How Pure Does Rudy Have to Be?

We wise heads in the Washington press corps have pretty much decided that Rudy Giuliani is leading in the polls for the Republican presidential nomination because of ignorance.

Republicans obviously know very little about him. And when they wake up and smell his stands on social issues, he will sink like a rock.

But ... maybe not.

Maybe Republican voters are not so ignorant after all.

Maybe they figure that after losing both houses of Congress in 2006, after Katrina, after Iraq, after the current veterans' care scandal and taking into account a natural desire for change, the Republican presidential nominee is going to have an uphill fight in 2008.

And maybe some Republicans figure that they are going to need something more than the same old hot-buttons they have pushed time and time again.

Maybe they believe that if a Republican is going to win in 2008, the party must do something other than just "grow the Republican base," which has been the mantra for a while now.

Maybe a Republican who can attract some independent, centrist, swing and non-ideological votes, a pro-choice Republican who, because of that, could actually put California in play, would have the best chance of winning against a Democrat.

The wise head theory has been that Giuliani is one of those candidates who could do well in a general election, but could never win his party's nomination.

But what happens if Republicans decide that they want somebody who can win in November, rather than somebody who is more ideologically pure?

On Monday, Giuliani was endorsed by David Vitter, a conservative Republican senator from Louisiana.

When a reporter asked Vitter if Giuliani would be a "tough sell" in Louisiana, Vitter replied, "I don't think he is going to be at all, particularly post-Katrina."

Translation: When the next hurricane hits, people are going to want a president who knows what he is doing rather than a president who believes that abortion is murder.

Some Republicans will not buy this.

Perhaps most of them won't. After all, Republican media wizards have sold them on the opposite message for years. They have said that ideology is what really matters in elections, not competence. Ideology, Republicans have been told in election after election, is what gets people to the polls.

Giuliani has a different message. He says he knows how to run things. He says he knows how to get the job done. He says America will be attacked by terrorists in the future, and it would be a good idea to have a president who can handle that.

He does not ignore the Republican base. He just asks it to grow up.

This is what Giuliani said at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington: "Ronald Reagan used to say, 'My 80 percent ally is not my 20 percent enemy.' What he meant by that is, we don't all see eye to eye on everything. You and I have a lot of common beliefs that are the same, and we have some that are different. You just described your relationship, I think, with your husband, your wife, your children."

He also said: "The point of a presidential election is to figure out who you believe the most and what you think are the most important things for this country at a particular time."

Conservative columnist George Will, who gave a rousing introduction of Giuliani at the conference, has written that Giuliani is doing well in the polls because Republicans know where he stands, not because they don't.

"This does not mean that the social issues have lost their saliency," Will writes. "People for whom opposition to abortion is very important might, however, think that in wartime it is not supremely important."

And they might also think they would rather win next fall than lose.

The question Giuliani poses to his party is a simple one. Which would you rather have: purity or the presidency?

To find out more about Roger Simon, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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