National Review Online's David Freddoso and radio talker Mark Levin go toe to toe with John Podhoretz over whether or not Rudy Giuliani is a conservative. Freddoso and Levin say Giuliani is not a conservative; Podhoretz says he is. Who's right? Giuliani adopts more conservative positions than liberal ones, but I don't think it's quite accurate to say that he is a conservative, at least as the term is understood in contemporary American politics. It may be more accurate to say that Giuliani is anti-liberal: his opponents - and he defines himself by whom he opposes - are far more likely to be on the left than on the right. And indeed, he has gone out of his way this year to inform interest groups on the right that he will leave them alone, as long as they do not actively oppose him. As usual, Andrew Ferguson put it best:
Giuliani is routinely described, in the pundit's shorthand, as a moderate, and Fred Siegel, the Cooper Union scholar, coined the term "immoderate centrism" to describe Giuliani's politics. But watching the mayor lay out his views you begin to see that Siegel's term is only half correct. Giuliani's not a centrist at all. He's that rare politician who's most comfortable staking out positions at the further points of the ideological spectrum, swinging from one end to the other depending on the issue at hand, and passing over the middle altogether. Rather than appeal to the "center," as his supporters claim, it is just as likely that Giuliani's social liberalism will offend conservatives and his fiscal conservatism will offend liberals.
It's difficult to label Rudolph Giuliani's politics. But one thing is for sure. The man is sui generis. UPDATE: In the exchange quoted above, John Podhoretz never actually says that Giuliani is a conservative.