“How could we not be for Rudy?”
One of the early — and quite amazing — sidelights of the race for the Republican nomination for President in ‘08 is how so many prominent conservatives are lining up behind Rudy Giuliani, who has perhaps the slimmest conservative credentials of any of the major GOP hopefuls.
The Republican Party has had a strong pro-life plank in its national platform since 1980, but the former New York mayor still characterizes himself as “pro-choice” and has never reversed his oft-stated 1990s opposition to a ban on partial-birth abortion. When I questioned him during the recent California Republican convention about his support of gun control while mayor and his Bush-like support of a guest-worker program for illegal immigrants, Giuliani again declined to change his past, non-conservative stances. He did, though, refuse to use the term “guest-worker program,” instead describing his position as favoring “immigration, assimilation and Americanization.”
While never actually endorsing gay marriage, Republican Giuliani broke with the President and most GOP members of Congress by opposing a constitutional definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman. During his stint as mayor from 1993-2001, Giuliani actively courted the gay community by appointing gays to various city offices and marching in gay-pride parades. “How could we not be for Rudy?” is how James Vaughn, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, responded when I asked him who his group would support in ‘08.
