In a recent edition of the Washington Post, from an article on the Republican presidential campaign in New Hampshire in advance of the state's approaching primary, there was this, from a typical New Hampshire voter on the candidacy of Rudy Giuliani: "Don't think he has a chance," Cloutier said as his 12-year-old daughter dug into a stack of pancakes and interrupted to offer her seventh-grade observations about Giuliani. "I think he did a great job when he was in New York," the elder Cloutier said. But the fact that the candidate has been married three times is being used against him, he said, adding: "If you push that to conservatives, that is going to be a factor. It's unfortunate."
Falsehood. Not true. The Republican Party is simply not as exclusionary on social issues as many think. And I can prove it. Look: take Ronald Reagan. Yes, in 1980 Reagan was against abortion. But people forget, Reagan was divorced. As governor of California, he signed into law what at the time was one of the most liberal abortion laws in its history. Were social issues what elected Reagan in 1980? No--the most important issues in that campaign were taxes, increasing the defense budget, and being tough on the Soviet Union. But he won the Republican nomination. Take George H.W. Bush. Yes, in 1988 the elder Bush was against abortion. But that wasn't what elected him--what pushed him over the top was his "no new taxes" pledge and the strong economy (and what was fatal to him was his alienation of the Republican base when he broke his no-tax pledge--it didn't matter that he remained anti-abortion). In 2000, , yes, George W. Bush opposed abortion. But he ran mainly on an anti-tax, education reform, end-the-era-of-Clinton-scandals platform; that was mainly what he talked about.
This is not to say that social issues mean nothing or that conservatives no longer care about them (Giuliani's statements that he hates abortion and would nominate strict-constructionist judges, and his playing up his attacks on crime and pornography while mayor of New York, despite his belief that the government shouldn't ban abortion, is testament to that). But it does mean that Republicans and conservatives aren't and haven't been one issue voters, and as I've argued before, this is very consistent with traditional conservatism (Russell Kirk had six "canons" of conservatism way back when--not one.) Conservatives need to continue to emphasize this point. The idea that a Giuliani simply CAN'T win the Republican nomination is false, and really those who argue it's true are slandering Republicans by falsifying the party's history and damning them as exclusionary Puritans. Enough!
