Recently there was a bit of a pow-wow in Salt Lake City among conservative pro-life Christian big-wigs. Basically, they’ve finally come to accept the reality that Sam Brownback isn’t going to get the Republican nomination, and that all the likely winners are far too close to pro-choice for comfort (so was W., but these guys are a little slow). After some media speculation, Dr. James Dobson, of Focus on the Family fame, wrote a column in yesterday’s NYT. In his letter, Mr. Dobson throws down the gauntlet: if neither party nominates a pro-life candidate, Mr. Dobson and almost anyone else at the meeting pledge to vote for a minor-party candidate. This is landslide news, if Mr. Dobson, his allies and their followers actually carry through on their threat. I’m not sure they can, but I would love to see them try. Many of the leaders in the pro-life movement are dedicated 1-issue voters (or k-issue, where k<5, if you add euthanasia, gay marriage and human cloning). However, many of their followers are died-in-the-wool Republicans who cafeteria-pick these issues as an excuse to always vote Republican (and ignore, say, the “inconvenient” social justice issues often brought up by religious Democrats). So if Dobson et al. carry out on their threat, we’ll see if pro-life voters are pro-life first and which ones are Republicans first. If most of them are pro-life first, then not only is the strength of the movement shown with substantial support for some third-party candidate, but the Republican candidate gets annihilated (President Clinton redux, anyone?). If they are Republicans first, then perhaps the pro-life movement will get its head out of the sand, break with the Republican party and go up for bid to the party that’s responding to their needs. I’d imagine that pro-life Democrats, like Bob Casey Jr. of Pennsylvania will be very happy indeed.
October 5, 2007
James Dobson Throws Down the Gauntlet: Pro-Life Movement No Longer a Republican Annex
Posted by Angry New Mexican under Politics, POTUS | Tags: Abortion, Angry New Mexican Rants, Conservatives, Religion |[3] Comments
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October 9, 2007 at 1:07 pm
This is, to me, a really interesting development, and one that I suspected might well happen. The risk of a third party challenge is always there, especially when you have a coalition of strange bedfellows, which is, of course, the nature of American political coalitions given how diverse the country is. Segregation split the Democrats twice: 1948 (when Strom Thurmond bolted and ran as a “Dixiecrat”) and gain in 1968/1972 with George Wallace’s candidacy. There are other historical examples. Dobson may essentially be playing the role of Ralph Nader in 2000.
October 10, 2007 at 6:12 pm
I don’t think Dobson is going to be playing the role of Ralph Nader. By all lights, Gore should have won the White House — but he campaigned so badly he didn’t.
2008 is a different story. It will take a miracle for any Republican to win the White House. Between the bungling of Iraq and the lack of fiscal restraint the Republicans have blown it. Bush has destroyed the brand, so to speak.
October 16, 2007 at 12:54 pm
AL wrote:
###I don’t think Dobson is going to be playing the role of Ralph Nader. By all lights, Gore should have won the White House — but he campaigned so badly he didn’t.###
There were a lot of issues:
-Eight year itch (tendency for people to get sick of the president’s power after eight years)
-Gore not campaigning well
-Bush having a better legal team in the Florida recount
However, Nader is an example of what most third parties do: Whether he wanted to or not, he said “Screw you, you guys will LISTEN to me. I know this will throw things to the other side but I don’t care.”
Serious third party presidential candidates almost always act in this way. 1992, Ross Perot drew votes from both Clinton and Bush the Elder but, the election was largely turned from Bush to Clinton by Perot peeling off disaffected Republicans. Anderson in 1980 may well have had that effect. Certainly George Wallace in 1968 did.
###2008 is a different story. It will take a miracle for any Republican to win the White House. Between the bungling of Iraq and the lack of fiscal restraint the Republicans have blown it. Bush has destroyed the brand, so to speak.###
Yeah, that’s my general feeling but I am always tempered by the fact that there’s a lot of variance possible in one year in politics. The general performance of the Republican candidates so far has not made me think they’ll pull it off, though, even if things start looking way up for Bush, since none of them are attached to him.