Giuliani's GOP:
Posted on 09/06/2006 9:13:55 AM PDT by Reagan Man
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”).
She is also, not incidentally, a self-described nonbeliever.
“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.”
That may sound like a nebulous aim. But it is also an honorable one.
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.
(1) The question was about one's favorite philosopher, not one's favorite political philosopher.
(2) Is the author really suggesting that President Bush should avoid the rhetorical tropes employed by President Lincoln?
Captain Obvious was here. Not to mention he's a gun-grabber.
At least she is willing to admit who will be choosing the Republican nominee for Pres. I would suggest Rudy and others remember that.
"Not to mention he's a gun-grabber."
you beat me to it....
Sure. Only politicians who don't let their professed faith influence their political positions are allowed to mention God in public. (Several former presidents spring to mind ...)
However, I am not to worried about having to face voting for Rudy in '08, I just do not think it is a possibility.
RKBA is not a specifically "religious right" issue, but it's more than enough to keep me from voting for the man for any national office.
No, I'm not, either.
It just irks me when someone can walk around 24 / 7 with armed security guards.....yet they won't allow or trust me with a firearm to protect myself and my loved ones. Something seems distinctly "un-American" about that.
“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.”
This is because, in part, the number of non-believing conservatives is dwarfed by the number of believing conservatives.
Politicians, like Willie Sutton looking for money in banks, go where the votes are. If you're a conservative, it's with believers.
That's a pretty bold statement by Mac Donald. How does she know? You mean to tell me that Rudy never prayed for guidance, especially during and after 9/11? He never prayed for strength to lead the city out of it's crime infestation?
Michael Pakaluk lies down to recover from his attack of the vapors.
April Fools was months ago.
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.
This is precisely where the Objectivists fall down. Elevating belief in rationalism (objectivism) to the exclusion of a belief in God is just fooling yourself.
Normally, I like MacDonald, but she's off the deep end (as is the "author" of this screed) on this one.
This is an lie. From the December 13th Des Moines debate 1999:
BACHMAN: Governor Bush, a philosopher thinker and why.
BUSH: Christ, because he changed my heart.
Amen.
---- President Ronald Reagan, Prayer Breakfast 1984
Christians are not to relegate God to the closet under lock and key.
This is why John Kerry is no good. He is supposedly Catholic but votes for abortion.
That it matters.
Such talk might just be read-my-lips syndrome, but it's calculated, reasonable, and logical all the same--even if it's not coming from the heart. They know the constituency for whom it matters.
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