Posted on 11/24/2006 8:29:23 AM PST by Milltownmalbay
Conventional wisdom indicates that if only Rudy Giuliani could clear the insurmountable hurdle of the Republican primaries and convention, he could be a formidable presidential candidate.
Polling data indicates that the opposite is true. Whether Republicans eager for a win after a bruising midterm election will reluctantly nominate Giuliani is one thing. The fact that he cannot win the general election is quite another.
Gallup polling prior to the 2004 presidential election confirms what many previous polls have indicated: a pro-life position helps Republicans. When factored into a close election, that help is the difference between winning and losing.
When asked by Gallup simply whether they regard themselves as pro-life or pro-choice, pro-choice wins by a margin of 52 – 41. When asked whether they would vote for a candidate who was pro-life, only 10% of pro-choicers said no. When asked the same question in reverse, 30% of pro-lifers said no.
In other words, while pro-choicers outnumbers pro-lifers, pro-lifers vote are three times as likely to vote the issue. When Gallup factored those numbers back into presidential categories, they found that 25% of the people who were planning to vote for Bush were self-described single issue pro-life voters. Only 11% of Kerry’s supporters were committed firmly to voting for a pro-choice candidate.
If we factor those numbers into the number of people who actually voted for Bush, it means that about fifteen million (out of sixty million) Republican voters have said that they would not vote for a pro-choice candidate. Admittedly, many when faced with the possibility of Hillary, might feel compelled to vote for Giuliani.
But when the President only won by four million votes, any Giuliani strategist needs to consider that his position on abortion will alienate fifteen million Republican voters. Add to that his positions on guns, gay marriage, and partial birth abortion, and you have a recipe for disaster.
In the 2004, Osama bin Ladin released a threatening video tape aimed at influencing the American elections the weekend before the election and the top concern of voters in election polls was moral issues.
Giuliani Republicans are counting on the fact that pro-lifers will reluctantly support Giuliani rather than allow another Clinton presidency. What they fail to realize is that many pro-lifers may just sit this one out, believing that they have no horse in the race.
Even worse for Giuliani, many pro-lifers may believe that it would be better to lose one presidential election than to end up with both major national parties supporting abortion on demand.
In any case, Giuliani has a problem with fifteen million of the voters he needs to win the in 2008.
And about reigning in spending and maybe even using that Presidential veto pen once in awhile.
Also, Supreme Court nominations. But the "principals above pragmatism" crowd always cut their noses off to spite their faces; look at South Dakota.
You are spot on my friend. I hope our fellow conservatives wise up before 08. Do they really think a staunch conservative candidate will win the presidency. Guliani is a good compromise. We all know where he stands on all issues and if he becomes president, I think we will sleep easier at night knowing his stance on terrorists. Please fellow conservative, you can't change things with democrates running things. Stay tuned and watch the circus about to begin in congress. We have to win elections!
You are spot on my friend. I hope our fellow conservatives wise up before 08. Do they really think a staunch conservative candidate will win the presidency. Guliani is a good compromise. We all know where he stands on all issues and if he becomes president, I think we will sleep easier at night knowing his stance on terrorists. Please fellow conservative, you can't change things with democrates running things. Stay tuned and watch the circus about to begin in congress. We have to win elections!
You are spot on my friend. I hope our fellow conservatives wise up before 08. Do they really think a staunch conservative candidate will win the presidency. Guliani is a good compromise. We all know where he stands on all issues and if he becomes president, I think we will sleep easier at night knowing his stance on terrorists. Please fellow conservative, you can't change things with democrates running things. Stay tuned and watch the circus about to begin in congress. We have to win elections!
Apparently not. My apologies.
Giuliani is a liberal. Compromising with liberalism will only get you more liberalism.
Slight exaggeration of what I said.
The mass media controls the flow of information to tens of millions of people in this country. Many on those millions rely exclusively on "old" mass media sources for their political news. ("More American get their news from ABC News than any other source") About 70% of everybody I know does. If you do an informal survey, you'll find that to be the average.
They choose what gets reported and what doesn't. And they choose when to report it (Mark Foley, Bush D.U.I., etc.). Everybody knows Giuliani has a past. The worst of it will be found by his opponents and released to the media at the worst possible time for the candidate. And it will dominate the news for cycles on end.
We don't have to look back very far to see the evidence. This is what they do. And it's been working well for them lately.
You are also under the impression that America hasn't already made it's mind up about if it likes Giuliani or not (which I also can't type with a straight face). It has, and the answer is yes.
America may like him just fine, but "likes" in '06 doesn't automatically transfer over to "wants to be POTUS" in '08. Personal approve is nice, but it's meaningless at this stage. Especially in Giuliani's case, considering he hasn't had a glove laid on him in over five years.
I agree. It should be the anti-abortion party (as Reagan made it), as well as the low-spending party, the strict-constructionist-judges party, the national defense party, and the small government party. But if you take away the anti-abortion element, the rest of those things by themselves won't be enough to provide victory. The GOP was the minority party until Reagan came along and added social conservatism (including anti-abortion); that brought in the evangelicals and social conservatives. If you're content to throw them overboard, shake hands with Gerald Ford, because you'll be moving the GOP back to the losing days of the Ford unelected presidency.
The Republican Party should also be more than just the Iraq war party. Santorum was the biggest supporter of the Iraq War, of all GOP candidates this time around. That didn't save him. It was a bad year for Republicans - thanks to many things, but mainly to Bush's abandonment of GOP principles on spending and immigration. The one message we shouldn't take away from this defeat is that the GOP should abandon the issues on which the GOP is in this right - anti-abortion, war on terror, to name two that Santorum stood up for
BTTT
If someone could convince Rudy to give up the gun banning, I'd go with him easily. I'd still take him over hillary, but man it'll be *harrrddddd* to do.
Thanks.
BTTT
In the posts that I've come across, you mention religion -- usually in the context of taking potshots at religions outside of your own obviously secular beliefs -- more often than any religious conservative I've ever seen on this forum.
Yet, it's the other guys who are pushing their religious beliefs down your throat.
Funny how that works.
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