Despite a clear liberal political track record on social issues that puts him on the wrong side of the influential conservative base of the Repubican Party, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani continues to lead the pack of GOP presidential hopefuls. He has been the target of sustained attacks from both the left and the right, and yet as noted by Matthew Continetti of the Weekly Standard, Giuliani is still standing and advancing boldly toward victory at the head of the pack when by many expectations he should be trudging toward defeat at the backend of the race.
At the beginning of the year, many commentators assumed that Giuliani could not win the GOP nomination because he was ideologically out-of-synch with Republican primary voters. While this survey confirms that he is viewed as being to the left of most Republican voters, Giuliani also remains very popular. Seventy-one percent (71%) of Republicans have a favorable opinion of America’s Mayor while just 23% have an unfavorable opinion.
What's more, a story today by Sam Youngman in The Hill seems to indicate that Giuliani's frontrunner status is not going away any time soon. More power brokers in the Republican party are rallying to his side.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) this week announced endorsements from four members of Congress, and one campaign official said more lawmakers would voice their support for the White House hopeful in the coming days.
Illinois Reps. Judy Biggert (R) and Jerry Weller (R) and Pennsylvania Reps. Phil English (R) and Jim Gerlach (R) endorsed Giuliani Monday.
“Mayor Giuliani is the only candidate for president who has demonstrated the ability to lead in a time of immense national crisis,” Weller said in a statement. “No one can forget how this leadership reassured America and brought New York City back from the 9/11 attacks.”
As things stand now, the biggest threat to Giuliani's ability to win the nomination appears to be former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson, who is presented by some polls as slightly behind the former New York mayor and by others as a neck and neck co-frontrunner. Thompson was widely viewed as being a solid social conservative on issues such as abortion and homosexuality, and this perception is the single greatest factor for his surge in support among the GOP base. But recent skeptical media reports, commentaries and editorials especially in leading conservative media outfits have started to chip away at his stalwart conservative image, and questions are being increasingly raised as to whether his hide of social conservatism hides a blood flowing thick in liberal genes. In a story that became a big talking point among the chattering class, Michael Finnegan of the Los Angeles Times reported that Thompson, contrary to his claims of being consistently anti-abortion, did lobbying work for a pro-choice organization in 1991.
Fred D. Thompson, who is campaigning for president as an antiabortion Republican, accepted an assignment from a family-planning group to lobby the first Bush White House to ease a controversial abortion restriction, according to a 1991 document and several people familiar with the matter.
A spokesman for the former Tennessee senator denied that Thompson did the lobbying work. But the minutes of a 1991 board meeting of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn. say that the group hired Thompson that year.
News reports like this have worked to erode some of Thompson's credibility among the GOP conservative base and slow his surging momentum towards the front of the GOP nomination race. Some commentators such as Rick Klein of ABC News have even gone as far as speculating that the Thompson candidacy may have died even before it was birthed. Whatever be the reality of the dynamics of the race, the perception is that Thompson's stumble in recent weeks, particularly the seeming dip in support among social conservatives, may work to re-assert the frontrunner status of Giuliani and give him another oxygen shot in his quest to be the first openly liberal candidate to win the GOP presidential nomination race in recent times.
The question is, why? Why are social conservatives seemingly on the brink of handing the presidential candidacy of their party to a man whose social policies as a former government official and whose likely future policies, if he comes back to public office in any capacity, runs counter to most, if not all of their core values? For an answer, some have pointed to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and the continuing threat of more. According to this school of thought, the terrorist threat to the United States has fundamentally and radically changed the voting priorities of Americans, including conservative voters. The security of the nation is now the most important issue for voters, including conservatives, and they now care more for leaders with proven competence on handling high levels of national danger than those whose political rhetorics echo their social conservative values but are not perceived to be tough. But could it be that the more fundamental answer lies in the possibility that the social conservatism professed by so many voters was never really more than that --- mere profession. And could it be that Giuliani has seen through this and is riskily but cleverly hedging right his bets.