Posted on 03/07/2007 4:32:54 AM PST by Verax
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John Bender
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| Rudy Giuliani can’t win the general election. No matter how much some people in the Republican Party wish he could, he can’t and here’s why. There is about 30% of the voting public in each camp who vote for the party no matter what. The Republicans have so-called conservatives who would vote for Arlen Specter rather than Thomas Jefferson, because Specter is a Republican and Jefferson was a Democrat. On the Democrat side, they have a group who would vote for Zell Miller rather than Lincoln Chafee, because Miller is a Democrat and Chafee is a Republican. Neither of these groups have any political clout in the general election. They are irrelevant to the political debate. Neither party, nor any politician, has to work to get their vote. Consequently, their issues are of no concern to either party. The battle in every election is to get out the vote of people who lean toward a party or candidate, and to get the vote of issue voters. The 40% or so of voters who either switch their vote from party to party, or who withhold their vote, when dissatisfied, are the ones politicians have to court and motivate in any general election. Neither the unmovable Republicans nor the unmovable Democrats are of any real interest to the respective parties. Those votes are there and counted before the polls ever open. The parties and individual politicians fight for and court the other 40% of the voters. Rove knows this and spoke about it after the 2000 election and adjusted his campaign strategy in the 2004 election accordingly. In 2000 Evangelicals didn’t turn out in their customary numbers and almost cost Bush the election. Rove was determined to change that and said so more than once between 2000 and 2004. In 2004, Rove made it a point to go after the Evangelical vote, including an unprecedented heavy Republican push in the nation’s Black churches. Evangelicals and other Christians responded by getting out and voting for Bush. This included a record 16% of the Black vote in Ohio, just about all of which came from the Black churches because of social issues like abortion, gay marriage, etc. That 16% of the Black vote was not only almost double the percentage of Black votes the Republican historically gets in presidential elections, it was more than double the Black vote Bush got in Ohio in 2000. The increase was also more than Bush’s margin of victory in Ohio. It gave him the election. Without the Black vote Bush would have lost Ohio and its 20 Electoral votes. Take those twenty votes from Bush and give them to Kerry and you have President Kerry no matter how Florida voted. In fact, remove the increase in the Evangelical turnout nationally; and it is impossible for Bush to have won a second term. Rove worked on pushing those issues that motivate Evangelicals and it gave Bush a second term. If the party again removes the Evangelicals who stayed home in 2000, PLUS some of the other social conservatives, some of the Second Amendment voters, and some of the defend the borders voters, there is no way one can come up with a GOP win in 2008. The party isn’t going to attract enough pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, pro-open borders, to offset the loss from the above mentioned groups. It just isn’t going to happen. Now, some in the 30% who are unmovable Republican voters are happy the party has moved to the Left and wish it would move a little farther Left. Others don’t like the slide to the Left, but are so locked into the party they will accept the slide, vote a straight ticket and hope for a better candidate in the next election. Those in the second category, they’d like a more conservative candidate, but will vote for whoever gets the GOP nomination, are actually helping assure that they will never get what they want in a candidate. They are not helping get a more conservative candidate because they come right out and say they will vote for ANYBODY who the party nominates. They are making themselves irrelevant. Why should the party try to please them? They are going to vote for the party no matter what. They are telling the party to ignore them. The people who make the party earn their vote are the ones who can push the party back to the Right. They are the ones that the politicians have to please. Don’t be fooled by the Republican establishment’s mantra that someone is too conservative to win. They said the same thing about Reagan. Reagan twice showed that attracting social conservatives and fiscal conservatives produces landslide victories. The Republican establishment doesn’t like conservatives. They never liked Reagan. They didn’t want the people to believe he would win in the general election. In 1976 Ford’s Chief of Staff called Reaganites “right wing nuts”, a term that also pops up in several Ford internal campaign memos from that year. In 1980 Bush the Elder said Reagan was an extremist and that his economic policies were “voodoo economics” that could never work in the real world. None of this was true then and it isn’t true now. There are now four conservatives in the race for the Republican nomination; Rep. Ron Paul, Rep. Duncan Hunter, Governor Jim Gilmore, and Rep. Tom Tancredo. Any one of these gentlemen could beat Hillary or Obama in the general election. Giuliani can’t do it. The Rockefeller Republicans, who are the party bosses, and the Doubting Thomas Republicans who are pushing for Giuliani’s nomination are going to hand the election to the Democrats if they succeed in nominating Giuliani rather than a conservative. It’s up to the party’s base to stop that from happening. The only real choice for the anybody-but-a-Democrat voters is to work to make sure one of the conservatives gets the nomination or accept the fact that they helped put a Democrat in the White House in 08.
"Published originally at www.EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact." John Bender is a freelance writer living in Dallas, Texas. He is a past Ether Zone contributor. John Bender can be reached at: jbender@columnist.com |
GOP control of the South peaked in '04 and has started to wain.
Rudy wants to McGovernize the party as well.
"thats what they said about Regan!!!! he was unelectable!! both times!!"
That's totally awesome!!!
But it isn't 1980.
Good for you! Make a statement!
In the era when the Democrats dominated the South, the Upper South and the Border States of KY, WV, and MO were never as strongly pro-Democrat as was the Deep South. Hoover defeated Al Smith in these states in 1928, and Eisenhower beat Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and 1956, even though the Democrats held most of the cotton growing states.
