Pro-Life Giuliani

Neocon John Podhoretz has a bad tasting op-ed in the New York Post this morning about Giuliani's need to become pro-life in order to become president. Link. Excerpts:

Ronald Reagan, whose 1980 victory cemented the move of evangelical Christians from the Democratic to the Republican Party because of his pro-life stand, had quite a spotty record on the matter. As governor of California, he had signed legislation into law expanding access to abortion (before the passage of Roe v. Wade).

Later, however, Reagan said he was sorry he had done so. That was evidently enough for him to earn the enthusiastic backing of anti-abortion zealots from Jerry Falwell to Pat Robertson.

George Bush the Elder ran as an openly pro-choice candidate in 1980, and had his clock cleaned by Reagan. After working assiduously as vice president to make nice with the religious right, he emerged in 1987 as a pro-life lion - an ideological and religious conversion that was especially pleasing to antiabortion organizations because they understood he was doing it to curry favor with them.

In 1996, Steve Forbes ran for president on a flat-tax platform and did unexpectedly well. But he came to understand that his pro-choice views - which were quite vociferous - might hamper him in a genuinely serious bid to capture his party's nomination. He spent three years following Bush the Elder's example. He simply changed his opinion, and became a loud critic of partial-birth abortion especially.

By 1999, Forbes was actually favored by a bunch of pro-life activists, and was considered by the Bush campaign to be Bush's most potent rival.

The record is plain. A pro-choice candidate can win in the GOP provided he has a change of heart and goes pro-life. The change of heart does not even need to be all that believable. It just needs to be.