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October 18, 2007
The Ghost of Jerry Falwell 08!
So far, I've been a bit skeptical that the right will launch a third party candidacy against Giuliani. While there's no doubt that a winning, pro-choice Republican would be murder for the movement, it seems that evangelicals actually like the guy, and so a kamikaze candidacy launched by evangelical leaders could actually anger their flocks and lighten their membership rolls. And I don't think they want that, either. So my working assumption has been that Giuliani will make some loud promises to appoint pro-life judges, choose some credible member of the Christian Right as his running mate, and folks would make their peace with his candidacy. Michael Scherer's reporting, however, is making me think otherwise.
October 18, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
A third party is always destined to fail and split the party. How do you think Clinton won with just 43% of the vote?
BTW, I heard on the radio that Bob Jones III has endorsed Romney. This is important as it allows other evangelicals to vote for someone of a different faith. I suspect it will be a Rudy/Mitt ticket.
Posted by: El Viajero | Oct 18, 2007 8:59:14 AM
BTW, I heard on the radio that Bob Jones III has endorsed Romney. This is important as it allows other evangelicals to vote for someone of a different faith. I suspect it will be a Rudy/Mitt ticket.
A Rudy/Mitt ticket? Surely you jest!! The fundies won't put up with two heretics on the same ticket. The VP nominee will be someone like Sanford of SC or Pawlenty of MN.
Posted by: Joe Klein's conscience | Oct 18, 2007 9:12:35 AM
Dobson isn't stupid: he knows that the GOP is, in all likelihood, headed for a rout in 08 no matter what he does. But if he throws his support behind Moore/Keyes, he gets to take credit for the loss and set himself up again as kingmaker in 2012 (Do not discount the mighty power of the Evangelical Right! Oh, and also Jesus!). I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see a dominionist third party candidate even if Giuliani strikes out.
Posted by: michael d | Oct 18, 2007 9:13:39 AM
Probable exogenous factors make this analysis premature.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | Oct 18, 2007 9:30:22 AM
The Gost of Jerry Fartwell smells..
Posted by: Jacques | Oct 18, 2007 9:44:35 AM
A Rudy/Mitt ticket? Surely you jest!! The fundies won't put up with two heretics on the same ticket. The VP nominee will be someone like Sanford of SC or Pawlenty of MN.
Or Huckabee.
Posted by: Dave White | Oct 18, 2007 9:54:19 AM
I have my own analysis: the GOP will go with Giuliani or Romney and the media will be clucking about how moderate the GOP is and how they have rejected their more extreme elements in their base (and of course, the GOoPers will say "the media's callin' us good, patriotic 'murkins extreme ... see, we told y'all the media is liberal"). Meanwhile what the base really cares about is, as you point out, the courts (even if, as sensible moderate-liberals say ... we should have made abortion legal, desegregated the US, etc., through legislation -- the courts would still be important as what's to stop, Hashem forbid, SCOTUS from declaring, e.g., the 1964 Civil Rights act unconstitutional?) ... so Giuliani can be officiating at gay marriages held in the WH and giving away free abortions for all who attend and the right won't care so long as he gets judges in place who'll invalidate those marriages and send everyone involved (except for torture fanatics, er, "True Leaders" like Giuliani) to jail.
OTOH, if the GOP is guar-an-teed to loose, I think there's something to michael's analysis. Also, if the GOP does loose, look for GWB to do all he can to make sure that the next Pres. is tied up in many wars for which s/he will get the blame for loosing. GHWB tried it (as my mom often points out) ... just wait for GWB to try even harder. I hope Congress is ready to shut such things down ...
Posted by: DAS | Oct 18, 2007 9:56:59 AM
You're conflating evangelicals and churchgoers. There are many people, Republicans and otherwise, who attend church weekly but who are not evangelicals. You and other liberals are underestimating the importance of this issues to millions. Sure, some would cast a pragmatic vote for Rudy; many wouldn't. If the third-party candidate is Huckabee, things could get interesting indeed:
Here's what Rassmussen found:
"If Rudy Giuliani wins the Republican nomination and a third party campaign is backed by Christian conservative leaders, 27% of Republican voters say they’d vote for the third party option rather than Giuliani. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that a three-way race with Hillary Clinton would end up with the former First Lady getting 46% of the vote, Giuliani with 30% and the third-party option picking up 14%."
Posted by: david mizner | Oct 18, 2007 10:07:23 AM
a three-way race with Hillary Clinton would end up with the former First Lady getting 46% of the vote, Giuliani with 30% and the third-party option picking up 14%."
Wow, Clinton could beat Rudy with some Christian Right guy as an independent?
But can't... can't they all lose?
Posted by: sweaty guy | Oct 18, 2007 10:17:15 AM
Actually, FWIW, the conservative Christians I know (many of whom are of the Catholic rather than Evangelical variety) might cast a pragmatic vote for Giuliani in the general if he's the GOP nominee (based on the courts being the most important thing), but they won't vote for him in the primary.
