After the Republicans’ midterm devastating losses, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani have emerged as their party’s presidential favorites, according to public polls, GOP insiders, and Washington pundits.
And stunningly for a party that has championed conservative social issues like opposing abortion, banning gay marriage, and restricting embryonic stem cell research not one of these front-runners is a bona fide social conservative.
“There is no George W. Bush in the field,” says one neutral GOP strategist, referring both to Bush’s wide appeal in 2000 and his conservative views. That worries some on the right.
Even though George W. Bush popularity is eroding, he has stood up and championed issues that struck at the core of the Republican platform, which is something that is lacking in this election for the GOP.
This is the first time the leading Republican candidates are adopting a non conventional GOP platform since the nomination of Barry Goldwater of the 1964 election, which ended catastrophically for the Republicans.
Let’s examine their records:
McCain, for example, opposes abortion, but he rarely talks about it and once even said during his first presidential bid in 2000 that he wouldn’t support the repeal of Roe v. Wade because that would force women in America to undergo “illegal and dangerous operations.”
He also co-authored the Senate legislation that would create a guest-worker program for illegal immigrants and give them a path to citizenship. And he voted for legislation to expand funding for embryonic stem cell research.
Romney, moreover, campaigned for the Senate in 1994 and governor in 2002 on protecting a woman’s right to have an abortion. “On a personal basis, I don’t favor abortion,” he said in 2002. “
“However, as governor of the Commonwealth, I will protect the right of a woman to choose.” Also in 2002, Romney stated he would “work and fight” for embryonic stem cell research.
Giuliani, meanwhile, has been a consistent supporter of abortion rights, more federal funding for stem cell research, and civil unions for gays. Indeed, in what could further enrage some religious conservatives, he marched in gay-pride parades as mayor, appeared in drag for a party at a 1997 black-tie dinner.
“I think Rudy Giuliani should run against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary,” a local government official in the city of New York said, “The Republican base, the conservative base is not going to go for somebody like [him].”
Still, to think that not a single true social conservative is among the current front-runners for the GOP nomination, you would have wondered if the political world had turned upside down. The silver lining for die hard Republicans that after all its March of 2007, and there is still plenty of time for a true conservative to emerge and keep the GOP platform a live.