Giuliani Reaffirms Support for Abortion Rights

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Photo: Copyright © 2005 Jay Galvin. Licensed under Creative Commons.

When I profiled Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani's views on civil liberties late last year, I argued that he might change his platform on key issues in order to appeal to social conservatives and increase his odds of capturing the party nomination. That's certainly what Mitt Romney did. Presidential aspirations transformed Romney from a pro-choice, pro-gay moderate into one of the most vitriolic social conservatives in the Republican Party. Because he has less of a paper trail, Giuliani could undergo a similar transformation and stand a much better chance of getting away with it.

So I am surprised--stunned, really--to read that he has unambiguously reaffirmed his pro-choice commitment despite falling behind Romney in first-quarter fundraising. Giuliani has also refused to shift his progressive points of view on gay rights and immigration. And yet, somehow, he is still polling at 38% among likely Republican voters, far ahead of second-place McCain's 16% and fifth-place Romney's dismal 6%. If he rides his pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-immigrant convictions all the way to the 2008 Republican National Convention, what will this mean for the civil liberties debate in America?

It would be an amazing sight: Two socially progressive major-party nominees running for president, neither proposing that we blur the line between separation of church and state, neither interested in imposing a moralistic "family values" legislative agenda on the general public. It has been a full generation since we have witnessed a presidential election of that kind--Ford vs. Carter, 1976--and it would signify a sea change in American politics.

In many ways I am thinking of the failed 1991 Soviet coup, and what it told us about the wishes of the Soviet people. In August of 1991, hardline Communists kidnapped Secretary Gorbachev and took control of the country--or so they thought. But the Soviets rejected the Communist coup, and the coup leaders, realizing that they were not nearly as popular as they thought they were, surrendered. Leon Aron wrote at the time:

For the last six years, Soviet politics have been transacted on the margin of the giant black hole called the "Communist Right." As with its counterpart in astronomy, this political black hole was invisible but assumed to have enormous mass ... Now the black hole has been removed from the Soviet sky. Or not removed but revealed to be--and, perhaps, to have been all along--a rather paltry, ordinary star of less than average gravitational force.

The influence of the Christian Coalition, Moral Majority, and so forth has been built on the success of Ronald Reagan, one of the most charismatic political figures in American history. I, like many Americans, had always assumed that his success as a politician was due primarily to his socially conservative backers. Now, as the Republican Party contemplates a candidate who shares none of Reagan's socially conservative views but who seems to be attracting similar levels of party support, it seems reasonable to wonder if the self-proclaimed leaders in the Religious Right really have as much power as they claim. If the party that nominated Reagan can also nominate Giuliani, maybe it all ultimately does boil down to the candidate, the platform, and perhaps even--dare I say it?--the priorities of the electorate.

See also:

• The 2008 Republican Presidential Candidates on Civil Liberties