Giuliani and the 80/20 rule

The conventional take on Rudy Giuliani’s courtship of the religious right is that the former New York City mayor gutsily has refused to compromise his pro-choice principles, instead asking pro-life Christian conservatives not to allow his differences with them on that issue to obscure larger areas of agreement. In fact, in a well received speech at the recent Values Voters Summit sponsored by the Family Research Council, Hizzoner tried to make a virtue of out of his apostasy.

“Isn’t it better that I tell you what I really believe,” he asked the VVs, “instead of pretending to change all of my positions to fit the prevailing winds?” He then cited his — and the audience’s — hero Ronald Reagan for the proposition that “my 80% friend is not my 100% enemy.”

Do the math, as they say, and one might think that the 80% Giuliani and the Values Voters have in common concerns issues other than abortion — toughness on urban crime, for example, or resistance to what Giuliani called “the Islamic terrorist war against the United States.”

Actually, thanks to some rhetorical double-bookkeeping, Giuliani was able to cram abortion-related issues into his 80% solution. True, he alluded to his own longtime pro-choice position by noting that “people of good conscience come to different conclusions about whether abortions should be legal in some circumstances” (an assertion that is anathema to many Values Voters). But then he turned on the fudge machine.

Pro-choice as he may be, Giuliani told the VVs that he wants America to become “a country without abortion.” This takes Giuliani well beyond the triangulating formula used by Bill Clinton: that abortions should be “safe, legal and rare.” In its absolutism, moreover, it recalls the absurd aspiration of a “drug-free America.” True, Giuliani said he would obliterate abortions by “changing the minds and hearts of people,” but then he offered a laundry list of governmental actions to limit the procedure.

“First, I will veto any reduction in the impact of the Hyde Amendment or other existing limits on abortions or the public funding of abortions. I will support any reasonable suggestion that promises to reduce the number of abortions. I support parental notification and will continue to, and I supported and continue to support the ban on partial-birth abortion.” He added that as president he would “remove the bureaucratic red tape that makes adoption so difficult, both for children here at home and abroad” and would make a $10,000 adoption tax credit permanent.

But that’s not all. The supposedly pro-choice Giuliani promised the VVs that he would appoint Supreme Court justices “in the mold of Justice Scalia, Justice Thomas, Justice Alito or Chief Justice Roberts.” For good measure, he noted that his campaign’s judicial advisory board is chaired by former Bush Solicitor General Ted Olson and includes conservative lawyers Miguel Estrada and Steven Calabresi (a founder of the Federalist Society.)

Never mind that the four justices he mentioned are not interchangeable on abortion. All four joined in this year’s ruling upholding a federal ban on so-called partial-birth abortion, but Roberts and Alito declined to sign a concurring opinion by Thomas and Scalia that trashed Roe vs. Wade. So there are at least two molds in which President Giuliani might form his appointments to the court. But that nuance was lost (as it was supposed to be) in the larger message: that Giuliani would appoint justices congenial to the VVs on the issue they care most about.

So let’s review: Giuliani is pro-choice, at least to the extent of believing that abortion should be legal “in some circumstances.” (If the circumstances he has in mind are abortions early in pregnancy, then he believes that most abortions should be legal.) But as president he would do his best — including in his appointment of justices to the Supreme Court — to make it harder to get an abortion. And his absolute goal is an America in which no abortions occur — including abortions that the pro-choice half of Giuliani’s brain thinks should be legal.

Huh? Giuliani has been criticized — fairly — by pro-lifers for simultaneously believing that abortion is what they say it is (the unjustified taking of a human life) and for insisting that it’s a matter of a woman’s choice. But that contradiction is no more contorted than Giuliani’s message to the Values Voters: I am pro-choice, but I will appoint Supreme Court justices who (nudge, wink) might take that right away from women.

Let me anticipate a defense of Rudy’s position — that you can be “personally pro-choice” and still object to Roe vs. Wade as judicial overreaching. I actually know and admire people who hold this position. Abortion should be legalized, they maintain, but through the action of the people’s elected representatives, not by the fiat of an imperial judiciary.

Fair enough. So would a President Giuliani sign the Freedom of Choice Act, a perennial proposal in Congress to codify Roe vs. Wade in a federal statute? I suppose Rudy could balk at signing that bill by citing concerns about federalism, rejecting the legislation’s premise that Congress can legislate on abortion as part of its constitutional power, including the power to regulate interstate commerce. OK, but in that case, would Giuliani urge the states to legalize abortion in the circumstances in which he believes it should be allowed? I have a feeling the Values Voters would regard that as a breach of faith.

The interesting question about Giuliani’s courtship dance with the religious right is not whether VVs will accept him as the Republican nominee despite his differences with them on abortion. It is whether Giuliani’s pro-choice position is so attenuated and abstract that he might as well be an opponent of legal abortion. As a practical matter, the 20% difference between the VV’s position on abortion and “what I really believe” may be closer to 2%. Perhaps an abortion-rights group should invite the mayor to amplify on what being pro-choice means to him.

Michael McGough is The Times’ senior editorial writer.Send us your thoughts at opinionla@latimes.com.