The ones are, in their own words, "throwing [their] vote away for Keyes".
What'll be interesting is to see how many Christian conservatives (of any variety) vote for Giuliani as opposed to Huckabee (at least until the media declares Huckabee's campaign completely dead): I think it'll say something about the real motivation of Christian conservatism whether they vote for someone who's "socially liberal" but whose mean-streak passes for conservatism in some circles vs. someone who seems to be a genuine Christian conservative.
Posted by: DAS | Oct 18, 2007 10:17:52 AM
"If Rudy Giuliani wins the Republican nomination and a third party campaign is backed by Christian conservative leaders, 27% of Republican voters say they’d vote for the third party option rather than Giuliani.
This is why I think the whole 3rd party idea is just to put the squeeze on Giuliani. The Dobsonites will try to sink his campaign. But if he does get the nomination, they'll mount a 3rd party bid up to the point where he promises to appoint the right kind of judges.
It shouldn't be too hard for Giuliani and the Dobsonites to find common ground. Both want the US to be ruled with an iron fist. Giuliani probably won't care if the judges he appoints criminalize abortion so long as they get rid of the rest of our Constitutional protections, and the Dobsonites have already shown that they'll trade the entire Constitutional framework so long as it puts ovaries and uteri back into the hands of the men who own them.
Posted by: Stephen | Oct 18, 2007 10:22:52 AM
I think it'll say something about the real motivation of Christian conservatism whether they vote for someone who's "socially liberal" but whose mean-streak passes for conservatism in some circles vs. someone who seems to be a genuine Christian conservative.
Like all the good Evangelical Christians who passed over Tom McClintock in favor of Schwarzenegger a few years ago?
Posted by: Stephen | Oct 18, 2007 10:28:04 AM
A third party is always destined to fail and split the party. How do you think Clinton won with just 43% of the vote?
According to the 1992 election results, the popular vote split was 43 percent Clinton (44,909,806 votes), 37 percent Bush (39,104,550 votes), and 19 percent Perot (19,743,821 votes). And according to polls, Perot's support was split pretty evenly. 20 percent self-described liberals, 27 percent self-described conservatives, and 53 percent self-described moderates. If you assume that the moderates would split perfectly down the middle if they had to choose between Clinton and Bush, then the popular vote would have been 53,991,964 votes for Clinton (52 percent) and 49,766,213 votes for Bush (48 percent). Even if you assume that two out of three moderates would have favored Bush, Clinton still wins, with 52,412,457 votes to Bush's 51,345,719 votes. Only if every single one of the so-called moderates would have preferred Bush, giving him fully 80 percent of the Perot votes or more, Bush would have won with 53 percent of the popular vote.
Therefore, Clinton probably won on his own merits, not because the Republican Party was split. It is not certain that he would have won the presidency if Perot had not been running, and I don't have the time or perseverance to do the math for individual states, but it is more likely than not.
Robert Zimmerman/Fred Jones/The Traveler/El Viajero: Wrong About Everything (TM).
Posted by: Cyrus | Oct 18, 2007 10:49:15 AM
your first instincts are right Ezra. The flocks love racism more than they hate abortion. Rudy's a fine candiate for them.
Posted by: mark | Oct 18, 2007 10:58:51 AM
Thanks, Cyrus. I always thought that conservative meme about Clinton only winning because of Perot was a little strange. I seem to remember him leading Bush all through the summer polls when Perot dropped out, then came back in again.
I remember hearing the same after the 1996 election, Dole would have won etc etc. That's when I realized it was just some Noooo-Republicans-are-born-to-rule thing.
Posted by: sweaty guy | Oct 18, 2007 11:13:15 AM
So my working assumption has been that Giuliani will make some loud promises to appoint pro-life judges, choose some credible member of the Christian Right as his running mate, and folks would make their peace with his candidacy.
More likely, he'll have some private meetings with Dobson and the other nutjobs, from which they'll emerge convinced that he "shares their values". Meanwhile, he'll campaign as a moderate to keep from losing all of those voters, while the code being broadcast to the religious nuts says "vote for Rudy". I think Rudy needs to shore up their support without somehow alienating the moderates.
Posted by: Seitz | Oct 18, 2007 11:23:31 AM
Thing One: According to the poll in the first link, Giuliani leads among 'churchgoing Republicans' with 27%. That doesn't mean they like him; that means they don't like anyone else better.
Thing Two: The Rasmussen poll probably overstates the potential defections, but even half that number would almost certainly doom Giuliani in the general.
Thing Three: A lot of people are talking about what the conservative evangelicals will do as a bloc, but it seems to me that whatever they do they most likely won't do it as a bloc--that is, unless the nominee is Huckabee, which isn't going to happen.
If Giuliani gets the nomination, some non-trivial number of authoritarian evangelicals will stay home or vote third-party because he's not sufficiently anti-gay or pro-forced-labor. Thompson somewhat less so, but there will still be defections. Romney may be the most disastrous of all, because so many authoritarian evangelicals really don't like Mormons.
