Giuliani's Value Voters Speech: No Fear
October 20, 2007
Rudy Giuliani came here to the Value Voters Summit Saturday and boldly proclaimed, “You have nothing to fear from me”. Webster’s defines fear this way: “To be afraid or feel anxious or apprehensive about a possible or probable situation or event.”
With Giuliani inching closer to the Republican nomination, fear may be gripping some social conservatives for sure. But on Saturday, Giuliani laid out his best material and full arsenal in a pitch to get their votes. The case was compelling and if Giuliani keeps making speeches like this, he has a good shot to gather enough social conservatives to his side to win the nomination.
Listen, as we’ve said here before Giuliani isn’t going to get the bulk of the single issue voters (life, marriage) but what he did Saturday is lay out a bunch of items he does have in common with social conservatives. Issues like school choice, fighting Internet pornography, keeping God’s name in the public square, increasing adoptions, home schooling support, supporting a ban on partial birth abortion, parental notification, strict constructionist judges…and oh by the way, fighting terrorism and supporting Israel. Folks, any way you slice it, that’s a boatload. It was so much material that Giuliani said forget the 20 minute time slot, I’m going over. He did. By about 20 minutes.
The question is can social conservatives overlook his pro-choice and pro-domestic partnership views and settle on all the rest he says he has in common with them? I noticed throughout the whole speech Giuliani weaved this idea of trust into everything he was saying. You can trust me. You can trust me. You can trust me. Clearly, that was a veiled shot at Mitt Romney. So was the line where he said he won’t twist issues up like a pretzel.
Afterwards, the reaction by social conservatives seemed to be pretty positive. Nobody thinks Giuliani is going to win the straw poll but I even had a policy guy from the Family Research Council tell me the speech was a 7 out of 10. That's saying something. Some weren’t too thrilled with his ‘inclusiveness” line at the beginning of his speech (which they believe is code for liberal) and he didn’t mention marriage at all. But all in all, the speech went over better than expected from the people I talked to.
Here’s the way I see it. The speech was very good and had a lot of issue oriented meat in it. Giuliani was greeted with polite applause but left the room to an even friendlier crowd. To use a football analogy, he may not have gotten in the end zone with this crowd, but he “moved the chains” with this speech. The ball is marching down the field. No fumble.
More on the speech here.
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