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 |
I live in an open primary state.
And when Hunter is not on the ballot there then what?
There are over a half dozen I would vote for and support to varying degrees. I just will never vote for Rudy McRomney.
Are YOU are Republican or just someone who pretends to be one, too?
And what does Hillary have to do with my question to a NON-Republican?
I guess if your definition of a Republican is someone who votes for the GOP candidate no matter who that is, then Rudy isn't a real Republican. If you wouldn't vote for Hillary if she were the GOP candidate then you aren't either.
Well, sure he can. The question remains as to whether he would.
Actions speak louder than words. When appointing judges in the past, most have been liberal. One can argue the pool of appointees and the appointment system, but the fact remains that the judges he appointed were mostly liberals.
If you don't want to rely on actions, examine Rudy's words. He says that he is pro-choice. He says: "Presidents, going back to the beginning of the republic, generally appoint people on the Supreme Court that they believe agree with them."
Both Rudy's actions and his words indicate that any appointments to the SC very likely could be liberal thinkers. At this point, his current promises don't mean as much to me as his prior words and deeds.
The only thing this guy left out is that the 2006 elections prove his point.
The Democraps did not win in 2006- The Republicraps lost.
Look at Reagan, look at Gingrich in 1994, the biggest landslides ever, pushed HARD CONSERVATIVE~!
The RINO's in 2006 lost it for us.
OH~! and I thought all the OTHER (liberal) newspapers have been telling us all day today how much Guliani is ahead!!??
I will be glad not to take advice from them...
On the contrary, I believe all the Upper South states (AR, TN, VA, and NC) and the Border states (WV, KY, and MO) will be up for grabs. VA and NC are drifting toward the left due to the spillover from the states to the north and east. These Yankees are not the old line white Catholic blue collar workers who abound in PA, NJ, and CT and who should strongly support Giuliani. They are metrosexual, irreligious, and postgraduate types who are decidedly liberal. Indeed, Hillary will have to prove she is liberal enough for these people. NC may still be a GOP victory unless Obama is on the Democratic ticket. 21.6% of the state's population is black. Stronger black turnout due to Obama's presence could cause a rare Democratic win in the Tar Heel State.
Evangelical and gun owner support will naturally drop with Giuliani running, even if third parties are restricted to the de minimis level of the Libertarian Party and the Constitution Party. The loss of these votes will put WV, MO, TN, AR, and even KY at risk. As with NC, Obama running as President or VP could help in TN and AR (both 16% black) and MO (11% black). Don't forget that the Harold Ford political machine in Memphis and Democratic machines in Kansas City and St. Louis are notorious for ballot box stuffing.
The Giuliani forces place too much stake in fear of Hillary as a motivating factor. Bob Dole received very few more votes in 1996 (about 100,000) than the elder Bush did in 1992 despite four years of Clinton sleaze and socialistic initatives.
The Upper South and the Border states will by no means be as safely GOP as they were in 2000 and 2004 with a Giuliani run. The New Yorker needs to look to his native Northeast and California to win the Presidency.
Hope you are having fun with rhetoric but you really need to improve your prose if you want it to make sense. The person I addressed admits he is not a Republican in any case.
Besides it isn't the Republican vote that should be worried about (69.3% of FReepers would vote for Rudy against HIllary) but that of Independents and moderate Democrats. Their defection is what cost us the Nov election and led to that conservative wipeout.
Obviously Republicans vote for the party's nominee for the most part not always. Should the party nominate a certifiable nutcase like Ron Paul/Tancredo I don't know what I would do. But it won't and though not in 100% agreement I will vote for Rudy.
What you are talking about doing is what my mom used to call "cutting off your nose to spite your face". It makes no sense at all. It is people like you who listened to Perot's siren song and got us 8 years of the clintons.
Not at all. "Cutting off your nose to spite your face" involves harming yourself while accomplishing nothing. Witholding your vote to avoid becoming irrevelent is taking a little pain now to avoid a lot of pain later. This is usually refered to as acting mature. Of course shortsited people only see as far as the current election.
410.
You mean like no way a Bush Sr. judge became the worst liberal on the court?
All dem judges WILL be extremely liberal.
What better reason to back a true conservative in the primaries?
I agree totally, no problem. But the republic would be safe if we have Giuliani as opposed to Clinton.
"on defending Israel, he [Guliani] is staunchly conservative"
Apparently you have one standard of US resolve for the democracy of Israel and another for democracy of Taiwan.
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