Andrew Sullivan: Never say gay: Bush plays a subtle vote card

The old Nixon saw had it that all campaigns had an arc. They tilted to the true believers during the primary season and then they tacked to the centre in the summer and autumn.

You shored up your political base — and then you made a pitch to the middle. Hyper-liberal or hyper-conservative positions in the winter were finessed by the summer convention, where the candidate had a chance to win over all those undecided voters.

There is one thing, however, that this scenario didn’t quite take into account: what if there are decreasing numbers of genuine swing voters in the middle? That certainly seems to be the case in this campaign. A recent Pew Forum poll found that the undecideds form about 21% of the electorate at this point in the campaign, compared with 32% at this stage in 2000.

Moreover, finding those swing voters is very hard. It takes prodigious market research to track them down, to figure out how to appeal to them and to offer them the one argument in each case that might sway them.

Core believers, on the other hand, are relatively easy to find. Find the counties where you did best last time and revisit them. Or go to organisations that already support you and that can mobilise the base some more.

So last week you saw John Kerry addressing the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), one of the oldest civil rights groups in the country. And you had George W Bush on a bus in the middle of rural upper Wisconsin, visiting places that he had won easily only four years before.

In some ways Bush’s base work was more significant than Kerry’s. Kerry’s base is already highly mobilised — by loathing for the president. Sure, he has to make some overtures to black and Hispanic groups and he has plans for a big media buy on the black and Latino television channels. But in general Kerry is now playing to formula: moving to the centre, speaking of his “conservative values”, taking a position on Iraq that is almost indistinguishable from Bush’s and so on.

But Bush, once again, is playing a different, riskier game. Karl Rove, his political guru, has been obsessed these past 3½ years that 4m evangelical voters did not show up to the polls in 2000. With them, Bush might have won some critical states and might not have had to endure the Florida nightmare. Did the last-minute revelation of a past drunk-driving arrest offend these rural, Christian voters? Or was Bush not attentive enough to their needs all along? There is no risk of that this time. Bush is playing hard to galvanise his religious base — even at this stage in the campaign. Last week Bush unveiled a central part of the strategy. A constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage was introduced in the Senate. It failed miserably and predictably — but that wasn’t the point. The point was to use the issue in the coming campaign. Bush pushed hard for it, used it on the trail and lobbied senators individually to come to his side. Evangelicals held telethons, where they sent a tsunami of telephone calls and e-mails to lobby for the measure.

The Republican leadership cleared the schedule of other less important matters — such as passing a budget — in favour of an emotional debate about values. All of this was not because they believed that the amendment would pass but because they wanted to find an issue to rev up their base with as much fervour as Kerry’s is mobilised against Bush.

The president has used the anti-gay gambit twice before and it is already becoming a staple of politics in the South. When he was governor of Texas, Bush used his support of the state’s anti-sodomy law (struck down last year by the Supreme Court) to portray his opponent, Ann Richards, as soft on moral values.

When Bush was in trouble in the 2000 campaign, after Senator John McCain beat him in New Hampshire, Bush’s surrogates in South Carolina sent out e-mails showing McCain meeting gay Republicans. Kerry, of course, is from Massachusetts, the one state where gay marriage is legal. It all adds up to a perfect subliminal message — and sometimes not at all subliminal — that a vote for Kerry is a vote for gays, drugs, sex and general moral decline.

Could this turn off the moderate voters? Of course. Kerry tried to exploit this at the NAACP. Here’s his riff on values: “Later today, John Edwards and I will embark on a series of front-porch tours — going to the homes of ordinary citizens across this nation and talking with them about the values that matter most to them — values you live by every day: Family. Responsibility. Service. Opportunity. Inclusion. Fairness. Faith. And the most revolutionary value of all — that we are all created equal.”

But Bush figures that his own rawer appeals will work better. And losing gay voters, their families and some suburbanites is more than compensated for by upping the anti-gay evangelical vote. It’s a classic wedge issue. Aren’t all the evangelicals in states where Bush wins easily anyway? Not at all. In places such as Ohio, these voters count in rural areas. If they come out in force, they can tilt the entire direction of the race.

In Wisconsin, Bush played all the tricks. He won’t gay-bash directly. In fact, he has yet to say the word “gay”, “lesbian” or “homosexual” in public. He simply asserts that he will stand up and defend “traditional marriage”, a proposition with which it is indeed hard to disagree. But his audience knows what he really means — “protecting” marriage from gays — and cheers.

Or he will refer to Kerry mockingly as someone who said that he shares “conservative values”. Or he will lambast those who hobnob with “sophisticates” and “entertainers from Hollywood”, a veiled reference to a large fundraiser that Kerry has just held. The message is: “I’m one of you and he isn’t. He talks funny, has a mega-rich foreign wife, likes the gays and is super liberal.” It’s not a subtle message but it can be an effective one.

Slate magazine recently visited Tennessee, a swing southern state. Its reporter found one Randall Vinson who said: “There are three things I know about John Kerry. First, that he speaks three or four languages and one of them is French. Second, that he’s married to an ex-senator’s wife who’s worth a billion dollars. And third, he is supposedly a Vietnam vet.” Rove should be proud of himself.

The base mobilisation has only just begun. Republican groups in several swing states are organising their own anti-gay marriage amendments to their state constitutions, and if the measures are on the ballot this autumn they will help to stoke a big turnout of fundamentalist voters.

