Social Conservatives Backing Rudy?
Rudy Giuliani, whose positions on abortion and homosexuality mark him as the most socially liberal Republican presidential candidate in more than a generation, is so far winning the contest for the support of social conservatives, according to a new analysis of recent polls.
Widespread perceptions that Giuliani is the most electable Republican in this year’s field are driving his support among social conservatives, according to the analysis by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
If the trend holds, this apparent willingness to support a candidate who fails what were once regarded as litmus-test issues would mark a landmark shift in the political behavior of a constituency that has been a pillar of the modern GOP. Already the shift is spurring sharp debate among prominent Christian conservative leaders, some of whom warn that Giuliani backers are abandoning core principles.
It is a fascinating development: suddenly, social conservatives seem to be willing to focus on other issues than the ‘favorite two.’ Suddenly, they’re backing a candidate who publicly says that he supports the right to choose for women. For years and years, this was considered to be a big no-no. Pro-choicers had no chance whatsoever of winning the Republican nomination… suddenly, all has changed.
Or not?
What will happen once Thompson formally announces his candidacy?
I fear for Rudy that a Thompson run will hurt his chances tremendously.
Cross posted at my own blog.
62 Responses to “Social Conservatives Backing Rudy?”
DLS,
Absolutely, I did not/ do not mean to imply you were dropping or altering others words. More ike Bob Hope… he could make a one liner take three lines just cause he could!
Steve
Well I don’t think anyone HERE takes Robertson or Falwell that seriously, but I do think that they have had considerable influence on the evangelical vote through the Christian Coalition, which handed out voter guides and organized turnout in the last several elections. Most evangelicals voted for Republican candidates. But probably commenters here think they’re both a little nuts.
Well, in order to show “influence” even in that more limited scope, you would need to prove that the evangelical voters would not have voted Republican anyway except for the endorsements of Falwell and/or Robertson. And I don’t think you can make that case.
The Christian Coalition effectively went out of business over a decade ago. The only people getting the voter guides were the already-converted. I don’t think there is any remaining “influence” and I certainly think there is no evidence that evangelicals think that Katrina was the “wrath of God” rather than, you know, a weather event that exposed massive bureaucratic deficiencies in state, local, AND federal government.
Also, if you are granting that no one HERE takes Robertson or Falwell seriously, why do so many of the commenters HERE keep throwing Robertson and Falwell in the face of those they deem to be “conservatives”?
> More ike Bob Hope
Admittedly I do get wordy, even too wordy, too often. When Holly in Cincinnati posts (she is concise), it is driven home extra hard.
I picked a mild ‘example’ Jason and instead of trying to see the point I’m trying to make you try to get out with a ‘loophole’. You may think you don’t have an anti “leftie” slant but I have the right to disagree… You walk like a duck and fly like a duck and still don’t understand who some think you quack like a duck, too.
Jason, I have already spent all together too much time on this silliness… it’s all off topic and really doesn’t matter so go ahead and tell me how, and why, I’m wrong / you’re right and we’ll move along.
Steve, you’re right, it doesn’t matter. I don’t understand why any criticism of the left has to be accompanied by an exact equal criticism of the right anyway. Such a standard is certainly not applied to the leftist posters on TMV.
DLS,
FWIW – Adding Bold, Italic,
Strike, etc. has always a real pain in the posterior. Since I’m a lazy person AND since Mozilla FireFox had a FREE extension that does all the coding I need with just a right click and select… I switched to the FireFox Browser.Here’s a link for more info…
href=”https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/491″>BBCodeXtra is an extension, compatible with Mozilla FireFox and Mozilla Suite, which adds to the context menu new commands to insert BBCode/Html/XHtml codes in an easy and fast way…
It’s a great tool.
Too Funny, I ‘hand coded’ the a href= above and screwed it up…!
Here’s that link again:
BBCodeXtra is an extension, compatible with Mozilla FireFox and Mozilla Suite, which adds to the context menu new commands to insert BBCode/Html/XHtml codes in an easy and fast way…
Jason if that’s true, why do Republican candidates work so hard to get the blessing of Falwell, Robertson and James Dobson? McCain, who in 2000 called Robertson and Falwell, agents of intolerance, went down and spoke at Liberty University.Newt went on Dobson’s radio show to discuss why he wasn’t a hypocrite for the affair he had during Clinton’s impeachment. During the GOP debates, 3 candidates disavowed evolution, all but one disavowed the pro-choice position.
And evangelicals have helped the GOP with get-out-the-vote drives- especially in the South. They are still a powerful force in the Republican party.
Usually, I only bring Falwell and Robertson up when someone HERE claims that the left dances to tunes played by Michael Moore or Rosie o’Donnell, but even without that they are still important voices in the party. Of course Falwell came up a lot last week when he died suddenly. I was amazed that some commenters defended him- crazy statements and all. I would have disavowed statements like that. Their names also came up recently in posts about how the Bush admin. has 150 graduates of Regent University Law School (Robertson’s). It was Monica Goodling’s alma mater, and is considered a 4th rate law school. The admin. liked their ideology.
So, I disagree with your major points.
Kim,
Jason already explained the concept of wedge issues- scroll back in the comment section. He gave a great explanation for why those politicians have courted voters that way even though the viewpoints aren’t necessarily mainstream.
I agree with most of that post, CS. But the influence of those figures is also sometimes very real. In Sharpton’s case- look at the Imus controversy. And I’ve partially made the case for Falwell and Robertson, but didn’t mention federal money that the Bush administration has given to faith-based charities. Look at the weekly calls to the WH from Ted Haggard before the scandal broke last year.
But, I agree that activists on both sides get more heated up about wedge issues than regular folks, which is then exploited by our politicians in a divisive way. Also agree that quite often media pundits with an agenda and politicians try to characterize the entire opposing party with the most extreme figures from that party.