The Mystery of Rudy Giuliani...Solved? And the Non-Mystery of Mitt Romney

Rudy Giuliani has been confounding people--including me--by continuing to score well among conservative evangelical Republicans, many of whom appear willing to support his candidacy for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination. Rudy is the frontrunner in spite of favoring gay marriage, gun control, and public funding of abortion.

There are many ways to explain these mysteries.

In the case of gay marriage, Giuliani's position is more in tune with the Barry Goldwater-Gerald Ford tradition of conservatism. The traditional conservative understanding of federalism was that the federal government had no business regulating the bedrooms of consenting adults. It further saw that traditional marriage, a rite of the Church, could not be threatened by any covenant established by the state, whose interest in marital relationships was (and is) threefold:

• the control of sexually transmitted disease;
• the joint ownership of property and its disposition in case of divorce; and
• the care and custodianship of children, whether the relationship continues or ends in divorce.
  

If some conservatives find Giuliani's position on gun control objectionable--and not all do, their apprehensions will be somewhat blunted by his apparently strong anticrime record while serving as New York mayor.

Abortion is a tougher one for conservatives, even some secular conservatives, to swallow.

But I think that Giuliani is even winning points and support from conservatives who intensely disagree with him on this trifecta of issues. Why? Because he isn't changing his position simply to make himself acceptable to some wings of his party. He seems to basically be saying, "I'm a fiscal conservative who'll fight terrorism. I also believe in strict constuctionist interpretations of the Constitution. Yeah, we disagree on other issues. I'm still the same guy today I was yesterday and I won't try to pull the wool over your eyes, pretending that I've had a road-to-Damascus experience when it comes to gay marriage, gun control, or abortion. But, there's a lot more that unites us than divides us."

My guess is that Giuliani is appealing to conservatives because of his refusal to flip flop on the issues.

Conversely, Mitt Romney appears to be facing all sorts of problems because he looks so much like a flip-flopper:










And notice the humor some clever Fox News Channel producer was showing here...



[Also see here. By the way, I'm not a Rudy Giuliani fan. I don't do endorsements, just observations.]