To give you an idea of the kind of rhetoric being used, here is an e-mail from a conservative lobby group sent out to its evangelical members last week. It was designed to shore up the troops after the failure of the marriage amendment: “No true believing Christian or Jew can afford to sit this fight out. The fight is not over. You must continue to speak up to ensure Washington understands . . . You must keep in mind where your senator stood on this vote as election day approaches.”

The Southern Baptist Council’s “I vote values” campaign reminds readers on its website that the founding fathers favoured castration for homosexuals. The Traditional Values Coalition has a campaign advertisement on the web that shows a demonic green man spliced with a child. The slogan? “Exposed: homosexual child molesters”. When Paul Weyrich, head of the Free Congress Foundation, a key Republican group, was asked how he felt about alienating gay Republicans in this campaign, his response was, “Good riddance.”

Bush does not want to have a rerun of his father’s campaign in 1992 which allowed Patrick Buchanan to foment a culture war in front of a prime-time television audience. So he has put up speakers at the convention who are uniformly social liberals: Arnold Schwarzenegger, John McCain, George Pataki, governor of New York, and Rudy Giuliani, another liberal Republican. But beneath the surface the “values” campaign is in full swing — especially in local media markets. If the distinction between a debate about values and a homophobic campaign gets a little blurry, then that’s all part of the plan, too.

People wonder why America is polarised. It’s polarised partly because the parties want it to be. And by November it will be polarised to within an inch of its life.

Andrew sounds a touch bitter this week, does he not?

Regards, Ivan

This week? I stopped reading him after his tirade against the Catholic church after the abuse scandal and his long diatribe about how celibacy is unnatural therefore, essentially, pushing priests into abusing young teens (no chance, of course, that there were actually homosexuals, right Andrew?).

It all adds up to a perfect subliminal message — and sometimes not at all subliminal — that a vote for Kerry is a vote for gays, drugs, sex and general moral decline. Could this turn off the moderate voters? Of course.

Wrong, Andy. Despite your most sincere wishes the good majority of the country is against homo marriage, and Bush's strong and consistent stance against it will only help him.

I have always thought that a true conservative, someone that is more worried about energizing the base than appealing to moderates, would be able to win elections. Motivate the base and get them to talk to their friends is far more effective than waffling in your positions.

Blinded by his rage. Surely he knows that evangelicals are not the only ones opposed to homosexual "marriage." A large chunk of the non-evangelical black vote and women's vote are opposed as well. In fact, many black churches have been making a stink about this. And yet, all Sullivan can do is bash Bible believers.

“I’m one of you and he isn’t. He talks funny, has a mega-rich foreign wife, likes the gays and is super liberal.”

Exactly.

Looks like Sullivan's martyr complex is acting up again...

Image from http://www.allahpundit.com/archives/000336.html

The homosexuals are all upset when they realized this weeks FMA vote was not the final word. CNN and a few suspect FNC reporters initial spin was that FMA was dead and gone.

Not so.

Sulivan the homosexual must be upset that there will be no federal recognition of homosexual recreational sex based marriages. Just another intollerant homosexual.

Homosexuals, like sulivan, MUST declare all opposition to all things homsexual as based only on religion. A lie of course. A hitlerina big lie to confuse the issue.

There are ample secular reasons to oppose homosexual sex marriage and homosexuality in general. However that does not play well for the perverts.

It is no different they resurecting the fictional homosexual gene every time homosexuals loose. Perhaps homosexuality should be treated with a 12 step program like other destructive addictions and behaviors.

Andrew is delusional. The issue of gay marriage (an oxymoron if there ever was one) would be a non-issue if a group of activist judges in Massachusetts hadn't invented a "constitutional right" to cornhole.

That being said, I do agree that a constitutional amendment is grandstanding at this point. There are not enough votes to pass it and the Republicans know it. Far more effective it would be to (a)bitchslap the activist judges by reorganizing or abolishing their judgeships- perfectly legal with a simple majority. Or (b)withhold any public funds and resources to enforce their ruling. Just one, I would like to see activist judges put in their place. It takes no more votes to impeach them than to pass a constitutional ammendment . . . and it is a lot faster.

And losing gay voters, their families and some suburbanites is more than compensated for by upping the anti-gay evangelical vote.

ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
President Bush isn't losing gay voters - because gay voters are not 'swing' voters. (Unless you are talking about the swing of a delicately manufactured, perfectly hand beaded, Gaultier handbag!). Gay voters, vote by and large vote with an agenda. And that agenda is NOT Republican.

I live half a world away from America and *I* can see that. How in the hell does Andrew Sullivan NOT see it?

bitter yes. Sullivan needs fatter clumsier profiles under the sun than the ones conservatives are giving him lately. all he's seeing is shadow warriors and he hates what that means.

A recent Pew Forum poll found that the undecideds form about 21% of the electorate at this point in the campaign, compared with 32% at this stage in 2000.

Duh. This means that GWB has more of the undecides up front, and Kerry has only his embittered Bush-haters. Haven't they heard? Hatred is not a family value... ;')

Statement:"... it will be polarised to within an inch of its life."

Response: Closer ever closer. The analogy being Rome in the time between the death of the Gracchi and the rise of Marius and Sulla; compared to the time between the death of the Kennedy's and ?????

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