Yuval, you ask a key question: “Given three candidates who are all basically good on the war, is the one who is by far the most socially liberal really likely to win, and to refashion Republican politics?” The reason I think Rudy can win the Republican primary — and yes, I prefer him to the others, but I’m trying to analyze this dispassionately — is that while he might hold “socially liberal” views almost by default, he is not actually a social liberal.

How is this possible, you might ask — how can a man who has spoken against banning partial-birth abortion and signed civil-union legislation into law not be a social liberal? Here’s why: Because as a matter of practical application, Rudy Giuliani offered the most dramatic example of programmatic conservative governance in recent American history. He didn’t mouth platitudes about the need for civil public order in New York City. In the teeth of ferocious opposition from the liberal establishment and the elected political class in the city, he imposed it and he never backed down. Not when he was decried as a racist, not when he was denounced as a violator of civil liberties and free expression, not when he was mocked as a Babbitt.

The man is an anti-liberal, as the word “liberal” has been defined since the late 1960s. That doesn’t make him a social conservative. But it makes him an opponent of anything-goes liberalism, which is a position he shares with a great many social conservatives.