A Giuliani Conservative Tilts at Religion

Rudolph Giuliani has repeatedly extended the hand of friendship to Christian conservatives in recent months. But a leading member of a think tank closely associated with the former Mayor has just delivered a powerful jab to the face of the same constituency.

Mr. Giuliani, long viewed with suspicion by the religious right because of his pro-choice, pro-civil-union positions, went so far as to campaign for former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed back in May. The move was widely seen as an attempt to curry favor with a voting bloc that will play a crucial role in electing the Republican Presidential candidate in 2008.

But last month, Heather Mac Donald—a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, the organization that served as a semi-official brain trust to Mr. Giuliani during his time in Gracie Mansion—mounted a brazen frontal assault on the politics of piety. Moreover, she chose Pat Buchanan’s magazine, The American Conservative, as the unlikely platform from which to do so.

Ms. Mac Donald is a heroine to many in the conservative movement, in part because of her robust attacks on everything from feminist ideology (“lunacy”) to The New York Times (“a national security threat”).

“Skeptical conservatives—one of the Right’s less celebrated subcultures—are conservatives because of their skepticism, not in spite of it,” she wrote in the Aug. 28 issue of The American Conservative. “They ground their ideas in rational thinking and (nonreligious) moral argument. And the conservative movement is crippling itself by leaning too heavily on religion to the exclusion of these temperamentally compatible allies.”

The article ignited a firestorm that continues to sweep across conservative opinion journals and Web sites. Pundits including John Podhoretz, Ramesh Ponnuru and Jonah Goldberg have, to varying extents, made their disagreement plain. Philosophy professor (and Opus Dei member) Michael Pakaluk has complained that Ms. Mac Donald’s “mockery of common religious sensibilities … is so unfeeling as to border on the inhuman.”

Asked about the timing of her article, Ms. Mac Donald suggested that her exasperation with the religiosity of present-day conservatism had simply reached a boiling point.

“I’ve just been impatient over the last six years,” she told The Observer. “I don’t remember anything like this current assumption that candidates should talk about their relationship with God. What is that supposed to tell citizens?”

There is no suggestion that the Manhattan Institute fellow is doing Mr. Giuliani’s bidding in making the controversial case for secular conservatism. On the contrary, Ms. Mac Donald’s argument is more likely to be met with consternation by allies of the former Mayor, for fear that it could dynamite the bridges to the religious right that they have been so assiduously trying to build.

Baruch College political-science professor Gerald De Maio, who teaches a course on religion and politics, believes that the debates about a Giuliani candidacy—and about the issues raised by Ms. Mac Donald’s article—are manifestations of the longstanding divide in the G.O.P. between social conservatives and libertarians.

The libertarian wing, he said, “is muted. They count for much less than they used to. In many ways, Gerald Ford was the last President to represent that tendency. Now, one of the questions is: Could Rudy Giuliani get the nomination as a social liberal? I can’t see how social conservatives in the heartland can back him.”

Ms. Mac Donald admiringly told The Observer that the former Mayor “never invoked God, but transformed this city in ways that couldn’t have been imagined.” But she insisted that her main concern wasn’t electoral politics. She was, she said, more interested in the need for “a sound philosophical basis for conservative argument.”

When the President names Jesus Christ as his favorite political philosopher, uses a sly phrase like “wonder-working power” during a manifestly political occasion like a State of the Union address or invokes God in support of his decisions in Iraq, he seeks, at the minimum, to give his agenda a religious veneer.

The invocation of religion in support of political beliefs is, above all else, a dangerously effective tool for foreclosing debate, discouraging scrutiny and suggesting that one’s opponents lack moral fiber.

The battle of ideas should be fought with the weapons of reason and logic alone.

That is not an intrinsically liberal idea. There is much to support in Ms. Mac Donald’s contention that conservatism is strong enough to prosper without being propped up by the language of religious piety.

But as Mr. Giuliani already seems to have demonstrated by his actions, many conservatives will never see things that way.

