Giuliani accepts invite to conservative family forum
Stop the presses! Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor with the liberal social views, has become the last Republican presidential candidate to accept an invitation to appear at a "values voter" conference in Washington on Oct. 20.
The conference, expected to draw some 2,000 conservatives, is being organized by the Family Research Council, an influential conservative group whose leader, Tony Perkins, has been among those quietly meeting amid mumbling about running a third-party evangelical candidate if someone with a pro-choice stand on abortion and gay rights like Giuliani gets the GOP nomination.
One of the more surprising long-term developments in the Republican race this year has been the continued national polling strength of Giuliani in a party where an estimated 30-40% of its membership are considered evangelicals opposed to abortion and other of Giuliani's views.
Conventional wisdom has been that his support would melt as conservatives, at first blinded by the halo of his 9/11 leadership, come to know the thrice-married Giuliani and his liberal views. He trails in Iowa, where he has not invested as much time or money as Mitt Romney, but has pulled close or even with the former Massachusetts governor in New Hampshire and regularly polls among Republicans as the most electable of the party's candidates.
Perkins, in a recent exchange with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network, predicted Giuliani's popularity would still diminish once Americans "realize how far outside of the mainstream of conservative thought that Mayor Giuliani's social views really are." If "by some chance" Giuliani did ...
win the GOP nomination, Perkins predicted an unenthusiastic 2008 election turnout by Republicans, setting up a Democratic victory.
Perkins, James Dobson, the founder and head of Focus on the Family, and a handful of other conservatives recently met in Salt Lake City to discuss threatening to mount a third-party evangelical candidate. Dobson, who supported George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, has made several outspoken statements this year about Republicans he would not support.
Prime among them is Giuliani, whose nomination Dobson said might cause him to skip voting for the first time in his adult life. He called that decision "irrevocable."
A Giuliani spokesman was asked today to confirm if the former mayor would attend the Family Research Council's forum and the dinner that evening honoring Dobson. The aide's e-mailed response: "I can confirm he is attending the forum on October 20th."
--Andrew Malcolm
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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The only thing "values voters" value is their money. When is this country going to catch on?
paul wertz
eugene, oregon
Posted by: Paul Wertz | October 09, 2007 at 10:33 AM
I am a religious conservative, and I am tired of religious conservative mouthpieces claiming to speak for everybody. This is the same group that won't vote for Romney because he's a (gasp!) Mormon. His religion is irrelevant, as is Thompson's church attendance . I care about whether the candidate supports my values, and I see all the republican candidates, except that Paul guy, supporting my views more or less. The world ain't perfect and Ronald Reagan ain't comin' back. To paraphrase Voltaire, they are letting the perfect become the enemy of the good.
Posted by: foutsc | October 10, 2007 at 06:05 AM
In most elections, only 50 percent of all possible voters vote. As a Populist Conservative, I have not voted for either major party's Presidential Candidates
for many years. Neither relfect the real needs of our times surrounding himan dignity in the workday. However, I have voted for the Constitution Party candidates and most likely will do the same this time too.
One of the most liberal candidates - Dennis Kuciinich is the only Presidential Candidate speaking directly about the unfair NAFTA, GATT etc. trade agreements. His far to the left stands voids any support by someone like me but the workday is the central issue of our times after the right to life for all people.
The Free Traders abound in the Republican party and it is a turn off for the working poor class they helped create and the Conservatives - "worked by way up from my bootstraps" is a tired story that ignores a vast underclass living in a silent depression in the USA. The Free Traders use Adam Smith as an excuse for their behavior but never say anything about what Adam Smith first priorities were. He held labor as something "sacred" and the core of all socieities. Labor is not held as something "sacred" by the Free Traders and the Republicans who hold so many other things "sacred" . They degrade labor and have put down the real Free Enterprise system for years. The so called Free Market does not match up with the Free Enterprise system. It has been many years now where impoverished workers are used to make goods for the consumers in America. It is now obvious that the upper middle class in the USA totalling about 20 million people can not support Free Trade. Free Trade now has a long history of failures which include the "bondage" of workers throughout the world. A new Colonialism has been created which is breeding terrorism and wars.
Reagan's "trickle down economics" have proven to be a dud half way down. Half way down it has exploded into a working poor class and under class. The Free Enterprise system took a big hit with big government locking hands with big business. Who would have ever thought "good" people would lead the way in this attack on human dignity in the workday.
Workers dignity needs to be applied again as a measurement in elections.
President Clinton acted as if he was the elder Bush's water boy in getting Free Trade consummated. Pres Bush the second just followed in Clinton's footsteps hiding the failed economics of the Globalists and Free Traders behind his pre-emptive wars.
People like Tony Perkins form the Family Research Council should first study John Perkins The Confessions of and Economic Hit Man and then compare it to The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman from the New York Times. Then they should defined the real world as it is and not as something that exists only in their imaginations.
See Tapart News and Art that Talks at http://tapearch.com/tapartnews http://tapsearch.com/flatworld and http://www.bizarrepolitics.com about the dysfunctional New World Order of the Bush/Clinton combo. It is really the New World Dis-order.
Posted by: Tapsearcher | November 24, 2007 at 12:20 PM