Rudy a Lefty? Yeah, Right.
By David Greenberg
Washington Post
You wouldn't know it from reading the papers, but the favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination is a confirmed right-winger. On issues such as free speech and religion, secrecy and due process, civil rights and civil liberties, pornography and democracy, this moralist and self-styled lawman has exhibited all the key hallmarks of Bush-era conservatism.
That candidate is Rudolph W. Giuliani.
As any New Yorker can tell you, the last word anyone in the 1990s would have attached to the brash, furniture- breaking mayor was "liberal" -- and the second-to-last was "moderate." With his take-many-prisoners approach to crime and his unerring pro-police instincts, the prosecutor-turned-proconsul made his mark on the city not by embracing its social liberalism but by trying to crush it.
Somehow, though, Giuliani is being introduced to the rest of America as a liberal. And the people pinning the L-word on him aren't just far-right spokesmen such as James Dobson or Richard Viguerie, to whom even the Bush administration looks squishily centrist. No, it's supposedly objective journalists who've been using the label. ABC News reporter Jake Tapper recently spoke offhandedly about the mayor's "liberal views on social issues." Echoed NPR's Mara Liasson: "Giuliani has liberal views on a number of social issues, including abortion." On washingtonpost.com, political blogger Chris Cillizza referred to the mayor's "liberal positions on social issues," even though Giuliani supports only limited abortion rights and gay rights.
To a New Yorker, the idea of Rudy as a liberal or even a moderate is unreal, topsy-turvy -- like describing George McGovern as a hawk or Pat Buchanan as a Zionist. The case for Giuliani's moderation rests mainly on three overblown issues -- guns, gay rights and abortion -- and even in those cases, his deviation from conservative orthodoxy is far milder than is usually suggested.
The "social" and "cultural" issues that divide Americans encompass much more than guns, gay rights and abortion. They include state support of religion; the legitimacy of dissenting speech; the president's right to keep information secret; the place of fair procedures in dispensing justice. The Bush administration's hard-line stands on these matters have polarized the nation as much as the Iraq war has. And on these issues, Giuliani is just as hard-line as the man he'd like to succeed.
If you've managed to keep liking President Bush, you'd have no trouble loving President Giuliani.
(Continued here.)
Washington Post
You wouldn't know it from reading the papers, but the favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination is a confirmed right-winger. On issues such as free speech and religion, secrecy and due process, civil rights and civil liberties, pornography and democracy, this moralist and self-styled lawman has exhibited all the key hallmarks of Bush-era conservatism.
That candidate is Rudolph W. Giuliani.
As any New Yorker can tell you, the last word anyone in the 1990s would have attached to the brash, furniture- breaking mayor was "liberal" -- and the second-to-last was "moderate." With his take-many-prisoners approach to crime and his unerring pro-police instincts, the prosecutor-turned-proconsul made his mark on the city not by embracing its social liberalism but by trying to crush it.
Somehow, though, Giuliani is being introduced to the rest of America as a liberal. And the people pinning the L-word on him aren't just far-right spokesmen such as James Dobson or Richard Viguerie, to whom even the Bush administration looks squishily centrist. No, it's supposedly objective journalists who've been using the label. ABC News reporter Jake Tapper recently spoke offhandedly about the mayor's "liberal views on social issues." Echoed NPR's Mara Liasson: "Giuliani has liberal views on a number of social issues, including abortion." On washingtonpost.com, political blogger Chris Cillizza referred to the mayor's "liberal positions on social issues," even though Giuliani supports only limited abortion rights and gay rights.
To a New Yorker, the idea of Rudy as a liberal or even a moderate is unreal, topsy-turvy -- like describing George McGovern as a hawk or Pat Buchanan as a Zionist. The case for Giuliani's moderation rests mainly on three overblown issues -- guns, gay rights and abortion -- and even in those cases, his deviation from conservative orthodoxy is far milder than is usually suggested.
The "social" and "cultural" issues that divide Americans encompass much more than guns, gay rights and abortion. They include state support of religion; the legitimacy of dissenting speech; the president's right to keep information secret; the place of fair procedures in dispensing justice. The Bush administration's hard-line stands on these matters have polarized the nation as much as the Iraq war has. And on these issues, Giuliani is just as hard-line as the man he'd like to succeed.
If you've managed to keep liking President Bush, you'd have no trouble loving President Giuliani.
(Continued here.)
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