R. Milhous Giuliani

Mike Gerson, el antiguo redactor de discursos del Presidente Bush, compara a Rudy Giuliani con Richard Nixon en su último artículo en el Washington Post. El ex Alcalde ha sido capaz de mantenerse siete meses como front-runner gracias a que ha sabido tomar la iniciativa en una especie de guerra cultural, sin ser un conservador social. Utilizando la defensa de los valores patrióticos tradicionales de América como nación frente a aquellos que los desprecian, y defendiendo aquello que es lo correcto en el imaginario conservador, sin ser verdades que se apoyen en la autoridad de Dios... la lucha contra el crimen, la pena de muerte, la guerra contra el terrorismo, la oposición a los privilegios de las minorías, etc.

(...) In his elections, Nixon appealed to conservatives and the country as a culture warrior who was not a moral or religious conservative. "Permissiveness," he told key aides, "is the key theme," and Nixon pressed that theme against hippie protesters, tenured radicals and liberals who bad-mouthed America. This kind of secular, tough-on-crime, tough-on-communism conservatism gathered a "silent majority" that loved Nixon for the enemies he made.

By this standard, Giuliani is a Nixon Republican. He is perhaps the most publicly secular major candidate of either party -- his conflicts with Roman Catholic teaching make him more reticent on religion than either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. But as a prosecutor and mayor of New York, he won conservative respect for making all the right enemies: the ACLU, advocates of blasphemous art, purveyors of racial politics, Islamist mass murderers, mob bosses and the New York Times editorial page. (...)