Residual Forces

…. Rudy’s Socially Liberal Predicament

Now, for a while I thought Rudy’s socially liberal persona was not going to be a problem. I figured we’d matured enough as a party to not make this our reverse litmus test like the Liberals. I also took Mr. Rudy at his words, when he said his personaly held view was not going to affect his policies and decisions.

My problem was that I believed a politician. Rudy’s problem was the socially liberal politician was running for the Republican nomination.

In others words, those were just words. As many social conservatives are toweling off after the recent admission by Rudy that he would support tax payer funded abortions, hopefully we will all realize it is just way too dang early to put our stakes under anyone’s tent yet. This was bound to happen, and hopefully the millions gathered by Rudy so far can be salvaged for some one else.

As my good friend Gary Miller has found out, Rudy’s race to the social right may not be all it’s cracked up to be.

I am as dismayed to read this morning that the Mayor essentially reaffirmed his defense of taxpayer funding of abortion. As another Italian-American of enormous stature might declare, “he’s dead to me.”

As Gary said, “How he lost me”. Personally he never really had me, but I was willing to keep him in the race as a potential. But now I wonder, how many more skeletons are in his closets? Is he is running for President just to get bigger closets? Does he just need more closet space to hide his own past? Sheesh.

Now, had Rudy been honest from the beginning, this may not have happened. Rudy does have a lot to offer conservatives, just not social conservatives. Had he never tried to spin his social liberalism, well, he wouldn’t be seen as untrustworthy like he is now. I mean come on, if he really believed this stuff, would he have been through 3 divorces? Um…. let’s just try to move on now. After spending months trying to convince Republicans he wasn’t what so many knew he was (socially liberal), Rudy comes off as a huge liar in my mind.

It is quite telling in the long run. The pressure was on. He was obviously stunned by coming in well behind Romney in the Q1 fundraising and his own expectations I’m sure. It was make or break time, and frankly, he broke. He was bound to do it sooner or later. You just can’t betray your own beliefs. If you yourself believe in an issue, it is nearly impossible for you not to support that publicly.

He is socially liberal, period. There’s not anything to be ashamed of, really. I mean lots of people are socially liberal. But then again, very few socially liberal people run for the Republican nomination for POTUS. And even less socially liberal people try to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes and pretend they are socially conservative, or would be if elected.

‘Well, I’ve supported tax increases all my career, but if elected, I’ll support tax cuts’

Would you believe anyone saying that?

Folks, we need a Republican candidate who not only says they stand for an issue we hold dear, but we need them to really mean it. Let’s find ourselves someone who has a record we can be proud of, and not have to explain. But most importantly, let’s get someone who doesn’t need to explain themselves on the most important issues for our party to us, just so we can hopefully trust them enough to mean what they say, not what they did.