No deal, Rudy

Catholic Online ^ | 3/6/2007

[markomalley]

They are saying that the next GOP presidential candidate might very well be a pro-abortion Republican who promises not to push that issue and is strong on other issues.

They hope that pro-lifers will “be reasonable,” not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and go along quietly.

We won’t.

Republicans and Democrats in 1980 took radically different approaches to the right to life. Republicans wrote into their party platform that all abortions should be outlawed. Democrats wrote into their party platform that not only should abortion be legal, but families should be forced to pay for others’ abortions through their taxes.

Democratic leaders have been utterly committed to their party platform. But there’s a movement afoot for Republicans to shrug off this plank of the party platform altogether, and give a pro-abortion politician the reins of the party and, they hope, the White House.

In particular, Rudy Giuliani has become a favorite for president of conservative talk-show hosts, and pro-war and tough-on-crime Republicans. He’s also way ahead in polls like Newsweek’s, though it’s anyone guess what such polls mean so early in the process.

The way the pro-Rudy argument goes is this: For the past three decades, social conservatives have had the luxury of insisting on purity in the Republican Party. Their clout was such that any candidate had to undergo a “forced conversion” before running for national office. But 9/11 changed that. Now, extremist Islam and the war on terror are such all-consuming issues, and we can’t be so caught up with abortion anymore.

Since Giuliani is committed to the war on terror and is a great crisis manager with a track record rooting out the gangs of New York, we shouldn’t demand that he be pro-life, but instead we should be willing to make a deal.

Rudy’s deal: He’ll promise not to push the pro-abortion agenda, and he’ll nominate judges in the mold of Samuel Alito and John Roberts. Pro-lifers in the Republican Party in return would support him, but keep insisting that the party stay pro-life, and fight our fiercest pro-life battles at the state level, where they belong.

That seems like a good deal, at first blush. We’re well aware that “forced conversions” to the pro-life fold are far from the ideal. Think of the candidacy of Bob Dole in 1996. And it is true that the fight against judicial tyranny is an immense front in the battle for the right to life. Transforming the courts is a prerequisite to victory elsewhere.

But what dooms the deal from the start is the fact that it totally misunderstands what pro-lifers care about in the first place.

When they ask us to “be reasonable” and go along with a pro-abortion leader, they assume that there is something unreasonable about the pro-life position to start with.

We’re sorry, but we don’t see what is so unreasonable about the right to life. We’ve seen ultrasounds, we’ve named our babies in the womb, we’ve seen women destroyed by abortion. What looks supremely unreasonable to us is that we should trust a leader who not doesn’t only reject the right to life but even supports partial-birth abortion, which is more infanticide than abortion.

We also see the downside of Rudy’s deal. If pro-lifers went along, we’d soon find out that a pro-abortion Republican president would no longer preside over a pro-life party. The power a president exerts over his party’s character is nearly absolute. The party is changed in his image. He picks those who run it and, both directly and indirectly, those who enter it.

Thus, the Republicans in the 1980s became Reaganites. The Democrats in the 1990s took on the pragmatic Clintonite mold. Bush’s GOP is no different, as Ross Douthat points out in “It’s His Party” in the March Atlantic Monthly.

A Republican Party led by a pro-abortion politician would become a pro-abortion party. Parents know that, when we make significant exceptions to significant rules, those exceptions themselves become iron-clad rules to our children. It’s the same in a political party. A Republican Party led by Rudy Giuliani would be a party of contempt for the pro-life position, which is to say, contempt for the fundamental right on which all others depend.

Would a pro-abortion president give us a pro-life Supreme Court justice? Maybe he would in his first term. But we’ve seen in the Democratic Party how quickly and completely contempt for the right to life corrupts. Even if a President Giuliani did the right thing for a short time, it’s likely the party that accepted him would do the wrong thing for a long time.

Would his commitment to the war on terror be worth it? The United States has built the first abortion businesses in both Afghanistan and Iraq, ever. Shamefully, our taxes paid to build and operate a Baghdad abortion clinic that is said to get most of its customers because of the pervasive rape problem in that male-dominated society. And that happened under a pro-life president. What would a pro-abortion president do?

The bottom line: Republicans have made inroads into the Catholic vote for years because of the pro-life issue. If they put a pro-abortion politician up for president, the gains they’ve built for decades will vanish overnight.

[streetpreacher]

Bookmark

[streetpreacher]

LOL!

[SampleMan]

Why do I like him? Because he gets the job done?

Go on. Which jobs has he got done and which ones do you expect him to get done?

