Redefining conservatism

There is a trend among the Washington DC and New York area Republicans who have decided that Rudy Giuliani is the candidate who can beat Hillary, if he can just secure the nomination. They realize that Giuliani's social issues liberalism make him unpalatable to genuine conservatives so the effort is underway to convince us either that Rudy is a "real" social conservative, not by making us believe that Rudy actually agrees with us on the social issues but that we're wrong about what it means to be a conservative or that being a conservative isn't all that important anyway.

The latter idea is put forward by George Will, elite New York intellectual, who wrote a column reviewing John Patrick Diggins' new book, " Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History." and concluded that Ronald Reagan was really a delusional "big government conservative". We are told that we have to get over Reagan because he was an aberration that can never exist again.

For the former thesis we go to Jennifer Rubin, a DC area writer, who has an essay trying to convince us that Rudy is really a social conservative, if we just rewrite the definition of "social conservative":

If the definition of "social conservative" is merely a checklist of several hot button issues, specifically abortion and gay rights, Giuliani is certainly to the left of his principal rivals. He might give assurances to appoint strict constructionist judges and might stipulate that his support of civil unions is not the same as support for gay marriage. However, on these issues he is unlikely to win the hearts of single-issue voters who care passionately about a candidate's beliefs and not just the likely outcomes of a candidate's policies.

But the commentators and consultants may have gotten the questions wrong. The better, at least the more interesting, question is whether Giuliani can establish a new description of what it means to be "socially conservative." . . .

Well Jennifer the answer is no. Rudy is not a conservative. On some issues he is conservative but on too many others he is not. He shares this with George W Bush who is not a conservative despite being conservative on some issues.

My advice to all the elite snobs who, truth be told, aren't all that comfortable with true conservatism anyway is to stop insulting our intelligence. If you believe that Giuliani is the only one who can beat Hillary and that he is therefore the best that the Republican Party can do this time out then say so. Make the case that someone who is somewhat conservative on many issues is better than someone who is completely liberal on all issues. After all Rudy cannot possibly be worse on the Second Amendment or abortion than Hillary and he will certainly be better on taxes and national security and entitlement reform and a number of other issues than the Wicked Witch of Chappaqua could ever hope to be.

So make your case based on the lesser of two evils argument and just maybe when November is upon us and we are really starting to think about how much damage the Hilldabeast could actually do in four years (anybody remember Carter?) we will agree. But if you keep treating us like we're too retarded to know what a "real" conservative is we just might get such a bad taste in our mouths when we think about him that we take an "anybody but Rudy" attitude and pull the leaver (or punch the chad) for a third-party candidate who actually represents all of our values.