Thing Four: The Republican coalition has dwindled to the point that it isn't enough to get a majority of the authoritarian evangelicals; they need an overwhelming majority just to stay competitive. If there is a third-party wingnut candidate, that'll be next to impossible; even if there isn't, it's an uphill battle at this point.
Posted by: Tom Hilton | Oct 18, 2007 11:36:58 AM
In the Salon piece, Weyrich says that a third party run would only be viable if
1. Significant numbers of GOP elected officials defected.
2. Some wealthy individual(s) agreed to banrkroll the party and
3. A major conservative news outlet, like Fox News or the Wall St. Journal supported it.
While Weyrich is refreshingly candid about how right-wing politics and media work here, I just don't see how these conditions get met. Number 2 might be within the realm of possibility, but I just don't see the other two happening. Can you think of any GOP governors or members of Congress willing to sacrifice their seats (which they almost certainly would) to burn Rudy? And the Murdoch media (including the WSJ now) makes culture war nosies but ultimately cares more about tax cuts and deregulation than overturning Roe v. Wade. Heck, Rudy's already got Sean Hannity's endorsement.
The Kulturekamphers are going to make a lot of noise and try to derail Rudy in the primaries, mayve hold their noses and back Romney if he seems like the only viable alternative. Rudy's gonna emphasis anti-choice judicial picks and make overt and covert gestures to win at least some Religious Right leaders over. If Rudy gets the nod anyway, I'd imagine some religious right voters will stay home and some of the activist groups sit on their hands, but I don't see them running a spoiler.
Of course, the upshot of all this that these divides only help the Dems next year, so I hope they keep fighting each other.
Posted by: Justin K. | Oct 18, 2007 12:52:44 PM
In the Salon piece, Weyrich says that a third party run would only be viable if 1. Significant numbers of GOP elected officials defected. 2. Some wealthy individual(s) agreed to banrkroll the party and 3. A major conservative news outlet, like Fox News or the Wall St. Journal supported it.Well, the article says Weyrich considers these the conditions for a successful third-party run; it's a little ambiguous what he means by 'successful', but I think Weyrich is far enough off the deep end to mean 'successful' as in 'winning the presidency'. I'm not sure he means them as conditions for a third-party run, period.
Posted by: Tom Hilton | Oct 18, 2007 1:16:08 PM
Point taken Tom. Still, an unsuccessful third party run would mean the GOP vote splits and the Democratic nom, which looks like Hillary right now, wins. I don't think Weyrich or anyone else wants that, so that's why I doubt they'll pull the trigger on this idea.
Posted by: Justin K. | Oct 18, 2007 2:59:39 PM
Just remember- according to the poll, even if 100% of the evangelical third party voters pragmatically chose to vote for Giuliani instead of their preferred candidate HILLARY STILL WINS THE DAMN ELECTION.
These guys are talking about splitting the smaller slice of pie. Don't forget it.
Posted by: AP | Oct 18, 2007 3:00:19 PM
Just remember- according to the poll, even if 100% of the evangelical third party voters pragmatically chose to vote for Giuliani instead of their preferred candidate HILLARY STILL WINS THE DAMN ELECTION.
Well, that's preferable to Giuliani, sure, but personally I still hope Edwards or Obama is the Democratic nominee... but anyway.
Posted by: Cyrus | Oct 18, 2007 3:01:58 PM
Point taken Tom. Still, an unsuccessful third party run would mean the GOP vote splits and the Democratic nom, which looks like Hillary right now, wins. I don't think Weyrich or anyone else wants that, so that's why I doubt they'll pull the trigger on this idea.
Yeah, and Nader promised not to campaign in battleground states. We all see how well that turned out. Now it's true the GOP is better at not stabbing each other in the back than liberals generally are, but I still think it's entirely possible for some pissed-off evangelicals to want to play spoiler in 2008 if they feel they're not being catered to.
Posted by: Persia | Oct 18, 2007 3:20:08 PM
Still, an unsuccessful third party run would mean the GOP vote splits and the Democratic nom, which looks like Hillary right now, wins. I don't think Weyrich or anyone else wants that, so that's why I doubt they'll pull the trigger on this idea.I think the real question for a lot of the authoritarian evangelicals is which they consider worse: losing the presidency to the Democrats, or losing the GOP to the social moderates. Those who think it's the former will hold their noses and vote for [socially moderate Republican] in the general, even though it means the social conservatives lose their dominant position within the party. Those who think it's the latter will write off 2008 (either stay home or support a third party candidate) in the hope of recapturing the party after [socially moderate Republican] goes down in flames.
From what I'm reading now (and yes, the election is a long way off), both these views are well-represented among authoritarian evangelicals.
Posted by: Tom Hilton | Oct 18, 2007 6:21:03 PM
Guiliani/Huckabee is the likeliest GOP ticket right now, IMHO.
Posted by: The_Question | Oct 18, 2007 8:47:59 PM
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