The Real Rudy Giuliani:

Pro-abortion - He even opposes banning partial birth murder.
Anti-2nd Amendment - supports gun grabbing legislation including the Brady Bill and the Assault Weapon Ban
Pro-big government - amassed unprecedented debt as Mayor of NYC
Pro-radical gay agenda

- Supports gay marriage
- Attended every gay pride parade in NYC while mayor (even one in 1992 that included a NAMBLA contingent of pedophile activists)
- Has received many awards from radical gay groups
- Attends and supports many functions and fund-raisers held by radical gay organizations (even did a cross dressing act at Pride Agenda fund-raiser)

Pro-illegal immigration - said no one in New York City is going to assist the federal government with the enforcement of immigration law, sued Feds in 1997 to be able to ignore immigration law, lost in court, vowed to ignore law anyway
Endorses liberal Democrat candidates over Republicans - endorsed liberal Dem Mario Cuomo over Republican George Pataki in NY Governor's race
Ran for NYC Mayor in 1994 on Liberal Party ticket. Appointed Liberal Party State Chair to a Deputy Mayor position. Endorsed 3 times by the Liberal Party for his liberal views.
Holds many other liberal views
Republican In Name Only - opposes many major planks of the GOP Platform
Read more about Giuliani's liberal positions here and here.
Some people want Republicans to ignore his liberalism on almost every issue and, as a distraction, they try to pretend that Rudy is fiscally conservative. Again, his record shows that he isn't fiscally conservative either:
According to an article in The Nation from 2002:

It's now apparent that Giuliani purchased the city's good times partially with borrowed money and left his successor, Mike Bloomberg, holding a bag of debt. New York City went from a $3 billion budget surplus in 1998 to a $4.5 billion deficit after Giuliani left office. This mismanagement of prosperity is a big part of his legacy. Giuliani left the city's finances in a mess...

Here are some things Giuliani did as Mayor that were NOT anywhere near being fiscally conservative:

New York City went from a $3 billion budget surplus in 1998 to a $4.5 billion deficit after Giuliani left office.

Added 25,000 government employees patronage hires to the city's payroll after promising to cut the work force.

Giuliani's borrowing practices increased the city's debt burden by 50 percent.

Partly because of Giuliani, New York City is now the biggest debtor in the nation outside of the federal government with $42 billion in loans outstanding.

According to the article from The Nation:

During the 1960s Giuliani was a self-described "Robert Kennedy Democrat." He identified with RFK as a liberal Catholic prosecutor. He volunteered for RFK's 1968 presidential campaign while he was a student at NYU Law School. Giuliani also voted for George McGovern in 1972. During the liberal 1960s, he was a liberal.
But in 1975 Giuliani switched his party registration from Democrat to Independent when he got a job in Gerald Ford's Justice Department, according to his mentor Harold "Ace" Tyler.
On December 8, 1980, Giuliani changed his registration from Independent to Republican. This was one month after Ronald Reagan's election, and just as he was applying for a top job in the Justice Department.
So, to sum that up:

Liberal Democrat until 1975
Worked as volunteer for Democrat Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign.
Voted for liberal George McGovern.
Liberal Independent from 1975-1980.
Did not register as a Republican until 1980 and only AFTER Ronald Reagan was elected and because he was applying for a top job in the administration.
He's a liberal. He's not even in the same building as conservative. He's only a Republican because...and this comes from his own mother, Helen Giuliani:

"He only became a Republican after he began to get all these jobs from them. He's definitely not a conservative Republican. He thinks he is, but he isn't..."

And as John Hawkins put it in an excellent article in Human Events:

Despite all of his charisma and the wonderful leadership he showed after 9/11, Rudy Giuliani is not a Reagan Republican. To the contrary, Giuliani is another Christie Todd Whitman, another Arlen Specter, another Olympia Snowe. He's a throwback to the "bad old days" before Reagan, when the GOP was run by moderate Country Club Republicans who considered conservatives to be extremists. Trying to revive that failed strategy again is likely to lead to a Democratic President in 2008 and numerous setbacks for the Republican Party.

>>>>Better start getting used to the idea of Rudy as the nominee - I know it kills a lot of you - but you can always take your toys and stay home.

I don't place much faith in a hypothetical internet poll. Obviously you do. We are 15 months away from the start of the GOP primary season, and over two years out from the general election. NO Republican has announced their intentions for 2008. If Giuliani runs, he will lose in the GOP primaries.

I agree with David Limbaugh`s comments on Sean Hannity'`s radio show yesterday. Social/religious conservatives will not vote for a pro-abortion, pro-PBA candidate. Not to mention Giulaini's staunch liberal position favoring even more gun control and an assault weapons ban. Add to it, Giuliani's positions favoring special rights for homos and illegals that do not exist in the Constitution.

Giuliani will start off having at least half the GOP vote against him in the primaries.

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