Posted on 04/02/2013 6:51:34 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Ed Morrisseyflagged this Politico piece earlier but I want to pay special attention to Huck's comments. Gabe Malor called BS on them on Twitter this morning. I think he's right. Huckabee's latest shot across the party establishment's bow:
“The last two presidential elections, we had more moderate candidates, so if anything a lot of conservatives went to the polls reluctantly or just didn’t go at all,” said Huckabee in a separate interview. “If all of the evangelicals had showed up, it may have made a difference.”…
Huckabee, like Santorum, was a bit incredulous at the attempt to fault social conservatives when the party nominated two individuals who largely shunned talk of culture in the general election and were uncomfortable when they had to discuss issues like abortion.
“Nobody would say that these were guys that just light ’em up at the National Right to Life Convention,” cracked Huckabee.
In other words, lower social-con turnout for Romney last year proved that the party’s already on thin ice. Move any further to the center on, say, gay marriage and who knows what might happen? Just one problem: Unless I missed something, social-con turnout for Romney wasn’t lower. On the contrary, after months of liberal concern-trolling that conservative Christians might not show up on election day for a Mormon, evangelicals gave Romney the best turnout among their demographic that any modern GOP candidate has seen. Remember this exit-poll comparison published by Pew a few days after the election?
Not only did Romney match Bush’s share of white evangelicals from 2004, when Dubya and Rove famously used the gay-marriage issue to mobilize social cons, he actually did ever so slightly better among evangelicals than he did with Mormons. But wait: To say that Mitt matched Bush’s share isn’t to say that the same number of evangelicals turned out for both. It could be that 20 million voted in 2004 versus only 10 million in 2012, with the GOP nominee winning 79 percent of each. Is that what happened? According to the exit polls, no. In 2004, white evangelicals made up 23 percent of an electorate composed of more than 122 million voters; last year, they made up 26 percent of an electorate consisting of more than 127 million voters. As a share of the electorate and of total voters, Romney actually improved on Bush’s performance. The only way Huck is right is if the rate of growth among the white evangelical population between 2004 and 2012 should have pointed to even greater turnout last year than what we saw. I haven’t seen any data to that effect but I’m willing to be corrected.
If Huck is right that Romney’s too moderate for social conservatives’ liking, why’d they turn out for him in such high numbers? Simple: They’re not single-issue voters. Skim through the graphs compiled by the NYT’s Thomas Edsall a few days ago. On subjects like harmful government regulations and strong defense, white evangelicals top white mainline Protestants and white Catholics. They’re conservative more or less across the board, which is what the party establishment’s counting on if the nominee has to finesse the issue of SSM with a federalism dodge three years from now. The X factor is whether Huckabee, Santorum, or some other prominent social conservative pol will turn gay marriage into a litmus test. That’s what was missing from 2012 — maybe evangelical turnout for Romney would have been lower if Huck had agitated against him by reminding voters of his pro-choice past. But he didn’t. Social conservatives were roundly unified behind Mitt in the interest of defeating O, even when they denounced him as being the lesser of two evils. The one silver lining for the GOP in potentially having to face Hillary in 2016 is that she’s sufficiently polarizing to maybe keep social conservatives in the Republican tent even if they’re unhappy with the nominee’s position on SSM. With a lesser known Democratic nominee, the impetus to unite and defeat the great liberal threat might not be as strong.
I think you'll find that a detailed analysis will show that a residual platoon of diehard Rockefeller Republicans didn't vote for Romney and that made all the difference.
Catholics with a KJV Bible. LOL!
By dropping Sarah Palin, Ron Paul, et al from the list of speakers Romney and his handlers made it a remarkably uninteresting convention (we wouldn't have noticed if the hurricane wiped this oneout eh) and the Republicans were not stirred up.
The Democrats were more or less contratulated on having renominated Obama, hardly intimidating to them.
BINGO!
made my day ~ actually I have a moslem buddy who reads the Bible just so he can communicate with Christians, so why not Catholics toting KJV.
