Rudy's Abortion Problem
How will Giuliani's campaign be effected by clarifying his stance on abortion?
May 10, 2007 — -- Rudy's for abortion rights and the GOP's activists know that.
Rudy's polling numbers weren't hurt by this knowledge because after Sept. 11 many GOPers became "security-first" Republicans, and after November '06 even more became Al Davis Republicans, as in, "Just win, baby."
It is with this last group that Rudy is now having problems. Some among the thoroughgoing anti-abortion voters might never have supported Rudy, but the pragmatic Republicans were hoping that Rudy could finesse enough of that bloc into acquiescence and even enthusiasm to make him a formidable November '08 candidate. Republicans cannot win without the serious conservatives, and so the pragmatists wanted evidence that Rudy could bring them along.
And for a while the evidence was there in the polling, and the reassurances about judges that Rudy needed to give were in fact given, both by him and by key surrogates like Ted Olsen.
But then Rudy started talking about the issue in ways almost designed to infuriate the anti-abortion bloc. He did so first on my radio program on April 13, then at the Reagan library debate, and then on Laura Ingraham's program on May 8. The explanation he offered Laura about past Planned Parenthood donations didn't only not help, they failed to pass the laugh test. The first rule of holes ignored again.
What anti-abortion voters must have in a GOP nominee is a commitment that his Supreme Court nominees will be originalists of the sort who understand that Roe vs. Wade was wrongly decided. Rudy keeps trying to make that assurance, but when he couples it with his declaration that strict constructionists could uphold Roe on stare decisis grounds, he unnerves -- repels? -- the very voters he needs to at least quiet. Rather than quiet they grow restive; the pragmatists do as well. Both camps start looking around for an alternative. True, they will not switch to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., but after former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's debate performance they begin to think there is an alternative.
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