Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Giuliani's "Federalism"   [Ramesh Ponnuru]

Ronald Brownstein says that Giuliani is running as a federalist candidate. I'm not so sure.

He's no federalist on abortion. Giuliani eventually came out for a federal ban on partial-birth abortion. He used to be for Roe v. Wade, and now refuses to say if it should remain the law of the land. In neither case, then, is he calling for a state-by-state resolution of the issue.

He used to be for licensure of gun owners, but now says that he favors Judge Silberman's ruling that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to own guns. So does he think that states should have to respect that right? If he favors a state-by-state approach, that can reasonably be called federalist—but it would leave him in the odd position, for a Republican, of treating the Second Amendment as the only provision of the Bill of Rights that shouldn't be enforced against the states.

Brownstein suggests that Giuliani is a federalist on health care as well because he would "encourage more state experimentation with expanding coverage." Since a lot of that experimentation would presumably involve federal money—that's the way it has worked up until now—people who care about authentic federalism shouldn't be cheering.

07/25 01:17 PMShare