October 13, 2007

Arkes on Giuliani, part 2

In August, we highlighted some brief comments by Amherst professor Hadley Arkes regarding former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s presidential run and the implications of a Guiliani nomination for the Republican Party. In short, Arkes believed that a Giuliani nomination would mark the end of the Republican party as a “pro-life party.”

According to political observers, Giuliani’s recent performances in debates among other Republican candidates have more clearly defined him as a front runner in the race for that party’s presidential nomination. Scott W. Johnson, one of the authors of the conservative Power Line blog uses the opportunity to reflect on Giuliani’s chances in a post entitled The Giuliani Prospect.

In the course of his comments on Giuliani, Johnson shares his notes of remarks made by Professor Arkes at a Labor Day weekend panel sponsored by the conservative Claremont Institute (Arkes and Johnson are both fellows at the Institute). In the course of a general talk on social issues and the Republican party, Arkes again addressed Giuliani:

Now with Mr. Giuliani we would have the advent of a candidate whose ascension in the party would mark the end of the Republican party as the pro-life party in our politics. Over the last twenty years the pro-life movement has sought a series of measures quite modest, moving step by step, with the object of putting the right to abortion “in the course of ultimate extinction,” to borrow a phrase from Lincoln. But the object of that design, put in place by Giuliani, would be to put the pro-life movement itself in the course of ultimate extinction.

Johnson concludes his remarks by sharing an interesting reflection made by Arkes:

Professor Arkes wondered in the course of his remarks whether it would be better to lose with Romney than to win with Giuliani. Better for whom? My notes don’t reflect whether Professor Arkes specified, but it was there that he lost me. It seemed to me to be lacking in the prudence [Real Clear Politics author Tony] Blankley counsels in his thoughtful (if not entirely persuasive) columns.

Dave Nardolillo '98 | October 13, 2007 01:31 PM | Campus

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