Rudy's Bold New World

So Rudy Giuliani has, we're told, decided to drop the tortured pretenses and run as an openly pro-choice candidate for the Republican nomination. Ross Douthat has a pretty good analysis of some of the implications:

I doubt that he can win the nomination like this, but it's not entirely out of the question, particularly in a frontloaded primary season where his weaker rivals may not have time to accept defeat, drop out, and allow the anti-Rudy vote to coalesce around a single candidate. (Though a brokered convention - the dream of pundits everywhere - might be a more likely outcome in that scenario.)

The larger question is whether winning the GOP nomination as a down-the-line pro-choicer might prove to be a poisoned chalice. Frankly, if Giuliani being the Republican nominee doesn't prompt a third-party run by a pro-life candidate that cuts into his general-election support, then social conservatives ought to retire from politics out of sheer embarrassment.

In a larger sense, Giuliani's decision makes him a considerably more interesting candidate, since it clarifies his candidacy's role as a significant litmus test for conservative and Republican politics. Are there circumstances in which a candidate can win the GOP nomination despite openly rejecting the anti-abortion position that has been so important to the strength of the party's base over the past two decades?

One might argue that many conservatives are reaping what they have sowed since 9/11: having done so much to spread paranoia over what they depict as an epochal clash of civilizations, and to encourage simple-minded hero worship and glorification of the strong leader in response, these conservatives are confronted with the harvest: a candidate whose power to reject fundamental elements of the conservative movement's agenda is drawn precisely from his ability to profit politically from those "long war" themes.

Of course, it might also be seen as a test of the relative strength of those conservative elites who have never cared much either way about abortion versus those who are dedicated to keeping the issue at the center of the conservative project. To put it more concisely: if you simply follow the money, how far will it take you?

History tells us that the conservative party in American politics tends to fare quite badly when it lacks a mass populist wing. Like it or not, for modern Republicans the anti-abortion movement is that wing. Can they survive without it? Will they dare to try?

Labels: 2008, abortion, conservatives, Presidential election, Republicans, Ross Douthat, Rudy Giuliani

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:54 AM