StormWarning’s Counterterrorism

EDITORIAL: In most aspects of life, the “Religious Right” plays it strictly Conservative.  But when it comes to Rudy, many of the important things are suddenly not so important - abortion, gay marriage, amnesty for illegal immigrants, marital infidelity and his failed sense of responsibility for his son.  This is a clear contradiction of values and in judgment.

I find this contradiction to be disconcerting if not disingenuous.  And yet, the rationales of the Evangelical right for supporting “Rudy, the Great Sinner” is that Rudy is also “Rudy, America’s Mayor” who on September 11th showed himself to be a great hero (my opinion shared by many others) and a truly compassionate man (my opinion shared by others), even though we all know that Rudy Giuliani the Mayor of New York City was a bully who enforced his will on others.  Rudy is a contradiction, and for that reason alone, I cannot understand the support of Evangelical Christians for him, and personally, cannot support him for President (my reasons lie mostly in his poor people judgment and his hair-trigger temper). 

Support of Rudy among the Religious Right centers on his national security and fighting terrorism positions.  And yet, this means that for the Evangelicals who largely support Rudy, country comes before G-d.  That, I believe is a contradiction.

Religious Protestants have come to view the issues that Giuliani has emphasized, “national security” and “fighting terror,” as more crucial than those family issues they stressed in the past. Thomas, who is himself a professing Christian but with a neoconservative, Zionist twist, stated the opinion on March 13 that such prioritizing indicates a definite “maturing” among his coreligionists.

But other than his statements and his pandering to the Religious Right with his rhetorical posturing on National Security, there is little in his past to suggest that he is especially equipped for that task.  His supporters point to the drop in crime in NYC while he was Mayor, and yet they fail to note that violent crime across the Nation was dropping at similar rates because President Clinton had provided the funds to increase police forces (and demographic factors and to the building and use of prisons).  Yes, he took derelicts off the streets, but many a car windshield stayed dirty because the squeegee guys had been run off by the “squeegee guy cleanup patrol.”  Rudy promises, and the Evangelical Right believes his promise that he’d appoint strict constructionist judges, and yet, as Mayor of NYC his appoints to the bench could only be characterized as “Librul.”

Rudy’s recent assurance to evangelicals that as president he would nominate “strict-constructionist judges to the federal courts” tells more about the credulity of his audience than Giuliani’s likely course as chief executive. While mayor, his
appointments to New York’s lower courts came consistently from the left wing of the Democratic Party. These appointees reflected the mayor’s pro-choice positions rather than the “strict constructionist” perspective that is now associated with critics of abortion.

Rudy is perceived as strong against terrorism, and pro-Israel (while not questioning the veracity of his support, “what else could the Mayor of New York City with its vast Jewish population be?”).  Conservative media has annointed Rudy as the Great White Hope of the Republican Party, and yet, they ignore all of the family values contradictions of his life.  The Weekly Standard supports Rudy, as do the younger generation of neoconservatives.

Cal Thomas has extolled his fellow evangelicals to recognize the big picture: “Character is seen as less important than who can face the multiple challenges facing the nation”—specifically, the struggle against international terror. From the evangelical perspective, this confrontation with terror is so intertwined with other issues that it serves as a kind of shorthand. Israel, Zionism, and the glorification of American democracy as a world model are all at least implicit in the evangelical conception of the struggle against terror—one that Giuliani is imagined to be able to lead better than any other presidential contender.

So according to this article in the June 4th edition of The American Conservative Magazine (The Giuliani-Driven Christians), evangelicals have moved away from divisive issues like abortion to stress an apparently less controversial “human rights” agenda.  In fact, “the Evangelicals have prioritized foreign policy over cultural concerns in supporting America’s liberal mayor.”  Clearly Rudy’s Evangelical supports do not see him as the supposedly “liberal mainstream media” see him - as the liberal Republican Mayor of New York City that he was.  Rudy is a pro-choice, anti-gun, pro-illegal immigration, pro-Gay marriage, multi-married wife cheating son abandoning contradiction, and proof that the American electorate, especially the Religious Evangelical Right, will believe anything they want to believe.  The way I see it, Evangelicals are a contradiction in fact, not in fiction.

Given the erosion of the evangelical consensus on once hardcore moral issues, a tendency that religious sociologist Mark Shibley has studied in depth, Giuliani’s stands on abortion or gay marriage may matter less and less to many evangelical voters. Like Mike Gerson, these Republicans are focused on foreign-policy goals—and they seem to have found their candidate in the maritally challenged former mayor.

I, for one, remain a member of Republicans Against Giuliani.

Cross posted on RCP.

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Current Affairs, National Security, Opinions, Religion