Posted on 11/24/2012 4:19:03 AM PST by Kaslin
Win, lose or draw, we're always supposedly hitting a tipping point where social issues just no longer work for the Republican Party. At first glance, this would appear to be a rather puzzling sentiment. After all, in 2010, despite the fact that the GOP was just as socially conservative as we were this year, the Republican Party had its best year in half a century. Furthermore, in 2008 and 2012, the GOP lost despite running moderate candidates who were soft on social issues and who barely brought them up at all. If anything, you'd think that seeing two non-social conservatives like McCain and Romney go down in flames should start to make Republicans wonder if we're not pushing social issues enough instead of the reverse, but if people were thinking about it logically in the first place, everyone would realize that it is a terrible idea to dump social issues right off the bat.
1) How would we replace all the votes we lose? It's highly ironic that you hear people claim that social conservatives aren't fiscally conservative, right before they urge us to purge them from the party. After all, if that were true (More on that in a moment) and the GOP abandons social issues, wouldn't those tens of millions of voters migrate over to the Democrats since we'd no longer have anything to offer them? Then, whom would we replace them with? There's already a fiscally conservative, socially liberal party called the Libertarians and they usually collect about 1% of the vote. Telling tens of millions of Christian conservatives that they can drop dead as far you're concerned to try to appeal to a few million wishy-washy independents who change sides based on the last commercial they saw and a million Libertarians who still probably won't vote Republican unless we agree to legalize crack, support open borders and close all of our overseas military bases doesn't seem like such a good deal.
2) Social conservatism is part of the Republican Party’s core: Social conservatism is not some fringe issue that's on the margins of the GOP. To the contrary, as Ronald Reagan used to say, the Republican Party is like a three legged stool comprised of a strong defense, free market policies, and social conservatism. You rip one of those legs off -- as the GOP found out during the Bush years when it started to move towards big government -- and there's a heavy price to be paid. Furthermore, if you think abandoning social conservatism would just mean that Pat Robertson, Rick Santorum, Tony Perkins and Brent Bozell would be hacked off, you should think again. If you're talking about Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Thomas Sowell, Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Walter Williams, Laura Ingraham or most of the other big name conservatives in the party, you're talking about people who are pro-life, favor God's definition of marriage and are generally friendly to social conservatism. People get into politics because they want to see their values reflected in the government and if you think are going to shrug their shoulders and do nothing while issues that are near and dear to their heart are tossed into the trash like an old sneaker, you have another think coming.
3) Social conservatism can be a winning issue: The words "can be" are in there because they're certainly not always winning issues. If a candidate comes off as looking down on people who disagree with him or blunders around like Godzilla through Tokyo on a sensitive issue like rape and abortion as Todd Akin did, it can be a killer. Of course, bad messaging can kill you on a lot of issues. That's how Mitt Romney got portrayed as an uncaring, rich jerk even though he's the kind of man who rakes leaves for the elderly and anonymously buys milk for hundreds of needy veterans.
Much has been made of the fact that gay marriage finally won for the first time at the ballot box in Maryland, Maine and Washington. Of course, constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage have passed in 30 states including swing states like Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, Michigan and Virginia. Do we really want to turn off voters in those swing states to make ourselves more appealing in a handful of blue states? The GOP did get pummeled on abortion in the 2012 election cycle and most people are blaming it on Todd Akin, but Mitt Romney deserves a lot of the blame, too. Barack Obama made attacking him on social issues a core part of his strategy and Mitt responded with the same tactic George W. Bush used in his second term: letting his opponents hit him in the face as much as they wanted and hoping that their arms got tired. It didn't work for W, it didn't work for Mitt and it won't work if we try it again. If you're up against a man who loves partial birth abortion and voted three times in favor of killing babies born after attempted abortions and you get beaten into the ground on abortion, it isn’t the issue, it’s that you stink as a politician.
