Is Giuliani Trying to Move The Republican Party To The Left?

Buried in a story about how Rudolf Giuliani has been invited to speak at Regent University, the theocon college founded by evangelist nutcase Pat Robertson and made infamous by Monica Goodling, this interesting litle tidbit got my attention today (God, I hate linking to the Post):

Giuliani made his sharpest case for moving beyond social issues this weekend in Iowa, telling The Des Moines Register, “Our party is going to grow, and we are going to win in 2008 if we are a party characterized by what we’re for, not if we’re a party that’s known for what we’re against.”

Asked about abortion, he said, “Our party has to get beyond issues like that.”

I’ve always been suspect of the right’s real commitment to social issues like abortion and immigration. If the Republicans were committed to overturning Roe v. Wade, they would have done it by now. Certainly with 6 years of total control over two of the three branches of our government, and a very slim minority in the third, one would think that they would have at least mounted some kind of attempt to outlaw abortion, but it never materialized. Yes, I know they passed an onerous law in South Dakota last year, but that was short lived and they never tried to bring it to the test. If they overturned Roe, they would lose it as a campaign isssue. The same holds true for immigration and many of the other social issues that Republicans hold dear.

So when I read this it suddenly occurred to me where Rudy may be going with his campaign. It sounds an awful lot like Giuliani may be planning to cast off the theocratic right wing fundamentalist base and try to bring the Republican Party back toward the center, to it’s historic roots, and liberate it from the stranglehold that the extreme religious right has had on it since Reagan. In effect, bring GOP back toward the left.

I’ve been of the opinion that the Giuliani candidacy has been a dead man walking. I’ve been of the opinion that he would never have the support of the “base” once they learned of his personal history and attitudes on social issues. But I think that this might be a very shrewd tactic by Rudy. There is no Republican candidate out there who is breaking with the religious and extremist base. Rudy would be the first to do this, to court the massive numbers of Republicans who have deserted the party as Iraq has decesnded into hell, more and more scandal metastasizes inside of the Bush administration and the Republican side of the aisle in Congress, and large sectors of our government are discovered to be infested with fundamentalist idealogues. These voters really have nowhere to go. They don’t want to vote for Democrats, and they feel raped by their party so they will most likely stay home. That’s how I see it. If Rudy could tap into this constituency he may be able to give the Democrats something to think about.

Loyal Opposition

by Stephen Fleischman

In the beginning, there was the word. Two words. Magna Carta.

It was less a document than a series of concessions wrung from the English King John by his rebellious barons in 1215 AD; for the first time, putting a limit on the power of kings. The democrats had their victory.

Seven hundred and ninety-two years later, in 2007 AD, the Democrats are not doing as well against King George. Democratic Majority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, hooked some clauses about setting a timeline for getting out of Iraq onto a funding bill for the war. The rebellious barons in Congress are having a tougher time trying to reign in the power of the king because they’re a little timid about what to do. King George accused them of “not supporting our troops” by interfering with his war. Looks like George is going to veto the bill and we’ll all be back to square one. Now what’s a rebellious baron to do? To fund or not to fund…? That is the question.

The mother country also handed down a bit of democratic software from ages past—“the Loyal Opposition”—the concept that one can be opposed to the actions of the government or ruling party without being opposed to the constitution of the political system. It’s a handy concept in wartime, because then, one party, “the loyal opposition” can be critical of the other party’s handling of the war without having to worry about “not supporting the troops”. The rebellious barons in Congress don’t seem to have grasped that concept, yet.

While their base is clamoring at the gate and practically tearing down the walls to protect their civil and human rights under King George, the barons dither. In 2006, the electorate told the Democrats, loud and clear, they want an end to this war and a restoration of the civil rights that had been torn away from them in the euphonious “war on terror”. But they are fearful. They should replay Franklin D. Roosevelt’s words, “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.” Dave Letterman replays those words, again and again, almost every night.

A gift of democratic hardware handed down with the mother lode was “Habeas Corpus”. Now there’s a piece of work that has some clout. The literal meaning of the term is: “you’re holding a body”. The writ commands the person (or governmental authority) holding the body to bring it into court and show cause as to why it shouldn’t be let go.

