Several months ago, I had a constantly-updated list of John McCain’s many policy flip-flops, as the one-time GOP maverick abandoned every position that made him popular, on route to currying favor with the conservative Republican base. The list got up to 17, which is quite a few flip-flops for one candidate.
As it turns out, I may have been keeping a list on the wrong candidate.
Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani continues to discard the moderate and liberal positions of his past. The latest is civil unions for same-sex couples, which the Republican presidential candidate has been backing away from in recent months.
A campaign aide told the Globe this weekend that Giuliani favors a much more modest set of rights for gay partners than civil union laws in effect in four states offer.
Giuliani has described himself as a backer of civil unions and is frequently described that way in news reports. But he began distancing himself from civil unions in late April, when his campaign told The New York Sun that New Hampshire’s new law goes too far because it is “the equivalent of marriage,” which he has always opposed for gays.
Giuliani’s aides offered little explanation of what specific rights he would support for same-sex couples.
Joe Tarver, spokesman for the Empire State Pride Alliance, a gay-rights group that worked with Giuliani during his eight years as mayor, called the shift “pretty un-Giuliani-like.” Tarver added, “It’s quite obvious he’s playing to the people whose votes he needs to get the Republican nomination.”
Obviously.
Mitt Romney is usually the GOP candidate mocked for reinventing himself, and it’s true, the 2007 Romney bears no resemblance to, say, the 2002 Romney.
But Giuliani is also doing his level best to flip-flop all over the place.
Representatives of New York groups who advocate for abortion rights, gun control, and rights for immigrants, also said Giuliani’s actions on the presidential trail, presenting himself to a more conservative GOP electorate, bears little resemblance to the man they knew as the stand-up mayor of Gotham in the 1990s who was open to moderate and liberal arguments.
He’s flipped on public funding of abortion. And McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform. And late-term abortion. And civil unions, Roe v. Wade, immigration policy, the Hyde Amendment
“One of the things we always said about Rudy Giuliani, and it’s his political capital, really, is what you see is what you get,” [Mary Alice Carr, spokeswoman for the New York state affiliate of NARAL Pro-Choice America] said. “He was always in your face. To now see a guy who says it doesn’t matter either way on Roe v. Wade, we don’t understand who this guy is.”
As a political strategy, I think Giuliani may not realize what a mistake this is. His original strategy used to be, “We may disagree on some social issues, but I hate taxes and 9/11, 9/11, 9/11.” With this new strategy, Giuliani apparently hopes to treat the GOP base as a bunch of idiots, who’ll simply forget his old positions.
It’s a dubious proposition. The right may be nutty, but conservatives know shameless pandering when they see it. What’s left of the GOP center, meanwhile, sees Giuliani moving away from everything they liked about him in the first place.
This is likely to backfire. Stay tuned.