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During today’s address to the Value Voters Summit, the year’s largest gathering of religious right activists, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani “tried to find peace with a restless bloc of the Republican Party…telling religious conservatives not to fear him for his stand on issues such as abortion or expect he would change purely for political advantage.”
“We may not always agree,” he said. “I don’t always agree with myself. But I will give you reason to trust me.”
Giuliani’s quote may be more revealing than he hoped. As The Body Politik has previously noted, Giuliani has “changed purely for political advantage.” Since announcing his candidacy for president, Giuliani has shifted his positions and outlook on immigration and the threat of terrorism to reflect the views of GOP primary voters.
While mayor, Giuliani sued the federal government over a provision in a welfare reform bill which he believed would lead to “inhumane” treatment of illegal immigrants. He defended immigrants “as valuable contributors to the city’s economy and culture” and acknowledged that “we’re never going to be able to totally control immigration to a country that is as large as ours.”
Now, Giuliani is certain that we can. In a recent speech Giuliani promised that “we can end illegal immigration” with “stricter border control, tamper-proof identification cards for noncitizens and the deportation of foreign-born criminals.”
Giuliani’s rhetoric on terror also contrasts with his record. These days, Giuliani says that he understands terrorism “better than anyone else running for President,” and portrays himself as “deeply engaged with the Islamic extremist threat long before planes hit the World Trade Center.”
“But for most of Giuliani’s career as a Department of Justice official, prosecutor and New York’s chief executive, terrorism was a narrow aspect of his broader crime-fighting agenda…Giuliani expressed confidence that Islamic extremism could be contained through vigorous investigation by law enforcement agencies and prosecution in the court system — the same approach he now condemns.”
In fact, Giuliani framed “terrorism in the language of crime” in the weeks after September 11th and “as mayor, Giuliani made decisions that seemed to discount the gravity of the terrorist threat, such as placing his emergency command center at the World Trade Center a few years after the 1993 bombing attack there, against the wishes of top advisers.”
World events and shifting political realities can surely cause politicians’ views and positions to evolve. But Giuliani’s disingenuous attempts to portray himself as a consistent, tough and even visionary candidate only highlight the contradictions of his image.