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CAN WE PLEASE STOP CALLING RUDY GIULIANI "PRO-CHOICE?"
It's great fun to taunt social conservatives with the fact that the Republican front-runner is "pro-choice" and "supports abortion rights." But we're getting to the point where claiming so much is just, well, not factual. "Pro-choice" politicians don't "reassure" Sam Brownback that they'll appoint "strict constructionist" justices to the Supreme Court following the model of John Roberts, as Giuliani did yesterday, according to Politico's Jonathan Martin.
Rudy simply isn't planning on governing as an abortion-rights supporter. So instead of blithely asserting that we're going to marginalize the theocrats by moving into a period in which abortion will become apolitical, we should call it like it is: Giuliani has become anti-choice, and the only way to protect and expand reproductive rights at the federal level is to elect a Democrat to the White House.
--Dana Goldstein
COMMENTS (3)
Exactly. Well said. And he's not "a supporter of gay rights" either.
Posted by: winer | October 26, 2007 3:41 PM
Excellent point (as Winer said). In the ways that matter, Giuliani is effectively, maybe even extremely, anti-choice.
Posted by: Gerald Scorse | October 27, 2007 10:32 AM
You are absolutely right that Rudy is not any longer pro choice. Before he ran for mayor he was anti choice and his pro choice conversion is the result of the absolute necessity that no anti choice politician could ever become the Mayor of New York being anti abortion. (in real life, the anti choice character Fred Thompson plays on Law and Order could never have been elected as the District Attorney of Manhattan.)
Once he said he would appoint judges like Scalia and Alito, means he is talking out of all four sides of his mouth to signal to independents in the general that they should feel safe.....when he is lying to them.
I have been a board member of a pro choice group since before Rudy was Mayor. I know him and his positons very well.
It is crucial that we on our side never, ever burnish the the notion that he would in any way govern as a pro choice president. We are handing him a weapon to use against us.
He is an authoritarian, tyrannical bully.... who makes George Bush look like a cream puff. We should stop helping him.
Posted by: debcoop | October 28, 2007 12:37 AM