"...As a matter of policy, Giuliani is a supporter of "civil unions" - the notion that a gay couple's relationship can be recognized as a matter of law. This happens also to be the position of Vice President Dick Cheney - and if he were running for president, he'd be considered a strong contender for the votes of social conservatives.
Most daunting for Rudy is that fact that he's on record as being pro-choice, and even said back in 1989 that he'd theoretically give his daughter money for an abortion if she needed it (though he also said that he'd try to talk her out of it, by promising that "I would help her with taking care of the baby").
Yet even Giuliani's views on abortion don't automatically mean he can't win.
For starters, the Republican Party is the party of strength at home and abroad, and for many, Rudy Giuliani personifies that - not only because of his conduct on and after 9/11 but because of his historic accomplishments as the motive force behind the crime drop that turned New York City around.
Republicans not only like Rudy, they want to like him. Conservative Republicans want to like him. Socially conservative Republicans want to like him.
In this respect, he represents a momentous change from prior candidates hailing from outside the party's socially conservative wing.
Past "liberal" GOP candidates and would-be candidates have sought the nomination by taking strong stands counter to the views of the party's conservative base - like Elizabeth Dole opposing handguns in 2000. Those candidates, that is, were engaging in battle against the social conservatives. They were fighting a culture war within the GOP, trying to rally the party's more socially liberal elements - women and suburbanites in particular - to defeat the hard-line element."
Okay. it's official. We are now the hard-line-element. What Podhoretz fails to mention is Rudi's stance on gun control. Pro gay unions, pro choice, anti-gun. Three strikes, and disliking this makes us the hard-line-element. Podhoretz is a NY "Conservative", and that's a kissing cousin to the D.C. "Conservative". Guns are just soooo 1950, so get over it already. I mean, take a good look at these guys and tell me that they'd ever even consider owning a firearm, or at the very least would join the fight to restore the 2nd Amendment.
The single thing keeping me from an all-out bash Rudi slugfest is the fact that these are positions he's taken in the past. If in fact they were his beliefs on how to govern NYC, and not necessarily his stance on the union as a whole, then lets hear it. BUT...
Pro-Abortion
Pro Gay Unions
Anti-Gun
Do not a Conservative candidate make. Ever.
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