Tuesday, March 13, 2007

The Purity Test   [Peter Suderman]

Now, I remain intrigued by Giuliani as a candidate, both in the public image he’s crafted and the current public response to that image. But I just don’t find Roger Simon’s Politico piece on him today, “How Pure Does Rudy Have to Be?”, all that convincing. It’s pretty much pure speculation, a list of hopeful, unsupported "maybes" about voter opinion that attempts to account for Giuliani's poll status while failing to deal with the surveys that show that many Republicans aren’t aware of his views on social issues, and that if they became aware, they’d have reservations about him as a candidate. Now, some of Simon’s maybes are nice, and a lot of my email suggests (anecdotally, of course) that serious pro-lifers aren’t necessarily disinclined to support Giuliani. But I also understand that a lot of Romney and McCain supporters are expecting Giuliani’s campaign to falter as his views on social issues become more widely known. Right now, though, we just don’t know what the reaction will be. It’s a waiting game, pure and simple.

03/13 01:15 PMShare