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Why the '08 race could break the mold

A Clinton-Giuliani contest would pit two socially liberal candidates against each other.

By Linda Feldmann | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the November 6, 2007 edition

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Washington - A year before Election Day, Americans may be heading toward the most unorthodox US presidential race in a generation.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D) of New York appears well positioned to become the first woman nominee of a major party. But it is Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, who would represent the greater departure for his party, if he were to win the Republican nomination.

Mr. Giuliani's liberal positions on social issues – foremost, abortion and gay rights – put him at odds with the large social conservative wing of the Republican Party. If Giuliani can make it through the primaries, he would be the first Republican nominee to hold such views since President Reagan made opposition to abortion a central feature of Republican doctrine.

Senator Clinton, in contrast, represents mainstream Democratic thought in her policy positions, even if the liberal wing of her party is skeptical of her centrist take on foreign policy – most recent, her vote for a resolution on Iran that opponents say could pave the way for war.

So how is it that Giuliani has defied expectations and remained at the top of national polls of Republican voters this long? Two factors, analysts say.

"The first is 9/11 and number 2 is Hillary Clinton," says John Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif.

For both parties, toughness has become an essential quality both in fighting wars and in doing battle with the opposition party. And in a campaign where the operating assumption is that Clinton will win the Democratic nomination, Republicans so far are willing to forgive Giuliani his social views if they think he can beat her, says Mr. Pitney.

In addition, religious conservative leaders are hopeful that the bulk of GOP primary voters are ill-informed about his social views, and that as they tune in to the race, they will conclude that he is too liberal. For the antiabortion movement, the prospect of pitting two pro-abortion rights candidates against each other in the general election is almost unthinkable. The next presidency could represent the culmination of a generation-long battle to overturn the right to abortion, enshrined in the 1973 Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade.

Court-watchers predict two or more justices will leave the court during the next presidential term, creating the potential for an anti-Roe majority. Giuliani has promised to nominate "strict constructionist" justices in the mold of the current court's four most conservative jurists, but social conservative leaders are not assuaged. They are also concerned that anti-abortion Democrats who have been voting Republican in recent elections will "come home" to the Democratic Party, if the abortion issue is taken off the table.

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