Tuesday, April 17, 2007
On the Big Tent [Rich Lowry]
J-Pod, as the instigator of the minor fuss about Giuliani's comments, let me respond. First, your cautionary note yesterday was justified. His comments read better in context. But he's still saying that pro-lifers hurt the party and that pro-lifers are somehow uniquely negative ("against" things). That's going to rub pro-lifers the wrong way, and it should.
On the larger point, if Giuliani doesn't get the nomination, it doesn't mean the GOP isn't a big tent. He's not going to be banned from speaking at GOP conventions. The reason conservatives have talked about all the former pro-lifers in the Democratic party, meanwhile, is to highlight that the position can't be "extreme" if so many of its critics used to take it. (Or, in some cases, to lament the Democratic party's drift toward social-liberal extremism.) I don't think people bring up all of these conversions of convenience because they're shocked that major political parties are going to tend to have nominees that share their views on important public policy questions.
On judges, it's great that Rudy wants to nominate judges who honor the Constitution. But for pro-lifers in particular the meaningfulness of that pledge is vitiated by the facts that he apparently thinks that the Constitution enshrines a right to abortion, and that he thinks his strict-constructionist judges might well vote to uphold Roe.
Finally, the "opinion" that the government should protect unborn life should indeed be one of the "tentpoles" of the GOP tent. If a pro-choicer wants to come under that tent, wonderful—but he should keep his hands off the poles.
Rudy may end up handling all this amazingly deftly, more deftly than his has in the last two weeks. But I won't be surprised if by the end of this campaign, Giuliani and his supporters, along with the media, are hawking the notion that—because they have proven resistant to Giuliani's charms—pro-lifers are intolerant bigots harming the GOP. Hope I'm wrong...
04/17 04:21 PM
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