his religious and moral beliefs at the
church door?
A man who would publicly repudiate the dictates of his
conscience is much more dangerous to the GOP than one who is
intrinsically liberal. This notion that deeply held beliefs,
religious or otherwise, should not enter into public life is a
cancer on that life. Who would hire an accountant that professed a
personal dedication to honesty, but was unable to transfer that
into his business dealings? Or a car manufacturer whose innate
sense of integrity did not inform his workmanship?
Politicians, because they craft the laws under which we all must
live should, at all times, bring their personal and/or religious
sense of ethics and values to their work. And these should be a
matter of record while they are campaigning, so their constituents
can decide whether or not those ethics are in line with theirs.
There are those who say that certain social issues won’t matter
if we don’t elect a leader whose number one priority is the defense
of this country. But what kind of a country are we left to defend
if, at its core, it is morally decadent? John Adams famously said,
“Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious
people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.”
Many conservatives have asked a question that could not be a
better tactic for the mainstream media than if they composed it
themselves: If it came to a choice between Rudy and Hillary, what
would you do? This liberal win-win scenario can only be forestalled
if the GOP sticks to its principles, come what may.