I think humorous that some give some mystical import to the “Queen” James translation, considering King James was such an unrepentant homosexual!
Dear God,
You know I really want to do what is right, but we have to win this election no matter the cost. I don't think you understand how evil Obama is; some people even fear him more than they do You. I know you want us to do what is right and trust you, but we are suppose to have separation of church from state in this country and not let our faith in you interfere with our vote. We should not look at a persons value, beliefs, or what they have done in the past to see what they might do in the future. We need to stop thinking about social issues like innocent babies being killed and our children being taught sexual perversion, our freedom of religion.....because we can't win elections thinking like that. Times are changing and if we don't change people won't like us. They will call us names like they did you. Even people on the right will do this. If people like us they will be more open to vote for our side. Then we can reach them because we have more in common.
We have these really smart people like Rove other political advisers telling us what we have to do to win. The advisers have calculated that if we move left, some of the precious independents, and maybe some of the obama voters will vote for our guy. I know we will have to accept certain behaviors that we now find repulsive, and consider people we don't believe or trust, but they are better than the left. If we keep moving left, we might not even notice what is happening to us. I won't change my belief in you. I promise. I just need to compromise this one time and then everything will be ok.
I just had this great idea. Maybe we could move left before the other side does and get those professors votes. What did they want to do? I'll have to email Karl Rove. This idea might even save our country! .
Thank you God for being on our side not matter what we do!
By no means did I sit out, I simply voted my convictions.
I'm proud to say the first vote I ever cast as a young man was for Ronald Reagan. I've voted exclusively Republican my entire voting career up to thisl ast election, but no longer. The party left me. Screw em.
Felt the same way about Romney. While he did better than McCain he didn’t improve enough on McCain to win the election.
Also note - white Catholics were +7 shift, among his largest shift, and we shifted more than Evangelicals to support Romney over Obama.
So please tell me again how Catholics are to blame for re-electing Obama. No, no, we are not.
Was it a mistake....or by design?
Its been apparent for quite some time that those who run the Republican Party dislike Conservatives. Don't get me wrong, they want the Conservative vote and (at times) will say things which appeal to Conservatives. But, when the rubber hits the road, they are far more comfortable with their Liberal cousins.
I don't know if Gov. Huckabee is right or not in his reasoning. What I do know is since the 70's, history reflects that "Moderate" Republican Presidential nominees lose elections while those seemingly Conservative win. As this track record is certainly no secret, you can draw your own conclusion as to what the GOP actually represents.
As long as the conservatives don’t see a dime’s worth of difference between the two candidates (and you can scream their differences all you like, but you have to get them to see that *on the issues that they care about*!), they have no incentive to get out there and vote.
Thank you! I heard his comments too, and I smelled a Roveian operation when it came out that the Romney campaign was picking and choosing which candidates to support! FFS!
What were social conservatives supposed to do then?! Support Romney after his backstab? Yes, Akin cost Romney the election - but only because Romney chose to betray social conservatives. Had Romney simply taken it in stride, he would have had greater support than he needed to beat Obama.
Why did Romney lose where Bush won? Real simple. His numbers were the same or better than Bush in 2000, except in two areas - religious unaffiliated and non-Christians where he dropped about 5 percent off of Bush Jr. Yes, you heard it right - the supposed moderates he was expected to draw, did not show up for the party.
My conclusion - it’s not worth electing moderates. Moderates won’t vote for you and you need to focus on the base and get good turnout.
Please return to hosting a bad cable TV show, playing bass, and getting fatter. Leave rebuilding the GOP to conservatives.
That story has been put to rest with the discovery that Jamestown was initially settled in the midst of one of the Great Droughts and salt water had backed up all the way to the Fall Line. Without fresh water Jamestown was doomed.
The letters of Queen James survive. He was homosexual. He was buried between two of his male lovers and called one of them his wife in public.
Most of the Republican canidates lost!
There are many spurious documents that've been created to demonstrate all sorts of nonsense about the man.
Even if something was REAL it'd need to be discredited simply because everything else has been discredited.
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