Abortion, Giuliani, and Politics 1001

I am convinced that succeeding at politics is, above all else, keeping your nerve when others around you panic. Doing so helps ensure that you will not break one of the cardinal rules: never extrapolate out into the future what appears to be the case today. Breaking that rule is part and parcel of another fatal flaw: making premature judgments.

This may seem like Politics 1001, and it probably is. But it's also the fundamentals--the ABCs--that are most consistently ignored.

To switch metaphors, certain commentators whose opinion I ordinarily respect are looking at the 2008 presidential election as if it were a billiards game where the only consideration is the cue ball and the immediate ball that it strikes. Not only are they misreading the likely outcome of that initial collision, its impact on the remaining balls on the table is totally ignored.

Rudy Giuliani is, at this moment, the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination. Too many people who ought to know better treat that as (a) an immutable truism and, in an interesting leap in logic, (b) proof positive that no other Republican presidential candidate can defeat the putative Democratic nominee, Sen. Hillary Clinton. Let me tackle this first--the equivalent of the cue ball's impact on the first ball--before I briefly mention the disastrous carom of a Giuliani nomination on candidates lower down the ticket.

Nothing definitive can be said in October other than that Giuliani's performance on September 11, 2001 (and, to a lesser extent, as mayor of New York City) catapulted him into a lead over his GOP rivals he has held most of 2007. What we don't know--and shouldn't pretend to know-- is far more impressive.

With the compressed schedule of presidential caucuses primaries, it is impossible to gauge whether Iowa and New Hampshire [which come first) will play a lesser or greater role than in years past.

Nor can we know what happens if one of the other GOP presidential frontrunners catches fire and/or the impact if one of the top five candidates drops out sooner than anticipated.

Nor, most of all, can we know in advance whether an issue (or issues), now simmering, will boil over, igniting one man's candidacy. There are a host of tangibles and intangibles that will change the status quo.

The congealing consensus in some circles is that Giuliani is the candidate best able--probably the only such GOPer --to defeat Sen. Clinton. Frankly, this is a mystery to me, but the consensus seems to be the product of a combination of two assessments, both of which are dangerously wrong.

First, the core constituencies of the coalition that has kept the White House in Republicans hands for all but eight years since 1980 will line up behind a pro-abortion Republican who, in truth, is seriously at variance with those constituencies on absolutely pivotal issues, such as right to life. Second, a pro-abortion Republican from the Northeast can assemble a new, stronger coalition, which can make up for any losses.

We are told by various experts that Giuliani's gestures to pro-lifers will be--should be--enough for us to enthusiastically support a man who once said, hypothetically, he'd pay for his own daughter's abortion. 

Ask yourself, if his gestures are all that persuasive--not only to us but to many other constituencies--why would liberal pro-abortionists with lifestyles tastes far to the left possibly choose Giuliani over the real deal? The real assumption is that pro-lifers are docile and that people with values indistinguishable from Giuliani's will understand that it's all wink-wink, nod-nod and choose him over Hillary Clinton, the wife of a wily tactician, a man who retains an immense popularity.

All of this is, in my opinion, astonishingly unpersuasive, and reflective of a panic that, while understandable, threatens to guarantee the very disaster it is said to be able to prevent. Choosing someone like Giuliani could fracture the coalition that has been elected pro-life Presidents five of the last seven presidential elections and resulted in a Supreme Court which has upheld the first ban on an abortion procedure since 1973.

The likelihood of another Clinton in the White House is dramatically increased if Giuliani is the Republican nominee.

Furthermore, when it becomes clear that a colossal miscalculation has taken place, it will be too late to save countless other candidates who will pay the price for widespread disillusionment with the choice at the top.

The necessity/inevitability argument goes hand in hand with a campaign to persuade us that Giuliani is BOTH anti-abortion AND pro-choice. That is, he is "personally pro-choice" but operationally pro-life in the sense that Giuliani has promised to nominate "strict constructionists" to the bench. We have discussed this canard previously in TN&V and in National Right to Life News.

But the ultimate trump card remains, "Take what you can get, or you will get Hillary!" Everything pro-lifers have achieved would then be at risk. Of course it would be, if Sen. Clinton is President.

But insisting that Giuliani is the Republican most likely to keep her out of the White House is to falsely assume that choosing a pro-abortionist to head the party that has stood for Life since 1980 makes it more likely the GOP would prevail over Sen. Clinton rather than less likely. So much is at stake that such a fatally wrong diagnosis must be rejected.

We know that the Movement has made steady progress since 1980. The number of abortions has diminished--still horribly high but much lower than in the 1990s. Conversations about the intricacies of fetal development that were few and far between are now common currency, made possible by 4-D color ultrasounds and a younger population that is more pro-life than ever. Pro-life groups are also now thriving in states where they were once virtually invisible.

Having made all these gains, assisted in no small measure by genuinely pro-life Presidents, pro-lifers are now being told that we would be better off with Giuliani as the nominee. Why?

Paradoxically, because his position is not the same as President Reagan's or President George H.W. Bush's, or President George W. Bush's. Sure, they won five elections between them and, granted, the country is more open to the pro-life message than ever before, but it is Giuliani's position on abortion, we are told, that is supposedly is harmony with the majority of Americans.

This is so wrong, it make your head hurt.

A majority of Americans oppose the reasons that account for more than 90% of the abortions performed in the United States. This majority accepts abortion only in cases where the mother's life is at risk, or in case of rape and incest, or doesn't accept any abortions.

There are plenty of pro-abortion columnists who are touting Giuliani's candidacy. But there are also "experts," who are not hostile to our cause and who ought to know better, who are so panicky they're confusing the forest with the trees.

My advice to them is the same as it is to you. Keep calm, keep steady, and don't be browbeaten into thinking black is white and up is down.