NY Times Reports Giuliani to Embrace Abortion Rights

In what is seen as a direct challenge to the influence of the religious right in the Republican Party, the New York Times is reporting that Rudy Giuliani is going to announce for a woman's right to choose. Since 1980 Republican presidential candidates have announced their support for pro-life positions, regardless of their previous record or stated beliefs. This is about to turn the GOP primaries into a real battle between Rudy Giuliani and the people who supported George W. Bush and are credited with his re-election in 2004.

This will be fun to watch, although such a battle, if Giuliani wins the nomination could make him harder to beat in the 2008 election. This move will reinforce the media's desire to portray the political transvestite as some sort of "moderate" Republican without asking him where he stands on issues such as Bush's reckless tax cuts and the need to strengthen the social safety net.

One thing that could happen if Giuliani is nominated is the creation of a third party by right-to-lifers. Traditionally in America third parties are on the fringe unless they start to gain broader appeal. When that happens one of the two major parties co-opts the ideas of the third party and takes their supporters into its embrace.

That history, though, was created before the Internet. The Internet makes it possible to organize faster and link up people who have common beliefs but are physically far removed from each other. There is no reason why the Internet couldn't be used to create a third party.

The function of political parties was to bring groups of people together who shared a common belief system. Such people were spread out and needed an organization in order to combine their efforts to achieve political power. Once you have a very inexpensive way of finding out who people are that share your belief system, why do you necessarily need a political party?