So what to make of this argument?

Some engaging thought and analysis on the issue of Rudy and Roe. What started it off was an opinion piece in the New York Times by a Catholic University theology graduate student who wants to believe that somehow, Rudy would be a good choice for pro-lifers after all.

Republicans have had no trouble electing pro-life presidents these last 30 years, yet Johnston seems to think that a pro-abortion GOP candidate would have a better shot at breaking some logjam or other in the public debate over the issue.  But the logjam has only secondarily been in the realm of public opinion.  First and foremost, as long as it asserts its hegemony over the issue by upholding Roe, the logjam has been in the Supreme Court.  And Rudy Giuliani is the least likely of all the leading GOP contenders to attend to this question (even tacitly while avoiding that allegedly awful “litmus test”) in choosing Supreme Court nominees.

Yes, he has pledged to nominate “strict constructionists.”

But…

He has not said that for him, strict constructionism requires the overturning of Roe.  He has even said that judges could go either way on the survival of Roe as a precedent and it would be “O.K.” with him.

Franck recalls here that the Republican party at one point considered making Democrat Stephen Douglas their candidate, and he draws this parallel:

Douglas was to slavery then what Giuliani is to abortion now—the “don’t care” man, who declared that it mattered not to him which way people voted on slavery in the territories, just as Rudy shrugs at either outcome the next time Roe is tested in the Supreme Court.

Another parallel:

At this moment it was essential for Lincoln, the party, and the country that he make Douglas unacceptable to the Republicans.  For the future of the right to life, it may be equally essential that Giuliani be made unacceptable to today’s Republican Party.

Other calculus than that is just creative wishful thinking.