Add to this sociological changes to the South. MD is no longer a Border State, as the post-Civil War development of Baltimore as a major industrial center and the growth of the Washington suburbs essentially Yankeefied the state. VA and NC appear to be drifting in the same direction, with a large influx of "damyankees" (professional, postgraduate, lifestyle liberals) into the major metro areas. Of course, southeast FL has had strong ties with the New York metro area for decades, although the most recent generation of NY-NJ retirees has moved northward from Dade County into Broward and Palm Beach Counties.
Giuliani in 2008, a socially liberal secularist, may not play well in the socially conservative and mainly evangelical Protestant South and the Border States in the manner of Al Smith, a "wet" Catholic in the "dry" and mostly evangelical Protestant South.
yeah they said something like that too!
First, I disagree with the 30/30/40 division of the voting public. I see the division more like this:
1. Each party has a group of reliable voters. These are people who will vote in almost every election and vote a straight-party ticket for their side almost every time.
2. Next are groups of consistent party voters on each side. They will vote for their party maybe 70 to 90 percent of the time but will occasionally sit out an election on purpose, vote third party, or maybe vote for the other major party candidate. The most famous example is the "Reagan Democrats" who will vote for conservative Republicans who represent their traditional values. Another example is the "Country-club Republicans" who abandoned Ronald Reagan in 1980 to vote for that liberal Republican who ran as an independent. These people also abandoned Oliver North in the Virginia senate race in 1994. Many religious conservatives fit the same mold as relative newcomers to the GOP who will go elsewhere if their issues aren't addressed.
3. Finally, there are the people who are completely erratic voters. They are not all moderates as the media would like to portray but are all over the map. Some are hard-core liberals who complain about DINOs in the Democrat Party just as the ones on the right complain about RINOs. Some are people who vote for a candidate because they like his name or his hairstyle. Some are true moderates. Others may have some oddball deciding issue. Some are just drawn to a novel campaign idea the way many people liked Ross Perot showing pie charts during his speeches. Others are the kinds who say things like "I want Democrats to make my laws but Republicans to look after my money," or "I want Democrats to teach my kids but Republicans to protect my kids." Some are the people who vote for an incumbent as long as they still have their jobs. Some will vote for someone because they saw him once in the grocery store.
Following this line of thought, most elections come down to each party getting almost all of its reliable voters and the winner getting a larger percentage of its consistent voters and holding more or less even among erratic voters. For instance, Ronald Reagan won by getting crossover of "Reagan Democrats" who were in the consistent Democrat category. George Bush won in 2004 by getting a bigger percentage of consistent Republicans than a Republican would normally get. These were the religious conservatives who turned out in larger numbers to vote for President Bush. Bill Clinton won in 1992 in large part because Ross Perot drew many of the erratic voters who would have voted for an incumbent and drew a few more consistent GOP voters than he drew consistent Democrat voters.
I believe that Rudy Giuliani would lose the general election because he would lose more consistent Republican voters than he would gain consistent Democrat and erratic voters. The consistent Republican voters are largely made up of pro-lifers and pro-gun people, and they will abandon the GOP if the candidate is completely unfriendly to their issues.
I believe you're saying is that a social conservtive would lose those consistent GOP voters who are moderate and liberal. I disagree. None of the issues that have hurt Republicans over the past two years have had anything to do with social or religious conservatism. We are frustrated with the Iraq War aftermath because we don't see that aftermath as just the latest battleground in the war against Muslim jihadists. People who don't know any better bought into the notion that the federal government somehow failed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The housing bubble is bursting a bit, so people don't see their net worth rising as much as it did for a few years. People are buying into the global warming nonsense, so those who don't know any better think that they have to change the government in order to change the weather. Again, none of these are related to religious or social conservatism.
The problem is not that religious and social conservative issues are out of favor. The problem is just that the religious and social conservative voters do not have a well-known candidate to represent them. After seeing failures of Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan, Alan Keyes, and Gary Bauer, they realize that running a candidate with little or no experience in elected office is not likely to be successful. We want a candidate who knows what he's doing, but we want a candidate who represents our views. If George Allen hadn't train-wrecked or if J.C. Watts had been elected governor of Oklahoma, we'd have a prominent religious/social conservative at the front of the race.
Bill
You wrote this article?
I am more concerned about who is the next Commander in Chief...and I sure as hell think Rudy will do a mighty fine job.
Man, this article really hauls ass. I gotta bookmark it.
If Hillary Clinton is the Democrat nominee, then at least half of your analysis should have been directed at how the voters would react to her. All that I have said is, if it's Hillary against Rudy, Rudy wins. And he wins big.
If the Democrats have the sense to nominate a different candidate, who is more electable than Hillary, then all bets are off.
Congressman Billybob
Wrong! It is the anti-Rudy PIMPS that are trying to shut up any and all that would give Rudy a look-see as the process unfolds.
If Rudy is the Republican nominee and Hillary is the Democrat, a significant part of his support will come from voters who refuse to vote for her, no matter what. At this point the Anyone But Hillary voting block is much larger than the Anyone But Rudy block.
That's why all the polls agree that Rudy will take far more of the independents and some Democrats, than Hillary will take from independents and some Republicans. That's the reason for my conclusion in my article that Rudy Beats Hillary.
As I said in an earlier post, if the Democrats have the brains to nominate someone more electable than Hillary, all bets are off.
John / Billybob
Rudy Roto Rooter that is the name
And away goes Rudy down the drain.
Rudy cut and ran from a race against Hillery in 2000, started sleeping with a staffer and abandoned his kids.
Look, he had 1 good day on 9/11 when he was a lame duck mayor.
Facorting in an incestuous marriage with his cousin. ...
This is not prresidential mettle.
Go Duncan.
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