Young, unmarried women vote for the Dem in overwhelming numbers no matter who the GOP puts up. I'm not certain, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're now more loyal as a demographic than Blacks, given Dubya's draw of record Black support in the last two elections. (Note the appeal to empirical data...pretty cool, eh?)
I believe, and I may be wrong, that if the abortion debate becomes the primary issue of the election, millions and millions of voters will go to the booth to ensure that thier right to have an abortion will stay intact.
1. Think about 2004 for a moment. You had an unswerving pro-lifer and un unswerving pro-abort. Guess what the primary issue in the campaign was? National security. Trust me on that; I wrote an op-ed about it based on exit polling data. The single greatest deciding factor in who people voted for that year was whether they thought we were safer now than on 9/11.
2. Given the small number of women that are both pro-abortion and hardcore conservative on other issues, there is virtually no chance that pro-abortion women will choose Rudy over a liberal, especially if a vote for that liberal is a vote for the first woman president.
3. When Rudy is asked to give examples of the kind of judges he would appoint, the names he lists are pro-life strict constructionists. If you were Hillary, you wouldn't have anything to say about that? You wouldn't say "He says he believes in the right to choose, but he'll appoint a Supreme Court that will have us in the back ally"?
I cant stress this point enough.
I guess I can't stress this point enough: The class of women you are talking about vote Dem almost unswervingly and ARE NOT AND NEVER WILL BE SWING VOTERS. They do not decide elections. Choosing a candidate based on what they say about politics is like me saying that Rudy can't win the general because all the NRA members I talk to are really concerned about gun rights.
Im not ready to give up those women just because they are percieved as being lost causes for the party.
One by one.