A nice piece from Thomas Edsall yesterday lays out the not exactly new but nonetheless nicely put idea that Rudy will be able to bond with Southern, religious, and other “values voters” by talking about what he doesn’t value instead of what he does. He may not share their “value” of the “sanctity of marriage” or the “right to life” but he does share in their intolerance for people on welfare, immigrants, people of color, the homeless. When he ran on those prejudices in New York, he was using a strategy much like the Republicans used after desegregation to gain electoral control in the South, peeling away white Democrats by playing off latent racism. And it may work for him again.
What Giuliani has really caught onto here is that “values voters” aren’t really values voters at all — they’re intolerance voters. And if these so-called “values” voters are looking for the most intolerant man in the race, Rudy is their candidate.
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