Presumed Republican presidential frontrunner Rudy Giuliani[1] is advising the rest of the field to focus on the big issues and leave all of that gay stuff for the other party to worry about.
He may not agree with the vote in New York to legalize gay marriage, but former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said the Republican Party should butt out of the bedroom and stick to fiscal policy.
“I think the Republican Party would be well advised to get the heck out of people’s bedrooms and let these things get decided by states,” Giuliani said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We’d be a much more successful political party if we stuck to our economic, conservative roots.”
I’m sure it goes without saying that, at least on the surface, I don’t have any problem with that message. You need to fish in the streams where the trout are, and right now the nation’s eyes are on jobs and the economy. But there are a couple more aspects to the Rudy puzzle which make this an even less surprising stance.
Even if Rudy actually was serious[2] about running for president, it’s not as if social conservatives were going to come flocking to him anyway. Despite the massive and largely deserved criticism of his electoral strategy in 2008, dumping time and money into Iowa or South Carolina is a useless exercise for Giuliani. They’re simply not buying what he’s selling, so why pretend to care about social conservative issues?
Second, it’s also a topic he can’t really avoid, since New York just legalized gay marriage and America’s Mayor is still more associated with the Big Apple than the national Republican brand. Were he seriously looking to win the GOP nomination[3] the question was bound to come up repeatedly. So Rudy just sticks with his personal support for civil unions and files the issue away under “states’ rights.”
And finally, this dovetails with what may be the real motivation for the Giuliani “campaign” of 2011/2012. Rudy doesn’t need to be mounting a serious bid for the nomination[4] to benefit from the free media exposure. The man does a lot of business and collects speaking fees around the world. Much of this activity centers on large urban centers and areas of Europe which lean a good bit more to the left and where strident opposition to gay marriage could result in precisely the opposite of the desired effect.
But it’s all good for the big show in the eyes of political junkies. The video of his comments from the CNN interview follows.
[1] Presidential frontrunner in one poll for approximately six hours.
[2] He’s not
[3] Seriously… he’s not
[4] Did I mention he’s not really running?
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