The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : Rudy and the GOP Platform

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In my column this morning, I discuss how Rudy Giuliani seemed to find his voice on social issues in Houston on Friday. Although I didn't mention it in my article, I think this exchange with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday was quite important:

WALLACE: ... If you become the nominee of the Republican Party in September of 2008, will you try to change the Republican Party platform, which has been pro-life since 1976 and now says, "The unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed."

GIULIANI: I'm not going to deal with the platform. I mean, I think that any candidate...

WALLACE: You couldn't live with that, could you?

GIULIANI: Well, any candidate of the party has about nine out of 10 things in the platform they agree with and one or two things that they don't agree with. I know what my positions are. A very, very big portion of my party agrees with that. A certain portion of my party disagrees with that. My attempt is to try to broaden the base of the Republican Party, to try to bring in people that can agree and that can disagree on that, because I think the issues that we face about terrorism, about our economy, about the growth of our economy are so important that we have to have the biggest outreach possible.

To me, this is a tacit acknowledgement by Giuliani that the Republican Party is still a pro-life party, and he won't try to remake it in his image as a pro-choice party. He is asking, at a time when we are engaged in a war on terrorism, that Republican voters give him a chance. But he sees that the big tent cuts both ways. When he says the party should stay united, he doesn't only mean that the party should be accepting of his views, but that he'll also understand the fact that "a very, very big portion" of the GOP feels differently on abortion, and he won't try to lead a rebellion against that. This also reinforces my point that Giuliani is not another Pete Wilson.

topics:
Abortion