Right now, the US government is “holding” four or five or six hundred bodies in prison camps on the southern tip of Cuba. (What the hell is a piece of the United States doing down there, anyway?) These bodies have been labeled “enemy combatants” by King George in an ephemeral terrorist war and so, according to him, they are exempt from Habeas Corpus.

Nowhere! Nowhere in the Magna Carta does it say that “enemy combatants” are exempt from Habeas Corpus! But I don’t see those writs flying down to Guantanamo Bay. What’s happened to the rebellious barons in the Congress? Fear again. Fear of the little shrub. Our British antecedents must be struck dumb with wonder.

Of course, there is one caveat. There’s a presidential election coming up and some of those Congressional barons have thrown their hats into the ring, or has that express become as obsolete as “writ of Habeas Corpus”?

You must remember, it’s a very sensitive time. Presidential candidates must be very careful they don’t say or do the wrong thing during this period of winnowing money and covering all bets, especially if one is the wife of an ex-President and another overly clean. Twenty-six million. Twenty-five million. That’s a lot of moolah! And that’s only for the primary. With dineros like that, surely, he or she must be in somebody’s pocket.

One bad slip on a banana peel and you’ve had it. McCain took one when he showed how safe it was to walk the streets in a Baghdad market in full armor and talk about how we were winning the war.

But there is one thing the Democrats can do with impunity. Play “the Loyal Opposition” card. We haven’t really had a loyal opposition in this country for a long time and it would surely go over with the voters.

Take the raging bull by the horns and opportunity by the forelock. The Iraq war is the chippie. The Middle East is burning.

Our service men and women are running in circles looking for terrorists, knocking down doors, terrorizing Iraqis, killing civilians, and in the process becoming terrorists, themselves. The rate of death among our own servicemen continues to mount, eight last week, sixty-seven last month. How long are we going to let this outrage go on? Will somebody please find the outrage? Where has it gone?

Whichever presidential candidate has the fortitude to step forward and say, “here is the outrage, let’s end it now,” will become the next president of the United States.

Virginia Tech Massacre

I’ve been trying to get my head around this tragedy since it happened yesterday. This is an emormously devasting event for those involved and I my heart goes out to the loved ones of those lost. This is truly senseless violence, it makes no sense and is therefore incomprehensible to anyone but the man who committed this horrible crime, and we will never know if it even made any sense to him.

Naturally when I got home I turned on The Mighty Wurlitzer to see what was being reported but it was all so loud and frantic that I had to turn it down and preferred to read. One of the first things I read was this:

Dana Perino says the president was “horrified and his immediate reaction was one of deep concern for the families of the victims, the victims themselves, the students, the professors and all the people of Virginia who have dealt with this shocking incident.”

Perino said “The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed.”

This man, who calls himself our President, seems to me to have no sense of decency whatsoever and seems willing to politicize anything. Personally, I find it repulsive.

Larry Johnson has a post up at No Quarter about the reaction of America to this tragedy and how it relates to our attitudes about the death and destruction that is integral to our nation’s foreign policy at this time. Trex has a two-part post up at FDL where the Firedogs were discussing the same thing. In that discussion marksb added this, which I thought was also quite relevant:

Lots of people are unstable and under pressure, and when one of them (one of us) snaps, the idiots have to blame something so they can get some mileage from the tragedy. It’s so sad; then it seems to get sadder still. Damn.

My wife had a dilemma with a student last semester. He was an Iraq war vet, Army, in her college communications class. He wasn’t completing assignments according to her directions and wanted to talk with her about it. From the way he was talking in class and in his papers, from his stress level and the anger he sometimes suddenly displayed, she was a bit scared. He was unable to talk about himself, even in a written description of dyadic communications—he had to make up a fictional account of two people communicating. She was able to work with him and find a middle ground that fulfilled the class requirements and respected his evident, but unspoken, PTSD…but he didn’t have a counselor from the VA or at the college.

When I heard about the VT shootings today I flashed on this kid at my wife’s college. I’m afraid of the issues we will have to face in our society over the next decade.

In the bizarro world the wingers are out there spewing a ration of shite that says that this would not have happened if there had been more guns on campus.

I think it may be time to watch “Bowling For Columbine” again.