Republicans still don’t realize Giuliani is pro-choice

August 4, 2007

A few weeks ago, Gallup conducted a national poll and found that three out of four Republicans (74%) believe Rudy Giuliani would make an “acceptable” GOP presidential nominee. None of the other Republican hopefuls came close.

The conventional wisdom suggested that these results, mirrored in other polls, spoke to a key development in Republican politics. Despite Giuliani’s support for abortion rights and gay rights as mayor, the GOP faithful apparently no longer consider his social positions a disqualifier in a presidential race.

But the conventional wisdom didn’t consider one nagging detail: most Republicans don’t know Giuliani’s positions on the hot-button, culture-war issues that have driven GOP politics for a generation.

Today’s Election Central Saturday Roundup, for example, noted this new poll from the Pew Research Center. As Eric Kleefeld explained, “When Republicans and GOP-leaners are asked if they can name the Republican presidential candidate who is pro-choice, only 41% could correct name Rudy Giuliani. Among self-described conservatives, the answer wasn’t much better at a mere 47% correct.”

This is similar to results of a Pew Research poll from June, when fewer than half of Republicans realized that Giuliani is pro-choice.

I haven’t seen any data on the subject, but I’d guess that an even higher percentage of the GOP probably doesn’t know that Giuliani supported gay rights and has a record as a thrice-married adulterer, either.

Maybe Republicans care about this, maybe not. But for every poll that shows the former NYC mayor as the frontrunner, the political world should pause a moment to consider just how many of his supporters appreciate these details — and how many are likely to hear about them from Giuliani’s GOP rivals before voters head to the polls next year.

Probably a lot of Catholic Republicans assume that as a Catholic Republican, he’d be anti-abortion, like them. That’s just my opinion, as a person who grew up Catholic.

  • Republicretin’s shot-glass sized brains shut down after they hear the words “Ronny Raygun” and “9/11” coming out of stuttering Rudy’s mouth. Watching him on Charlie Rose the other night made me want to kick in my TV set. If he gets elected, he’ll see to it that the entire country looks like New York City after 9/11. The day after 9/11.

  • So let’s assume Giuliani is nominated and runs in the national election. How are the Dems going to make hay with Rudy’s pro-choice stand?

  • Heraldblog – If Rudy gets the nomination, I think he will, by that point, have moved so far away from his pro-choice stance that the Dems will be able to call him on that over and over and over again. If he sticks to his pro-choice position, we certainly don’t want to attack him for it, but it’s not like there isn’t anything else we can go after him on.

  • The difference between Rudy and the leading Democrats, to the non blog reading voter, is essentially zero.

    No leading Democrat has championed universal federally funded health care, stopping extraordinary rendition, closing the prison at Guantanamo,subjecting warrantless wiretapping to FISA court oversight, progressive taxation, or even raising CAFE standards.

    There’s only one party, it just has two faces.

  • Rudy, like most “moderate’ Republicans, doesn’t care enough about abortion to actually take a pro-choice stand, and the wingnuts know this… he’ll sign off on all the Alitos they want to get into the WH, since as far as he, or any Republican, is concerned, rich women will still be able to get abortions just as they always have.

  • It may be true that Republicans are not aware of Giuliani’s pro-choice stance, but they may very well understand, correctly, that he will not defend abortion rights or advance gay rights. His statement that he would support judges who oppose all manner of people’s rights was exactly the music the right wing wants to hear. They seem to know instinctively that the judiciary is the forum for advancing or restricting people’s rights. The civil rights movement must have taught them something. And then, there’s the fact that most Republicans care less about their precious “issues” and “values” than they care about power. It’s OK with them if Rudy wears a dress when he wins, as long as he wins.

  • I think it’s more of a middle-class Catholic thing to assume that a conservative Catholic would be anti-abortion. An upper-class conservative Catholic wouldn’t be as likely to be anti-abortion as a middle-class one, so an upper-class Catholic would be less likely to assume it of other Catholics as well.

  • There are a great many people out there, like my Republican sister, who only know what the MSM tell them and don’t bother with the internet or even care. They just don’t bother because MSM would tell them anything they need to know. I just don’t understand it! I tell her things I have read online and she still refuses to believe them because it wasn’t on CBS etc. Rudy knows what to say to win these deluded people over and it is up to the remainder of us to keep reminding them of the truth. Oh, how did a Yellow Dog Democratic family come to have a Republican in our midst?? I ponder this every election day!

  • A delusional thought, I know, but if the MSM is even slightly consistent, how Dems can use this against Roodee is to do the Flip-Flopper attack, which the MSM aided and abetted in when used to destroy Kerry. All three of the leading R’s (and this will be true if Frederick of Hollywood joins as well) are major flip-floppers on some of the biggest social issues of the day. They will get even worse as they move deeper into the Rethug primaries and then into the more moderate general election campaign.

  • I think the “thrice-married adulterer” is the real relevant question here. It’s one thing for the Zombie Army to collectively conclude (or be told by their Christatollahs) that Rudy’s personal pro-choice view doesn’t matter because he’ll appoint would-be theocrats to the bench; it’s another for them to look at their would-be godly hero and think, “This guy cheated on his wife, doesn’t talk to his kids, and never even claimed to be ‘saved’; he’s still a sinner.”

    The question is whether any of Giuliani’s opponents can saddle him with the adulterer label without looking sleazy themselves. Romney’s trying, and he’s such an opportunist that I bet he does it in the end. Then you just wonder if the Chris Matthews types–with their twisted ethics of what is and isn’t “ethical” (they can propagandize for a war, but it’s bad form to talk about a gentleman’s personal indiscretions)–will talk about it.

  • I think he is all wrong for the GOP. I think that his poll numbers will go down as the other candidates start hammering him on this.

    For me his character is very important. If his own wife can’t trust him, how can I? I want a person of integrity in the White House, not perfect, but not one lacking moral conviction.

  • “So let’s assume Giuliani is nominated and runs in the national election. How are the Dems going to make hay with Rudy’s pro-choice stand?”

    He’s got such baggage that they could almost leave it alone entirely and still be in excellent shape.

  • This is a good point about his politics. But I think a more interesting thing that Republicans forget about Giuliani as a candidate is that the man was the Mayor of New York City. I spent a number of years in New York and then a number of years in Chicago, and from this I’ve learned that you can’t be the mayor of a metropolitan area without getting your hands dirty.

    It’s not going to be his stance on abortion or gun control that will sink him. It’ll be the person who, if Giuliani is nominated, will divulge whatever bit of dirt he or she has on the candidate.

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