The Safety Dance
January 29, 2007
Will the GOP embark on a "risky scheme" by nominating either John McCain or Rudy Guiliani for President in 2008?
You’d figure that the prospect of millions of evangelical Christian voters staying home on Election Day 2008 (instead of voting for a nonconservative GOP contender) would encourage Republicans to get behind a solidly conservative, eminently electable candidate such as Mitt Romney. However, at this stage in the game, that doesn’t seem to be the case: McCain and Guiliani currently enjoy a level of support that is, from a social-conservative perspective, disturbingly high.
Nominating either McCain or Guiliani is a huge gamble. It’s hard to see the conservative blogosphere firmly supporting either man, and impossible to envision talk-radio opinion-movers committing themselves to advocating on behalf of a candidate who doesn’t share their core values. In 2000, Rush Limbaugh strongly pushed for Bush, but four years earlier, he barely troubled a soul to help Dole.
While there’s been a deep desire in some segments of the GOP to move the party away from a focus on social conservatism, isn’t 2008 a little too early for such a desire to be fulfilled? Social conservatives want what they’ve always wanted: "a choice, not an echo." Why would the GOP seek to deprive them of such a choice?
Guiliani’s supporters have defended their candidate on conservative sites such as FreeRepublic.com; these advocates often argue that Guiliani’s support of Roe v. Wade should not be a "deal-breaker" for social conservatives, since his position on the War on Terror is more important in a post-9/11 era.
The argument is faulty for this reason: what about those who feel that birth-control-based abortions are, on some level, a form of terrorism against the unborn? Pro-life Republicans believe that they, too, are fighting an "axis of evil"–and would like to see the GOP nominate someone whose commitment to that fight is steadfast. How can these voters accept a pro-Roe Republican candidate?
If the GOP nominates either McCain or Guiliani, it will send a clear message to social conservatives: we don’t need you guys anymore. Is that the sort of message the party wants to send? If so, social conservatives will respond with a message of their own…a message that could result in a Democrat returning to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
UPDATE: Scot Lehigh on Guiliani.
January 29th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
What in the world are these people thinking? Republicans have been able to win the White Hosue by holding onto the South and those Big Square states in the midwest. With McCain and Guiliani, they risk losing either of those regions, which have strong social conservative constituencies. Those two will cost them those states and the party operatives are fooling themselves if either of those two will garner them any blue states? NY and CA aren’t going to turn red simply because one of these two is in the race. It’s a dangerous game. It’s about electoral votes in an all or nothing game (except in Alaska or Maine, but who really cares about those two). If the GOP drives away social conservatives–like me–we may not come back for quite a few election cycles.