Not a prayer, Rudy

Has former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani lost his mind? In a speech in Houston, yesterday, he told fellow Republicans that his personal views on gun control, abortion, and gay rights were not the most important concerns facing the United States of America today. He said they'd be better off worrying more about winning the 2008 election than in choosing a nominee who is pristine in his right wing social ideology.

In the real (i.e., non-Republican) world, such a speech would hardly raise an eyebrow. As Democrats and independents approach the next presidential election, they hope and intend to select a President who is capable of ending the war in Iraq, controlling the threat of global terrorism, restoring respect for American ideals and conduct, combating world-wide poverty, placing social security and Medicare on a sound financial footing, restoring fairness to the tax laws, making American industry competitive globally (insofar as can be done by public policies), and ensuring that increases in national prosperity are shared to some degree by all levels of our society.

Most of these goals, if not always the means, are shared by the great majority of Americans. Some are more divisive. But they are all natural subjects of public policy at the federal level. Which policies are to be adopted will depend upon the party in power.

Giuliani pointed out the importance of such national issues, as contrasted with the “social issues” that are divisive even among Republicans, and that are of importance only at a personal and, perhaps, state level. He urged members of his party to focus on legitimate national issues, the ones of concern to most voters, if they hope to retain the White House after 2008.

Hardly newsworthy, in normal times, right? But Tony Perkins, a right wing religious leader, responded immediately: “When people hear Rudy Giuliani speak about taxpayer-funded abortions, gay ‘rights’ and gun control, they don’t hear a choice, they hear an echo of Hillary Clinton.” (Why Christians, conservative or otherwise, would be opposed to gun control is not clear to me; why Hillary Clinton seems the apotheosis of “Liberal” also puzzles me.)

Pundits immediately declared that no Republican could win nomination while standing on the “libertarian” ground that Giuliani has staked out. That appears correct. The Republican party, as an organization, is now largely the political wing of the Southern Baptist church, with some additional allies from other groups in the Mid West.

“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” --George Santayana

Democrats have been through all this before. In 1972, they nominated George McGovern, who was defeated in a landslide by an unpopular president who also was bogged down in an unpopular war. An anti-Vietnam war campaign, competently run, should have won in 1972. The McGovern campaign ran into many problems, including Nixon's “dirty tricks” operations. But the single most important reason for the size of his defeat was the public perception that McGovern was a freaky, extreme liberal whose views on many issues, the war aside, were far outside the mainstream.

This public perception was fed by an unruly Democratic convention, largely managed by political amateurs and single-interest enthusiasts, accompanied by loud televised demonstrations supporting issues that to “normal” Americans of the time seemed Communist and/or “hippy,” and that were supported by demonstrators and delegates who looked bearded, long-haired, freaky, stoned, obscene, and, in a word, totally un-American.

My point is that the Democrats suffered in 1972 -- and for years afterward -- from having turned their party over to its far left wing. (Whether that wing was right or wrong on the issues is irrelevant for this discussion.) The Republicans show every sign of heading in the same direction next year, albeit in their own typical manner -- duller, buttoned-up, more boring, less imaginative -- but appearing just as loony to the voters.

As a Democrat, I should be happy that Giuliani doesn’t have a prayer of winning the 2008 nomination from his party’s convention in St. Paul. But as an American, I’d like to see a campaign in which the two parties debate legitimate national issues crucial to our era. Such a campaign requires two parties that agree on the issues that are legitimate and important, but disagree on the solutions. I don’t see such a campaign occurring.

I see the Democrats and Republicans talking past each other, like two ships passing in the night.