4) What about minority outreach? "Keep in mind that just over 78% of Americans are Christians and that number swells to roughly 85% of black and Hispanic voters." When you consider those numbers and the fact that black and Hispanic voters are still on board with Obama after the economic beating they've taken in his first term, it suggests that the GOP has a better opportunity to reach them on social issues than we do on economic issues. If Republican consultants claim we can't sell Christian values to demographic groups we need to improve with that are 85% Christian, then maybe they should get out of politics and go sell shoes.
bump
Conservatism is much less a political position then the leftist persuasion. Instead it is a moral, cultural, value, and theological rudder that partially expresses itself in political tendencies.
It is not an ideology but a collection of principles and values. As such it does not have options on the order form that can be left unselected.
good post
Yes,,”disposition” is a good choice.
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
I don’t actually think that distinguishing between elections as a tool and underlying philosophy - the first mutable and adaptive, the second granite-like and unchanging - creates cognitive dissonance.
I’m not sure that “democracy”, which is a fair approximation of what we have now, can possibly deliver a government of virtue based upon truth. If so, it may be foolish to be discussing electoral tactics.
But since I’m too old to go bushwhacking, I still think it’s worth trying to get virtuous leaders chosen through the process that we have. To my mind, this entails choosing candidates who can not “scare the horses” with opinions that large majorities abhor.
One of the reasons that the Left has become so powerful is that their candidates are experts at deception.
I now believe that this is a necessary part of the devil’s bargain of choosing leaders by election, and I wish our guys were better at it.
So, your objection to my thoughts - that they are internally contradictory - doesn’t hold up.
Thanks, however, for the food for thought. I will certainly think about it further.
“We’ll have to agree to disagree about that. The avalanche of Leftists who are killing our country are in office because they DO care about electability, and they are darned good at it.”
You contradict yourself, from things you have written elsewhere on the forum (I checked).
I refuse to agree to disagree on matters of principle. IF you will sell out principle to win an election, then you are no better than those “leftists.”
A mistake I made on election day, that I am ashamed of, was that I caved and voted for Romney in an act of desparation because I dreaded Obama so. I caved on “principle” and am now guilty of hypocrisy...I am ashamed.
In regards to “throwing away a Senate seat.” Well, the plurality of Missouri voters picked Akin in the primary. I am a Missouri resident. The voters had their say, and Akin won. He should have been supported by the RNC. Save some of your vitriol for the other two primary candidates. One could equally agrue that IF either of them had of dropped out of the primary, then there wouldn’t have been a three way vote with Akin receiving the most votes. However, each of them had “too much pride” to drop out. So, Akin received the most votes....yell at them for a change.
I actually didn’t take that much interest in the primary and voted for one of the three other than Akin (all three looked OK) because Palin had endorsed the candidate. However, once he won, and especially after I saw the hatchet job done on him by both the MSM and then the GOPe....it infuriated me and I vigourously and financially supported him from then on.
It makes me VERY angry when persons not living here, presume to tell us whom we should vote for or support. OR for a party to dump on our pick. I am VERY angry with Palin that she did not come back and support Akin the way Newt did...she has lost my future support because of her actions in regards to Akin. Her return to Missouri and helping Akin could have made a big difference. She was AWOL on that and has lost credibility.
If you think electoral politics is degrading and tends to contaminate all involved, I agree.
What I do not agree with is that there was NO DIFFERENCE between replacing Akin and sending Claire McCaskill back for six more years.
You believe that, with the right kind of support, Akin could have been elected (after August). I don't.
That belief of mine isn't selling out anything. I said he could not be elected, and he wasn't.
Perhaps you are mistaken on this point.
Hang on. I don't dispute that we need to persuade Catholics to vote more conserative. But here is the difference: if a voter self-identifies as Evangelical, that probably means he is in some way actually an observant Christian. People don't call themselves that unless there is some real contact with or belief in the premises of evangelical Christianity in their lives.
