I have made no secret of two things regarding the former Mayor of New York City: (1) his continued support and defense of Roe v. Wade undermines his claim that if elected president he’ll appoint constitutionalist judges and SCOTUS justices ”in the mold of Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas”; and (2) because of this fundamental contradiction, he is, well, “fundamentally” unnominatable.

Recently Douglas Sylva augmented that conundrum in NRO by pointing out that POTUSes do, indeed, have more sway over social policy-making than just their judicial selections:

For years now an effort has been underway at the United Nation, for instance, to reinterpret international law in the hope of creating a universal right to abortion on demand. Various forces at the U.N. also seek to redefine the family, to establish complete sexual autonomy for adolescents, to create a worldwide right to homosexual marriage, to depress world fertility rates, and to legalize cloning in order to create human embryos for medical research.

Bush has countered this entire agenda in spite of its yielding nothing politically for his efforts; in other words, Bush has acted as an authentic “Pro-life, Pro-family” advocate. Early in his Administration, he established specific orders for his diplomats at the U.N.; they were handed a text, to be recited whenever controversy arose on life issues: the U.S. does not interpret any language in the current document to establish new international rights, especially a right to abortion. With this simple act, Bush defeated so many sophisticated plans, hatched in the world’s finest law universities, think tanks, and international agencies, and the cosmopolitan world of international elites seethed.

More specifically, on his very first day in office, Bush reinstated the Reagan-era “Mexico City Policy,” which restricts federal funding from non-governmental organizations that perform or promote abortions in foreign countries. His enemies erupted in anger, naming the Mexico City Policy the “Global Gag Rule,” and claiming that Bush would be responsible for killing women who would not have recourse to legal abortions.

Bush also cut all U.S. financial support for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the U.N.’s chief population control agency, because it was complicit in forced abortion and sterilizations in China. The European commissioner for development quickly pledged that the EU would “fill the decency gap” created by the Bush Administration’s decision (the EU shifted money from international education programs to pay for the abortions and sterilizations).

Amazingly, Bush successfully campaigned at the U.N. for an international declaration against all forms of human cloning. Through it all, Bush was called the worst sort of religious fundamentalist, and a simpleton whose medieval beliefs would destroy scientific progress and deny people astounding cures.

Bush also altered the international response to AIDS, by creating a $15 billion program that included abstinence training — a major philosophical shift away from the condoms/safe-sex message that had failed so miserably, but had gone unchallenged within the international AIDS establishment. At one and the same moment, Bush became the worldwide leader in fighting AIDS, and, again, a “killer,” for embracing abstinence instead of just swathing the entire world in latex.

Sylva asks, not unreasonably, if a President Giuliani would carry on such thankless, politically-unrewarding, but morally imperative tasks.  I can’t agree with his description of “just” appointing constitutionalists to the federal bench as “Executive-branch neutrality,” but by the same token the domestic political heat that Rudy would take for that dwarfs what Dubya has incurred from the “international community” over his stands for the sanctity of life.  Would Rudy nominate a Michael McConnell or Michael Luddig or Edith Jones to Olympus, or Bush-like choices at the appellate court level, and just leave them to twist in the wind, or would he go to the mat for them?  Would he faithfully take the pro-life baton from Dubya and carry on the fight for what’s right at the UN?  Honestly, it’s difficult for me to see it.

And yet Rudy continues to lead nationally and make inroads amongst evangelical voters, despite the stout efforts of prominent religious conservative voices.  There almost seems to be an “I WANT to believe” impulse amongst a great cross-wing swath of the Republican base deriving from the Fear of Hillary that non-delusional right-wingers rightfully harbor and the less credible belief that only a “social moderate” like Giuliani can beat her.

I, personally, have never bought that notion and still don’t, because it defies the evidence of the past ten presidential elections.  The baseline of the past four decades has been that when the Republican nominee is perceived as conservative, he wins; when the Republican nominee is perceived as “moderate,” he loses.  A lot of that springs from base enthusiasm, a factor that Karl Rove utilized to great effect in this decade, and which an astonishing number of ‘Pubbies seem to be forgetting about in their rush to be hypnotized by Rudy’s pat reassurances.

Yet perhaps that rush isn’t quite yet the stampede that the Mayor’s supporters think, or hope, it is.  Take Jim Geraghty’s sense of Rudy’s speech to the “Value Voters” confab late last week:

Much like his NRA speech, I think that in terms of the arguments he put forth, Giuliani did about much good as he could do before a skeptical crowd. There were plenty of applause lines on the easy areas of agreement - but after a while, you hit a ceiling. I can easily see attendees thinking, “I like his cleaning up Times Square, I like his fight with the Brooklyn Museum, I like his work with faith-based organizations on welfare-to-work… but at the end of the day, I want a pro-life President.”

Yeah, that’s a subjective take - NZ Bear’s was gushing to the point of spontaneous genetic material secretion - so let’s examine an analysis of the next phase of the primary campaign that is a bit more concrete:

Scott Rasmussen Sees Good News for Giuliani - Until It’s a Two-Man Race….

Rasmussen noted, “Rudy Giuliani has been on top for a long time, and if you had asked me in January if he would be the frontrunner in October, I would have said no… I would note he’s still under thirty percent. Thirty percent does well when the rest of the vote is split among several other candidates. If it’s a straight up choice between Giuliani and Romney or Giuliani and Thompson, I’m not sure how that plays out. I’m not sure Rudy’s support can grow much, but it seems safe to say that those supporting him now won’t leave him.”

In other words, Giuliani has a solid floor, but also a solid ceiling not far above it.  And when the perceived conservative alternatives winnow down to one (either Thompson or Romney), the Mayor is in for a lot bumpier ride:

Now, here’s the important part for the Rudy supporters to understand - none of the other candidates have caught on whatsoever. All have had decent moments now and then, but none have had a moment that legitimately propelled them into contention with those three….And, just as importantly, most people have figured out that Mitt’s 9-15% isn’t going anywhere. So what has happened is that there are a lot of people who were supporting, say, Tancredo, Hunter, Brownback, Huckabee, whoever - who are waking up to the reality of a Rudy/Fred/Romney race. And while they may have really, really, really liked their guy, and really wanted him to talk about immigration/life/spending/whatever, the one thing a lot of these people have in common is that their greatest fear is a Rudy nomination. And while Fred/Romney not be their first choice - or even their fifth or sixth choice, Rudy’s not on their list of choices at all. And that’s pretty much where we are today. The Rudy supporters are probably not going to like the next couple of months, as the attacks on Rudy begin in earnest, but they should be aware that they are coming. And the closer we get to the actual primaries, as more and more people leave the second-tier candidates to support the first-tier guys, the worse it is going to get in terms of the scrutiny of Rudy’s record.

Put this in the context of the “He’s not a real Republican” shivs at the Mittster, and one can easily see Fred Thompson scooping up the non-Rudy primary vote and cruising on to the nomination.  Or, conversely, if Romney holds onto his leads in Iowa and New Hampshire, perhaps he becomes perceived as “inevitable” and leaves Rudy behind.

Either way, for all of his national name recognition, there doesn’t seem to be a clear Giuliani path to the 2008 GOP nomination.  If the Mayor wants to create one, he will, I think, have to make a lot stronger case than he has thus far.