Give Rudy credit, it takes balls to come out and say that he supports abortion rights.
After months of conflicting signals on abortion, Rudolph W. Giuliani is planning to offer a forthright affirmation of his support for abortion rights in public forums, television appearances and interviews in the coming days, despite the potential for bad consequences among some conservative voters already wary of his views, aides said yesterday.
This might seem like the most counterintuitive campaign move in history. In base politics terms I have a hard time seeing how it would be any worse if a Dem frontrunner announced that he could go one way or the other on privatizing Social Security. Kevin Drum thinks that Rudy doesn’t have any choice now that we know he donated to Planned Parenthood, but is that true? Mitt Romney clearly thinks he can get away with it. If I had to guess which would bring down more wrath from the base, flip-flopping to their side or sticking with a principled position that they hate, I would have picked (B). Everybody loves a good conversion story, whether it’s evangelicals (testify!) or the Kossacks pushing convert porn to the top of the rec list. Rudy could sit down for that come-to-Jesus chat with James Dobson if he wanted to badly enough.
Sure Rudy could do it, but the price would be pretty steep. He would have to stuff his true feelings into some deep place where no light gets in, apologize for them and lie about them every time he opens his mouth. That doesn’t seem to bother Mitt Romney much but instinct tells me that it just isn’t in Rudy’s character. He would rather lose as the man he is than grovel and win.
Otto Man
I think Drum’s right and he simply has no choice. Between his past statements, his weak debate stance, and the recent revelations he gave money to Planned Parenthood, he can’t weasel out of it. If he tried, he’d look worse than Multiple Choice Mitt.
He’s going to hope that the recent Supreme Court decision makes people think the tide has turned and, moreover, that his constant refrain of 9/11 will drown out the abortion issue. I doubt it, but that’s the plan.
empty
Maybe he figures it will take attention away from the 200K worth of rings he accepted from the yankees while mayor. Though maybe not. For the base he would probably be better off, maybe much better of, as a crook than as an embryo killer.
chopper
man, this is gonna be a win for the dems no matter how you slice it.
empty
One theory I heard was that given the large number of candidates the republican vote will be highly splintered. And from among the splinters he would pick the entirety of the republican moderate vote which combined with the father-knows-best vote will be sufficient to sustain him through the initial rounds.
BIRDZILLA
He sure is no conservative he is a liberal prochoice gun control wacko
likes guns, likes gun control too
“He would rather lose as the man he is than grovel and win.”
that gives him **far** too much credit for integrity.
He’d be happy to grovel and win; he has just calculated that groveling in this case does not provide much marginal benefit.
Look, don’t go all authenticity-porn on us. Giuliani is no more authentic than Romney’s love of hunting, or Bush’s good old boy roots.
Zifnab
Groveling to the base’s face with your right hand while you stab them in the back with your left hand is the foundation of the Republican Party. If you can’t get that right, you’ll never make it as a Republican President.
Otto Man
No, this is pure calculation. He only made this decision when it was clear the Florida, California and other large, socially moderate-to-liberal states were moving up in the primary. He knows an embrace of abortion rights won’t kill him there and, in fact, might just set him apart from the others, who’ll be splitting the pro-life vote 6-8 ways.
He wants to win, period. He saw that groveling wasn’t doing it, so he’s decided to try and fake sincerity.
ha ha
Rudy is toast! Not because he is pro-choice, but because he admits he is pro-choice. You cannot be a republican unless you bow at the alter of the anti-choice, anti-gay and pro-gun deity.
Patrick
2002 – Romney unequivocally supports a woman’s right to choose (via Andrew Sullivan):
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/05/romney_2002.html
Bob In Pacifica
I still want to see a good investigative report on Giuliani’s work as U.S. Attorney. Seems he was in the chair during a lot of Iran-contra and BCCI stuff, and like other U.S. attorneys during the Reagan/Bush I period tended to look the other way during massive violations of the law. Remember, that was the time when cocaine was coming in while the guns were going out. Monzer al-Kassar was dealing guns to the Iranians while shipping heroin to kids in Detroit.
demimondian
More than that, I suspect that Giuliani has concluded that he’s not going to get a large fraction of the social conservative vote during the primaries anyway. As a result, the cost of saying “I’m pro-choice” is quite limited — but the benefits are significant. It draws moderate Republicans towards him, while simultaneously giving him a chance for his own Sister Solja moment.
