Paul Runs Pro-Life, Romney v. Huck, and Giuliani’s Amazing Flip Flops

Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) is running on his pro-life record as he tries to secure enough citizen delegates to West Virginia’s primary:

Attention Rudy, Fred and Mitt: He’s pushing opposition to abortion.

So far, I’ve received 2 mailings from presidential candidates: Both from Dr. Ron Paul. The first one mentioned only his support of gun rights.

This one mentioned only his opposition to abortion-on-demand, which is odd for a libertarian. I thought they opposed government interference.

For clarification, there are plenty of pro-life Libertarians . Paul’s position on this has been pretty clear for 30 years. This is what makes Paul’s campaign potentially strong. While other Libertarians are openly disdainful of social conservatives, Paul is not. He voted for supports the Defense of Marriage Act, has voted Pro-Life his entire career, and has a great relationship with homeschoolers. While, he’s not the sweetheart of the movement, there was a reason he finished 2nd in the Values Voter Debate Strawpolls. This is ultimately the challenge to Libertarians after Paul, because many of the folks identified as libertarians have an attitude that can be best described as disdainful.

The letters Paul’s sent in West Virginia show that, at least in writing, he’s capable of doing what he usually can’t do on stage, and that’s targeting his message to his audience. And in West Virginia, pro-life’s a winning issue, particularly against folks who are either uninspiring, opposed to the grassroots position, or recent converts.

According to Jonah Goldberg, you don’t want to be on Mitt Romney’s mailing list:

Ack. I cannot tell you how much email the Romney campaign sends out. Too, too much doesn’t do it justice. I don’t want to be de-listed because of my burning desire to stay informed. But every 20 seconds I get an email from his “Press shop” or the Mass. GOP or some other Romney organ letting me know he’s on his way to his plane. Then, he’s on his plane. Then, he’s going to have a bag of peanuts. No wait: The Romney Campaign denies the peanut bag story. He will have pretzels. And club soda. And then, breaking news, hair number 235,098,017 is out of place, but his advisers have it under control. And…

I’m sure there’s some exaggeration here, but I think being on Mitt Romney’s mailing list is a sacrifice I’ll leave for those who are paid to do this. To quote Super Chicken, “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.”

Speaking of Romney, he’s slamming Mike Huckabee to the wall:

“He may be conservative on social issues, but when it comes to economic issues like immigration, he’s a liberal on immigration. He fought for tuition breaks for illegal aliens. He raised taxes time and time again as governor of Arkansas,” Romney told CNN.

Romney has long been the frontrunner in Republican polls in Iowa, but surveys in the past two weeks indicate that Huckabee has closed the gap with the former Massachusetts governor.

With just six weeks before the first contest of the 2008 presidential race, both men have draped themselves in the mantle of former President Ronald Reagan.

“I must admit that I find the vision and the direction that Ronald Reagan laid out for this country to be very powerful and very compelling,” Romney said. “And I’ll tell you, Ronald Reagan would have never raised taxes like Mike Huckabee did.

“Ronald Reagan would have never said let’s give tuition breaks to illegals like Mike Huckabee did. Ronald Reagan would have never stood by and pushed for a budget that more than doubled during his term as president.”

It should be said in the interest of fairness that Reagan did raise taxes in California. But Romney is showing a great degree of fight on this point. Huckabee’s response was predictable and shows Mitt’s overall weakness:

“When he was pro-abortion, I was still pro-life and always have been,” Huckabee told CNN. “When he was for gun control, I was against it. When he was against the Bush tax cuts, I was for them. When he was against Ronald Reagan’s legacy and said he wasn’t part of that Bush-Reagan thing, I was a part of that Bush-Reagan thing.”

The recent convert thing, an apparent effort to sway voters in the early primary states, is  a valid concern. However, it must be said that it’s not something that can last as a defense forever. With Romney, you really don’t know what you’re going to get, but to be honest, I’d rather have Romney than McCain (Big Government Statist who has a government solution to every problem) or Giuliani (Social Liberal who will really not do a whole lot to reign in spending.) Sometimes, the known alternative is so bad, it’s better to take a gamble that the other guy’s telling the truth.

I’ve got to say that if the race came down to Huckabee and Romney, it would be a tough, tough call for me. While I like Huckabee’s social conservative record, I’m fairly well convinced he’s been manipulating pro-life voters over the Human Life Amendment, when he’s stated differently as late as 2006. He’s someone who wants a bigger government to do things like ban smoking. He probably has the best shot of winning the general election, if economic conservatives don’t bolt, as he’s the type of Republican Oprah would love. But what would winning mean if it means a nanny state that’s going to seek to move into even more areas of our lives? There’s also nagging ethical concerns from Arkansas.

And while Mitt Romney has grasped the concept that our party is a three legged stool and all three legs are essential to winning, Huckabee goes around the country attacking Club for Growth as the Club for Greed, and in the past has called proponents of immigration reform in Arkansas anti-Christian and UnAmerican.

I’ve got to tell you, as an Evangelical Christian who has attended 10 Marches for Life and 11 Life Chains, I would be sorely tempted to vote for Romney if it were Romney v. Huckabee. Though, the odds of me having to make that choice in May, 2008 are quite thin and hopefully we’ll have better candidates to vote for.

CNN points to Rudy’s more radical pro-abortion past:

It was 1993 and Kelli Conlin remembers her excitement as a member of Mayor-elect Rudy Giuliani’s transition team.

“It’s always exciting to have a new mayor coming in, but this was a moderate Republican and moderate Republicans are hard to find,” Conlin said in an interview at her New York office.

Conlin is president of New York’s largest abortion rights organization and was appointed by Giuliani to the city’s Human Rights Commission. She still calls Giuliani a friend, but bristles at much of what she hears from him on abortion lately.

Now, as a presidential candidate, Giuliani has said, “I’m against abortion — I hate it.”

Conlin said she never heard anything like that when Giuliani was in office.

“He never seemed to have a struggle with the issue as mayor,” she said…

Some, like Conlin, label these flip-flops and accuse Giuliani of political calculation. But Giuliani aides reject the flip-flop label, and say any evolution in his thinking is the result of life experience and the very different policy calculations facing a president versus a mayor.

When he ran for mayor, Giuliani made clear he viewed his oath as an obligation to uphold the right to an abortion, but also said that doing so was at odds with values learned in his Catholic upbringing.

“I have personal views and religious views that are contrary to some of these areas,” Giuliani said back then.

Would you like to know what very different policy calculations means? Basically, you can get elected mayor of a liberal city like New York by saying you oppose parental notification for minors, that everyone’s daughter should be able to get an abortion with them being none the wiser, and that partial birth abortion is A-okay by you, and that the 25th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade ought to be commemorated fondly by the city, but you can’t try that while running for President in the GOP primary.

Rudy is as pro-abortion now as he can possibly be and still have a shot at the GOP primary, which is not pro-abortion enough for his disaffected friends in the pro-abortion movement. Which is why a Rudy nomination will not bring over many social liberals to vote GOP, but will cost a ton of Social Conservative votes.