[SampleMan]

Rudy just doesn't need the NCR.

That's Hillary's position too.

So your argument for why someone that doesn't approve of infanticide should get on board the Rudy Express is what?

[Outland]

"Rudy doesn't need you, and he's going to destroy hitlery"

Hitlery won't make it past the primaries and we don't need Rino Guiliani.

[Giant Conservative]

Murder being ancient doesn't give it credibility.

Life came first.

[GSlob]

Non sequitur.

[Giant Conservative]

Abortion itself is inherently irrational.

[Giant Conservative]

Why don't you go start your own party?

[Giant Conservative]

The main arguments of the "Rutards":

1. "He will stop Hillary" - You don't win with a negative, folks.

2. "He is good on foreign policy." Really? I haven't seen any of Rudy's writings in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, National Interest, etc. Most of his speeches on the subject are superficial, and sound like they were xeroxed from Commentary and the Weekly Standard. No vision, no REALISM.

3. "Remember 9/11!" - This is a fetish. 'Nuff said.

4. "He will grow more conservative in office, and will appoint strict constructionist to the bench." This is what they said about Pataki, Whitman, and John Rowland. We all know how THOSE folks turned out.

5. "He's a fiscal conservative." Really? New York was a union dominated, high tax hellhole when Rudy took office. It REMAINS a high tax hellhole, despite the modest tax cuts proposed by Giussolini.

6. "He's America's Mayor." As said by the Murdoch media empire. Ruling over a city where third world immigrants and their children are a MAJORITY of the population, and white Christians are a small minority, where Republicans are outnumbered 5-1 and where most of those who voted for him also voted for Schumer and Kerry.

Good list.

[TAdams8591]

It would be horribly tragic if we won the WOT but were defeated from within.

I don't know why we should settle for a candidate who will fight to win the WOT but escalate the chances for defeat at home, when there is/are candidates who can win and are willing to fight both.

[GSlob]

Au contraire, it is an entirely rational on the part of the woman involved [unless it be in China, in North Korea prison camp or other such place] and on the part of those performing the procedure, sometimes on the part of parents and boyfriends as well. More, as long as it is voluntary and deliberate, it is always rational, as all voluntary and deliberate actions are [rational in the reference framework of the person performing the action].
Irrationality is "I have two [or more] courses of action, A and B. In my opinion, B is better than A, therefore I will do A"]. And such a person has not yet been born, and never will.
If what a person does [as an extreme example, a self-immolation in a public square] appears irrational to you, it does not mean that the immolator was irrational - it merely means that in immolator's perception at the time, the benefits of his action [such as gathering publicity for his cause, or whatever else might be in his/her mind] outweighed the drawbacks you [an outside observer] would perceive - i.e. that his reference [value] frame is, or was at the time, different from yours. And in that reference value frame of his, his action would be entirely rational. As a corollary of this line of thought, all insanity defenses are ipso facto bogus.

[Lexinom]

That's precisely what so many of us see happening though. The Titanic sinks gradually while we clean up some crisis on the upper deck. This is why we've got to take the case to the American people with a candidate like Hunter, or Newt, or (perhaps) Thompson, who is multidimensional and can fight many battles simultaneously. We've got a big job ahead of us, as we can see just with recent exchanges among our own right here on FR.

[gogeo]

Those are reasonable viewpoints.

[streetpreacher]

She doesn't need to. It already exists:

http://www.democraticunderground.com

[StAnDeliver]

It is where it is, drama queen. And it is what it is.

I see you as one of the future-purged Arators of the Giuliette camp, that much is for sure.

[StAnDeliver]

"I am aware of JimRob's post to me. He used it to refuse to answer direct questions, posed by me and others, regarding his approval of that thread's use of the words "treasonous liberals."

That falls under the category of tough s***.

I had something far nobler in mind, but you Giuliettes like everything the hard way.

[Siobhan]

While he might eat a little less and chew a little slower in the beginning, he will eventually make large gains on the other glutenous man eating tiger as his appetite becomes ever so increasingly insatiable.

Fascinating. But unrelated to choosing between the lesser of two evils so that, while someone bad might move forward, at least it will not be the worst one.

[dmw]

Excellent summary of the most asinine reasons we should vote for Rudy. Great response too!

[Siobhan]

You have a great memory. Recall the video of the "friendly bear" that attacked the TV journalist who was encouraged to sit on a seat beside the bear? That's a prime analogy of what Rudy has done to conservatism and it's association with the Republican party.

My compliments to you on that brilliant analogy.