Posted on 05/23/2007 1:50:42 AM PDT by Jim Robinson
Rudy Giuliani's pirouette around abortion finally landed him on a pro-choice position that no major national Republican candidate has held since 1980. That was when George Bush I, who had backed abortion rights, told Ronald Reagan he could support his party's anti-abortion platform.
For Bush even the vice-presidency was worth a conversion. The conversion, as everybody knows, was tribute to the growing political power of the religious right. Reagan, who had signed the California Therapeutic Abortion Act in 1967, at the time one of the nation's most liberal abortion rights laws, didn't care much one way or another. He later said he'd regretted signing the California law.
Giuliani, who chose to dress necessity in the garb of principle, may have decided that, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, he could ignore the waning Republican orthodoxy on social issues and not be turned to stone. That Giuliani, also like Schwarzenegger, has an ego that eclipses any party platform didn't hurt.
But he may also have sensed that the political clout of the Christian right had passed its high water mark. The death last week of Jerry Falwell, who had done so much to forge that power, was only coincidental but it was symbolic nonetheless.
(If the deceased had been someone like porn publisher Larry Flynt, Falwell, who described the Sept. 11 attacks as God's punishment for America's tolerance of "the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians," might have ascribed it to a higher power).
Still, Falwell's passing is likely to be seen as an indicator of change. As is ever the case, the political power of the religious right depended as much on image as on substance: It had power in part because politicians believed it had power. The 2006 elections turned a growing number into un-believers.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
[T]he Wall Street Journal argues that Gov. Pete Wilson made the Republican party a minority party in California by running against illegal immigration. Wilson was unpopular for most of his first term. In 1994, he campaigned for an initiative to deny government benefits to illegal immigrants. That initiative won handily, and what had appeared to be a tough re-election battle for him turned out to be a cakewalk. The Journal concedes as much, but claims that the campaign left a bitter aftertaste. Yet Wilson left office popular.It is true that the Republican who tried to succeed him, Dan Lungren, lost big. But Lungren ran away from Wilson’s immigration politics, even supporting bilingual education as the state voted it down. Nor do the numbers suggest that Lungren’s defeat was a result of Wilson’s having enraged Hispanics who then registered to vote. The Republican share of the gubernatorial vote dropped 17 points between 1994 and 1998. The percentage of Hispanics in the electorate did not rise nearly enough to explain that drop. Hispanics were 11.4 percent of California voters in 1994 and 13.9 percent of them in 1998.
The only time Republicans have won statewide in recent years, they have benefited from popular concern about — yes, illegal immigration. George W. Bush’s positions on immigration did not bring him to victory in California in 2000 or 2004. Democrat Gray Davis became unpopular, and Arnold Schwarzenegger succeeded him, in part because Davis had allowed illegal immigrants to get driver’s licenses and Schwarzenegger opposed that policy...
...a Giuliani supporter who has a problem with Falwell. That figures.
There *is* an alternative. See the sig.
Not with me.
“There is already precedent for a moderate “unity” 3rd party to be created in an evenly split political climate such as this... Kadima did it in Israel just a few years ago.”
Israel’s system of Democracy is quite different procedurally than ours, as well it is Israel, not the US. This means there is really no comparison.
Giuliani’s plummeting numbers indicate an awakening in America that could be cause for celebration. We shall have to wait and see.
I haven’t seen any numbers recently on Schwarzenegger, however I know his RINOness has succeeded in alienating many here in California.
Another attempt by the New York Rockefeller socialists to mold the Republican party into a giant slush fund for bribing politicians and bureaucrats throughout the world. Their dream is a one world government where all laws are harmonized as per UN decree (see the LOST treaty) and serfs work all day in the hot sun growing tofu, while they sit on the veranda sipping mint julips and eating klip and caviar.
Well-stated, Sarge.
Peter Shrag... “symbolism over substance.”
Just like Limbaugh always says about liberals.
They’re doing quite well along those lines.
I have been predicting for some time the emergence of such a party, and 2008 may very well be the year. If not 2008, then 2012 for certain.
Of course, like the Bell-Everett effort, such a party would be a signpost on the road to war...
Good posting...
The local Republican central committees in California were also infiltrated and taken over by liberals.
These RINO country club types were aghast that they might actually have to hire an American.
If the GOP becomes the Schwarzenegger-Guliana Party, it’ll be without me!
At the time Reagan signed The Therapeutic Abortion Act---- it was the Stone Age of abortion "rights," years before the USSC unleashed Roe v Wade.
Back then Planned Parenthood savages were telling an alarmed populace that abortions would only be performed---and very reluctantly, at that----in the direst of circumstances----rape, incest, health/life of the mother.
Reagan apparently secured those assurances before signing the Act. (Source: Right to Life history).
PP's lies about abortion persist. We now know Planned Parenthood and the NARAL crowd all along wanted:
(1) abortion on demand with the govt picking up the tab,
(2) abortion as birth control,
(3) multiple abortions for convenience,
(4) abortion when sex of the child is unwanted,
(5) abortion for every conceivable birth defect.....and last but certainly not least,
(6) late term partial birth abortions (read infanticide).
God knows what these savages will unleash should their acolyte, Rooty Giuliani, sit at the levers of government.
Moderate? Give me a break! There ain't a moderate bone in this man's body! His fiscal irresponsibility (spend, spend, spend; borrow, borrow, borrow), corporate welfare initiatives (subsidize, borrow, subsidize, borrow), assault on property rights, efforts to institute toll-roads and privatize public projects (to accommodate yet higher spending), appointments to judgeships and high-office of ultra-liberals, covorting with RFKjr and his gangGreen brigade, make the guy is a disaster for the GOP. This could only be considered "moderate" to a liberal like Schrag.
Is Giuliani of the same breed? You betcha! And it ain't just social issues!
Still, you have to admit it's a near perfect match...[ducking]...
You're safe! (I don't get it! lol ... blondeness kicking in!)
It’s in the heading—”...Schwarzenegger-Giuliani party...”
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