Catholics are a different kettle of fish, however. There are millions of Catholics-Lite people who were born or baptized as Catholic but don't practice their faith at all, haven't seen the inside of a Catholic church in years, and are just referring to some long-ago cultural heritage that they have discarded along with other inconveniences. These people still say they are Catholic when asked, and for the purposes of demographics and voter polls are termed Catholics, but they aren't really, and they tend to vote liberal. The serious committed Catholics who show up in the pews every week are far, far more conservative. They voted for Romney. The priests in many Catholic parishes across the US read statements from their bishops about the issues in this election and took a very firm anti-Obama, anti-abortion, anti-Obamacare stance.
The only problem with this line of reasoning is what do you offer these evangelicals, Christians and socons that would make them do what you espouse? Not since Ronald Reagan have I seen any Republican candidate for President that was worthy of my socon vote and I rather suspect that I'm no where near alone in that sentiment. Actually I sense that sentiment to be growing in size and numbers every year since the Reagan Presidency.
Moving to the left of center hasn't worked so why not try moving back to the center of right and see what happens?! If not then the Republican Party should just go ahead and make it official that they have lock, stock and barrel become the party of the liberal RINO. Be done with it once and for all. End the charade of pretending to be the party of conservatism.
۞ "Since the bygone days of Ronald Reagan the present day Republican Party has taken on the appearance and all the demeanor of the corrupted liberal Democrat Party and has now become the party of appeasers, apologists, liberalism and an ever bigger government with all of the welfare largesse that emanates from it."
where I disagree with some on here is along the following: the primary purpose (primary, not sole) of campaigns is to elect somebody who is capable of serving in the office.
Therefore, backing candidates on principal who have zero chance of getting elected reeks of folly. Elections are a civic matter, not a religious one.
Prudence is a virtue and its benefits include circumspection and sound judgment. Those who use the Christian faith to argue for actions which lead to us “going down to glorious defeat” ... I argue they are attempting to make a virtue of folly. You now have an explanation of why many of us do not follow you. The goal of virtuous men should be to elect the BEST PEOPLE POSSIBLE, not to lose based on principal.
Of course, we knew all of this 40 years ago. But the past 2 election cycles demonstrate some want to continue to experiment with another way. The examples abound.
It is amazing that you want outreach to fix the most conservative voting block in America, the Evangelicals, yet you fight against mention of the loyally democrat voting, Catholic voting block, it is Catholics that we desperately need outreach with.
Calling oneself Catholics is the same as calling oneself an Evangelical.
Catholics who are no longer Christians or Catholics do not claim to be Catholics.
Only the Catholic denomination itself calls every person ever baptized a Catholic, Catholic, whether they are or not.
See post 75, we already win the Evangelical vote with almost 80%, in fact our second largest denomination, the Southern Baptists voted 80% for McCain in 2008, when our largest denomination, Catholic, was voting 54% for Obama.
It is the Catholic vote that conservatives need to figure out how to win.
i was thinking more of the Cristine O’Donnell model of candidates. Planned failure.
We should have 99.9% of the evangelicals, not 80%. And more of them ought to be registered voters, because they can’t vote for a Republican candidate if they can’t vote at all.
Some “Catholyks” are just a group designated by polling companies and aren’t really observant Catholic—kind of like secular Jews, who also don’t vote on religious or ethical considerations. You are never going to win them.
Other Catholics are observant, but they’re super-libs from the ‘70s. They’re not available to us either.
Of the real, active, observant Catholics, the ones who are actually in the church, over 50% did go to Romney. But I agree that there, too, the number ought to be approaching 100%, and that outreach is necessary.
At our Catholic parish, the priests came down very hard on the congregation about this election. They are not extremely conservative in this area—hey, I’m in Communist-held Maryland!—but they were tough and outspoken about this. They read statements from the archbishop, they explained that abortion is a non-negotiable point, that there are no gray areas about this, and that it’s not ethical to vote for a great evil like abortion so that people can get a lesser good, like the idea free healthcare or whatever. It was possible to see how uncomfortable/irritated some members of the parish were when they heard this, and how pleased others were (like me).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.