On the stump in Iowa last week, Mitt Romney tried to portray himself as the conservative in the race for the Republican presidential nomination and the man best able to sink national frontrunner Rudolph Giuliani. Romney attacked the former mayor of New York for running a "sanctuary city" for illegal immigrants. But Giuliani's campaign deftly fired back, shifting the conversation to security--hizzoner's strength.

Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, currently enjoys a double-digit lead in Iowa, and the conventional wisdom has it that he won the nationally televised debate in Des Moines on Sunday morning, August 4. He held his own against attacks from Kansas senator Sam Brownback and showed himself a top-tier candidate alongside Giuliani and John McCain. Whether or not the conventional wisdom is right, the debate likely won't matter in the long run, as it took place at a time when most Iowans (and most Americans) were in church, and it did not include former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson, who is expected formally to enter the race in September.

After the debate, Giuliani stayed two more days in Iowa, outlining his "Eighth Commitment to the American People": "I will increase adoptions, decrease abortions, and protect the quality of life for our children." Giuliani is pro-choice in a pro-life party, and every time he discusses the Eighth Commitment, he's touching on an issue that divides him from the Republican electorate. It's a bold move, befitting a politician who has never blanched at controversy. The problem here is that his disagreement is with the voters he wants to nominate him for president.

A senior policy adviser to Giuliani gives three reasons the mayor thinks his Eighth Commitment is important. Giuliani "cares about children," says the adviser, and he can point to his record of increasing the number of adoptions in New York City. More important, though, the mayor wants to emphasize common ground with pro-lifers and get practical about steps he can take as president to reduce abortions.

"His staff is making a good faith effort to reach out to pro-lifers," says Michael J. New, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama and author of a widely circulated National Review Online essay on how Giuliani could court pro-lifers. New has also discussed pro-life issues with Giuliani's staff. A focus on adoption is a "little more substantive than 'safe, legal, and rare,'" says New, referring to Bill and Hillary Clinton's abortion mantra. Still, "I'm really not sure that pro-lifers are buying what he has to sell here."

What is Giuliani trying to sell? At a campaign stop in Fort Dodge, Iowa, on August 6, the mayor focused on adoption policy. According to a campaign press release, a President Giuliani would promote an "innovative national effort to communicate the rewards of adoption to potential parents," implement policies designed to "speed up and simplify" adoption procedures, allow states to receive child welfare bloc grants from the federal government, direct the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to "promote organizations uniquely prepared to provide the necessary assistance to women who choose adoption," and make the $10,000 adoption tax credit, set eventually to expire, permanent.

What troubles pro-lifers is Giuliani's reluctance to say that adoption should be pursued over abortion, as opposed to its being one of many options. Ramesh Ponnuru, a senior editor at National Review and author of The Party of Death, opposes Giuliani on pro-life grounds. "On adoption, what Rudy offers seems perfectly reasonable," Ponnuru writes in an email. "But it has almost nothing to do with abortion."

On August 7, in Davenport and Clinton, Iowa, Giuliani talked up the law enforcement measures he would pursue to jail child predators, shut down the underground methamphetamine market, and combat human trafficking. This is more familiar territory for Giuliani, whose law-and-order, disciplinarian image has taken hold in the public imagination. But these measures also have almost nothing to do with abortion.