Edsall: Rudy is the GOP’s future
[from an article by Thomas Byrne Edsall in the new New Republic]
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20070521&s=edsall052107
[…]
Many observers believe Giuliani’s early success is the result of his
calculated move rightward–a savvy effort to trick conservative
voters into believing he is really one of them. But there is another
possibility, one that assumes a bit more intelligence on the part of
conservative voters like DePass: What if we are witnessing not Rudy
moving toward the rest of the Republican Party, but rather the
Republican Party moving toward Rudy? What if the salience of a
certain kind of social conservatism is now in decline among GOP
voters and a new set of conservative principles are emerging to take
its place? What if Giuilianism represents the future of the
Republican Party?
Giuliani is the beneficiary of an upheaval within the Republican
electorate–an upheaval that was catalyzed by September 11 but is
becoming apparent only now, as the GOP hosts its first primary battle
since the terrorist attacks. In brief, among Republican voters, the
litmus test issues of abortion and gay marriage have been losing
traction, subordinated to the Iraq war and terrorism. According to
the Pew Research Center, 31 percent of GOP voters name Iraq as their
top priority, and 17 percent choose terrorism and security. Just 7
percent name abortion and 1 percent name gay marriage.
The roots of this transformation predate September 11 and are partly
the result of demographics. The lions of the Christian right–Pat
Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson–no longer dominate Republican
politics as they once did. Their grip is slackening as their older
followers are slowly replaced by a generation for which the social,
cultural, and sexual mores that were overturned by the 1960s are
history, not memory. In retrospect, these men reached the height of
their power in the late ’80s, when, by a 51-to-42 majority, voters
agreed that “school boards ought to have the right to fire teachers
who are known homosexuals.” Now a decisive 66-to-28 majority
disagrees, according to Pew. In 1987, the electorate was roughly
split on the question of whether “aids might be God’s punishment for
immoral sexual behavior.” Today, 72 percent disagree with that
statement, while just 23 percent concur.
Giuliani is on the cutting edge of these trends, seeking to exploit
new ideological lines between conservatism and liberalism. He rejects
conservatism based on sexuality and reproductive issues; and his
personal life amounts to a repudiation of conservatism focused on
family structure, parental responsibility, fidelity, and lifelong
monogamy. Ed Gillespie, former chairman of the Republican National
Committee, notes that, even as voters learn about Giuliani’s more
centrist positions, “it does not seem to move his numbers.” The
former mayor, Gillespie says, is “challenging the notion that
abortion and gay marriage are vote-determinative for everybody in the
party.”
It isn’t just average voters who are driving this shift; many members
of the GOP elite–whose overwhelming concern is cutting taxes, a
Giuliani forte–would privately welcome the chance to downplay, if
not discard, the party’s rearguard war against the sexual and women’s
rights revolutions. Much of the Republican Party’s consulting
community and country club elite always viewed abortion and gay
rights as distasteful but necessary tools to win elections, easily
disposable once they no longer served their purpose. Now, with most
of the leading GOP contenders demonstrating at best equivocal support
for the sexual status quo ante, that time appears to be drawing near.
For the moment, at least, September 11 has replaced abortion, gay
marriage, and other social-sexual matters as the issue that binds the
GOP together as a party. And no one, of course, owns September 11
quite like Rudy Giuliani. “This is a different world from 2000, when
we last had Republican primaries without an incumbent president. 9/11
scrambled the priorities, and it may very well be that the war on
terror pushes social issues down,” says Whit Ayres, a Georgia-based
pollster currently unaffiliated with any presidential campaign.
“Giuliani is an authentic American hero, and Southerners love
American heroes.” No wonder the Yankee centrist suddenly has a chance
in South Carolina.
If Giuliani’s liberal inclinations on certain sexual issues represent
his party’s future, so does his decided conservatism on nonsexual
domestic matters. Take, for instance, the question of how much risk
is desirable in our economic system and what, if anything, government
should do to encourage or discourage it. Ever since Reagan,
Republicans have seen themselves as the party that embraces risk as a
worthy feature of American life; and Giuliani, with his criticism of
the social safety net, is very much an heir to this tradition. A
Weekly Standard article recently quoted Giuliani as saying that
Democrats want “a no-risk society.” Explaining his opposition to
health care mandates, he said, “We’ve got to let people make choices.
We’ve got to let them take the risk–do they want to be covered? Do
they want health insurance? Because ultimately, if they don’t, well,
then, they may not be taken care of. I suppose that’s difficult.”
[…]