Rudy’s Deceptive Strategy

There’ve been a lot of interesting posts on the possibility of Rudy Giuliani as the GOP nominee for President and the possibility of a Socially Conservative walkout. Clayton Cramer posted on the issue on Sunday and cited the age of Supreme Court Justices as a reason conservatives should back Rudy:

Justice John Paul Stevens is 87.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 74.
Justice Anthony Kennedy is 71.
Justice Antonin Scalia is 71.
Justice Stephen Breyer is 69.
Justice David Souter is 68.

I understand that there’s a lot of rage about abortion. But guaranteeing a Democratic victory in 2008, in the hopes that the Republican Party will start to listen to social conservatives is really, really foolish. You might get a social conservative Republican nominee in 2012–but so what? The Supreme Court will be fully stacked with liberals who will make social conservatives wish for the return of Sandra Day O’Connor.

Now as it’s been written about before, there’s little in Rudy’s judicial appointment record to suggest Rudy won’t the nightmare judges Clayon talks about, so many Social Conservatives are in a lose-lose situation, a hobson’s choice regardless. You can also point out that the notion 6 justices retiring in 4 years is a tad far-fetched, given that the retirement age is really into the 80s for most. Further, we will never be at a time when we don’t have old justices on the Supreme Court, so this seems to be an arrangement that leaves social conservatives forever at the mercy of the liberal wing of the party.

But what actually stands out to me is the duplicity of the Giuliani Campaign’s strategy. Here’s how it works:

In order to win the primary and to have a chance in the general election, he’s got to hold onto enough Social Conservatives to win the election. To do this, the Giuliani campaign has to convince them that he’ll appoint conservative minded judges who may overturn Roe v. Wade.

However, Giuliani’s big selling point to moderate voters is his ability to bring in moderates who are put off by the party’s position on abortion. In order to get these abortion-favoring voters, Rudy will appear as a non-threatening conservative who’ll keep abortion going trong and won’t appoint judges to overturn Roe.

The actual practicality of the plan is problematic and makes false assumptions. But leaving it aside, the undergirding of the Giuliani campaign is an attempt to get two different groups of people to believe different things about the same issue at the same time. It’s the height of dishonesty and the American people will see through it.