Liberal Giuliani Adored by Conservative Republicans...What's Up with That?

Patrick Ruffini is a fledgling political pundit who is getting a lot of Republicans to participate in his monthly online straw polls. The subject of these polls is who should be the 2008 Republican presidential nominee. Last month, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani was the decided winner in the crowded field. Once again this month, Giuliani is in the lead.

Ruffini points out that his poll isn't scientific. But as Hugh Hewitt reported some months ago, based on interactions he's had with grassroots Republicans, there's alot of support for a Giuliani presidential run from people who disagree with him on abortion, gay marriage, and a whole host of subjects.

Why is that? Why are conservative Republicans gah-gah over the liberal Giuliani?

I think that there are two reasons, one to which Hewitt alludes. In a nutshell, it's the insecurity of our world and the desire to have a leader who acts with confidence and dispatch in emergency situations. Giuliani is perceived as having done that on September 11. Wanting security in the face of disasters, whether caused by terrorists or by nature, is trumping concerns about other issues for conservatives. They want Rudy--right now anyway--because he's seen as tough.

This, by the way, is the very trait that probably propelled Ronald Reagan past Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential election. Americans had massive misgivings about Reagan. A few years before, his perceived bellicosity and possession of "the nuclear button" would have been grounds for most American voters to dismiss his candidacy for President out of hand. But with the long-running Iranian hostage crisis still dragging on by election day of that year, Reagan's perceived toughness seemed preferable. Similar concerns could propel Giuliani to the Republican nomination and to the White House.

But I think that there's a second reason for the enthusiasm Republicans appear to have for Giuliani. It's this: The labels of conservative and liberal have been fairly depleted of meaning. Today, by and large, when people say, "I'm a conservative" or "I'm a liberal," they may mean nothing more than, "I like the blue team" or "I like the red."

Sure, there are still true believers. But I'll give you a test. In it, I'll describe the policies of phantom administrations and ask you to name the party of their President.

Administration #1 undertakes a major retrenchment and reduction in the size of the modern welfare state and it moves the federal budget from a deficit to a surplus.

Administration #2 oversees a massive growth in the size of government, including the establishment of several new buraucracies, and undertakes an activist foreign policy designed to spread democracy throughout the world.

By any conventional reckoning, one would say that the first administration was Republican and the second one Democratic. But in fact, the first is that of Bill Clinton and the second of George W. Bush.

Yes, circumstances change. But can you imagine Lyndon Johnson acquiescing to the welfare reform program Clinton signed into law? Or even Mr. Bush's father enacting the kind of Wilsonian response to terrorism that incited our current war in Iraq?

Mind you, I'm not arguing about the policies of these matters or whether either Mr. Clinton or Mr. Bush were right in abandoning their party's core principles. Clinton probably had little choice once the Republicans won the 1994 midterm elections but to go along with the Republican-passed welfare reform program. It was only after those elections and its triumphant "Contract with America," that Clinton declared the era of big government to be ended. But Clinton had always been committed to a politics of "triangulation" in which he swiped enough of the ideas of his opponents to weaken their hold on more conservative voters.

Mr. Bush appears as committed as another president from Texas, the Democrat, Lyndon Johnson, to using money from the federal treasury--even when it has to be borrowed from China and other foreign lenders--to fatten the budget with people-pleasing pork.

Even on social issues, modern conservatives don't sound too much like the conservatives of bygone days. For example, many conservatives have been alarmed by soon-to-be Chief Justice John Roberts' answers during his confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Like conventional conservative jurists of the past, Roberts insisted that the Court should not be in the business of making new law and should pay attention to precedent. In other words, he disdains judicial activism. But this isn't what some "conservatives" wanted to hear. They want judges who will be activists in the pursuit of their agendas on abortion, homosexuality, and other issues. For them, activism on behalf of what they believe in is okay.

So meaningless have the labels conservative, liberal, left, and right become that not long ago, I a conservative Republican activist told me, "If Barry Goldwater were alive today, we'd see what a liberal he really was. I could never vote for him." When I heard that statement, I couldn't help but think of the novel, 1984, in which war was said to really be peace.

The bottom line is that Rudy Giuliani may just win the 2008 Republican presidential nomination and on his way to the White House, he'll be declared a great conservative.