Dulcie
I heart BIRDZILLA
mrmobi
First, all hail the mighty Birdzilla. This does appear to be the end of Rudy G as a candidate. Good news, I think. It looks to me like Fred Thompson isn’t going to run, so…. time for The Newtster to announce.
Zombie Santa Claus
And that slippery bastard Clinton got away with all of it, didn’t he?
Zombie Santa Claus
Amen. Be he poet, spoof, wingnut, or some bizarre combination of all three, he consistently offers the greatest insights into any given issue.
Tsulagi
Exactly.
Rudy’s been waffling for the past few months on abortion with the hope he could slide by on that issue, but that’s not going to work with the Jesus party. At this point he knew he’d already lost most of those who consider abortion the only real reason to vote. Plus if he continued waffling, he was going to keep getting tagged on it and youtubed to death. Losing not only the rest of those not absolutely fanatical about abortion, but others as well because of the squirming mealy mouth parsing on the subject.
This way he gets to quickly say his abortion position is known, then move on to club them with 9/11 and promise to give them back bladder control. Also, if he were to get the nomination, this position would be much better for him in the general election hoping to get some Democratic voters.
He’s not doing this because he rediscovered his balls, he’s doing it because he did the math.
tBone
Thus speaketh Birdzilla. Rudy, hang it up; if this is how the avian/reptile hybrids of the world feel, your candidacy is doomed.
Zombie Santa Claus
That’s a pretty significant portion of the GOP base, too.
They’re quite adamantly against the teaching of evolution in schools, for some reason.
tBone
I think it would be a worthwhile exercise to determine the closest analogues for the current batch of GOP hybrid Presidential hopefuls.
For Rudy, I’m going with a cobra crossed with a macaw.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Tancredo has to be part bald eagle, that’s all I know.
Bush is half chickenhawk, half garter snake.
mrmobi
Not so sure about that. The whole “chimp” thing really makes sense to me, no offense to chimps.
If he is a hybrid, it would be of a chimp and an animal whose facial muscles are not connected to its’ brain. I’ve never seen anyone in public life make more inappropriate facial expressions.
tBone
Romney: cuckoo crossed with a salamander. He’s slippery and has a lot of the characteristics of a brood parasite.
tBone
Damn it, forgot we were supposed to be sticking with reptiles. Oh well. We’ll make an exception for Amphibian Mitt.
Zombie Santa Claus
For some reason, jellyfish spring to mind. Then again, they have neither faces nor brains, right?
Chimpy, too. Republicans with ties to New England seem to be missing the reptilian component. Political zoologists should study this more thoroughly, once the science of political zoology is invented.
Dulcie
I dunno – did you see the expression McCain made at the debate after his rant about finding and catching OBL? He did his rant, and then he did a crazy smile. Something like a smile you’d see on a recently released mental patient who’d decided to stop taking his meds.
mrmobi
I know Thymezone thinks McCain has been fucked up from the beginning, but there was a time when McCain seemed like a reasonable guy, someone with principles, someone who might actually make a good POTUS.
Now, not so much.
mrmobi
Zombie, you are definitely on to something here:
See, because if jellyfish did have faces, the kind of expressions you would see on them would be just like Mr. McFlightsuit.
Did you see yesterday that Bush (in Kansas) took the opportunity to grab and fire up a chainsaw? He can’t pass up an opportunity to cut brush, no matter how dire the situation. We’re lucky to have a President who’s handy, no?
tBone
Didn’t we just do this? When this is offered as a major at all of the big universities, do we get a cut of the grant funds?
Zombie Santa Claus
As a zombie, I find this extemely troubling. Still, in the event of a zombie outbreak, this is the kind of leadership you’d expect from your Decider-in-Chief.
To get the big bucks, we really need to go right-wing with this science. We can get gigs at the Discovery Institute if we can write a credible paper explaining how John Kerry can be half flip-flop, half human.
tBone
Incontrovertible scientific evidence proves that John Kerry is, in fact, a previously unknown form of inverterbrate. His spinal column appears to be filled with a mixture of ketchup and French wine, rather than the more traditional verterbrae and spinal cord.
The incredible flexibility this affords the Kerrozoan could explain how he was able to shoot himself in Vietnam. It does not explain his penchant for windsurfing and hating America, but further investigation is planned just as soon as those fat grant checks start rolling in, bitches.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Well, the windsurfing is because he yearns for the sea. It’s really a much more natural habitat for a creature with no backbone.