Relatively sensible conservatives who still adhere to the Giuliani fantasy

Carol Iannone writes:

Ramesh Ponnuru rightly and roundly defends social conservatives from Republican libertarians such as Max Boot who blame them for the defeat in 2008, and who say that the Republican Party will have to de-emphasize social conservatism and become more socially progressive if it wants to win in the future. Ramesh argues that social conservatives are and will continue to be an important voting bloc, and that the Party did not lose because of social conservatism.

On a related point, Ramesh remarks that the fiscally conservative but socially progressive Giuliani could not win in the primaries because of his pro-choice position. But he implies that things might have been different if Giuliani had been willing to go pro-life.

I don’t understand why even some social conservatives don’t get the problem with Giuliani. Even if he had been pro-life, putting a man with his recent marital and family history into the White House would have spelled the end of social conservatism tout court. You would have heard the liberals laughing the way the demented villains do in horror movies when they finally trap their prey. The liberals were already chuckling in enjoyment at the spectacle of the supposedly pro-marriage, pro-family, pro-children Republicans so eager for the White House that they were willing to sell out their principles—or at least the principles they were thought to have—in order to support this man. Believe me, conservatives were spared when Giuliani could barely get his candidacy off the drawing boards, despite polls proclaiming his immense popularity and a media anxious to promote him for the sake of the snub he represented to social conservatives. Also, if I’m not mistaken, he did not win delegates even in open primaries, where Democrats and Independents could vote. And isn’t it an irony that while Republicans were wasting their time with Giuliani, the Democrats nominated someone who is happily and faithfully married to his first wife. And who, as it so happened, was elected president.

LA replies:

That’s just amazing that Ponnuru thinks that Giuliani might have become acceptable to social conservatives and to Republicans generally had he switched his position on abortion. It suggests that Ponnuru is guided by the sort of shallow rationalism (typical of liberals and libertarians, not of true conservatives) that sees Giuliani, or any politician, as a collection of positions on various issues, not as a whole human being. Yes, the biggest single objection to Giuliani for social conservatives and other Republicans was his pro-choice stand on abortion, but the main objection to Giuliani was Giuliani himself—the totality of everything he is, including his family and marital situation, including his personality, including his social liberalism outside the abortion issue, particularly his history of outspoken identification with the homosexual cause. And this totality would have remained unacceptable to Republicans even if he had changed his abortion stand to pro-life. Indeed, the brutal, stunning cynicism involved in such a switch would have made him an even more unattractive human being than he already was, assuming that that was possible.

Carol Iannone replies:

And another thing Republican libertarians and even some social conservatives don’t seem to get is the CONNECTION between conservative values and free market principles. Ramesh notes that single people tend more to go Democratic, for example. And the more people who grow up without the stabilizing influence of an intact family and the work ethic, the more people who will want government help! Don’t they see that?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 03, 2008 09:16 AM | Send