Searching for Mr. Right
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
HAVING lost Congress and faith, at times, in President Bush, social conservatives are now holding out for a hero in the 2008 Republican presidential campaign.But who? And what kind of hero?
Is it the hero of 9/11, Rudolph W. Giuliani, whose support of abortion rights is anything but heroic to social conservatives? Is it the hero against gay marriage in Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, who nevertheless once championed gay rights? Or is it a hero of wartime, John McCain, who has also betrayed them on issues like federal judicial appointments?
Eleven months before the first presidential caucuses, social conservatives are in no mood to compromise; many don’t want to settle for Senator McCain, nor can they abide Mr. Giuliani. They want a true believer, reliably opposed to abortion rights, gay rights and gun control, tough on immigration and a supporter of conservative judicial appointments.
But are any second-tier contenders strong enough to carry the mantle of their idol, Ronald Reagan — and also, strong enough to win?
Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas strongly opposes abortion rights and gay marriage; former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas is a Southern Baptist minister who talks about religion and civic life; and Representative Duncan Hunter appears to have solid conservative credentials. Yet all three are largely unknown beyond their states and Capitol Hill. The same goes for Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado, who appears to be a one-issue candidate, focused on fighting illegal immigration.
Gone is the sense that social conservatives are a unified bloc. The movement that rose with the candidacy of Ronald Reagan in the 1970s is now fractured over both its messengers and its message. The issues that social conservatives care about most are often overshadowed by Iraq and terrorism, energy and taxes. And if their vote splinters in 2008, their political potency could be sapped.
If these voters split into factions for different Republican candidates, either Mr. Giuliani or Mr. McCain could slip through the middle (while wriggling around the so-called values issues), uniting enough fiscal conservatives and national security conservatives — and moderate and liberal Republicans — to win the party’s nomination next year. And Mr. Giuliani, for one, is starting to shade his support for abortion rights in hopes of assuaging opponents.
“A fractured movement is Rudy Giuliani’s dream,” said Paul M. Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Foundation, a conservative research group. “What I hear constantly is, ‘We’ve got to beat Hillary; we can’t allow her to be president.’
“What I’m hearing is, ‘We hate him, we don’t agree with his positions, we feel that his personal life is a travesty — but on the other hand, he probably could beat Hillary.’ I hear this over and over again. I keep telling people, don’t fall for that.”
Yet Mr. Weyrich, a savvy political strategist, knows that if social conservatives are torn on Election Day, many may stay home, and the consequence might be another Clinton presidency. So a moment of political reckoning for social conservatives seems inevitable. Will they give ground on their issues in order to elect a Republican?
“I don’t see social conservatives making compromises to win in 2008,” said the Rev. Donald Wildmon, founder of the American Family Association, a conservative Christian broadcaster and advocacy group. “Social conservatives don’t blindly follow the Pied Piper anymore. We’ve been disappointed and taken for granted by Republicans at times. I don’t think there’s any appetite for compromising core values.”
Nor should there be, according to Governor Huckabee. In recent interviews, he has artfully tied his religious devotion to broader social concerns. For instance, on NPR last week, he said that reclaiming a nation for Christ was not a matter of proselytizing.
“It means that we would reflect what he reflected, and that is compassion and love,” Mr. Huckabee said.
Yet he was also critical of some opponents of abortion rights, suggesting that they focus too much on embryos. “I want to be concerned about making sure every child has music and art education,” he said. “There are a lot of things that, to me, are a part of my being pro-life.”
Senator Brownback, meanwhile, has told some allies that he will not allow Iraq or economic issues to distract him from talking about social issues. Indeed, in a speech last month, he listed reviving faith among Americans and opposing same-sex marriage as examples of his priorities.
Mr. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, has tried to explain his conversion on abortion rights, from support to opposition, with a made-for-television story: As he listened to a Harvard researcher discussing stem-cell science, and the destruction of embryos, he saw the antiabortion cause in a new light.
At some recent conferences for social conservatives, Mr. Romney has used a line that some conservatives find credible: “On abortion I was not always a Ronald Reagan conservative. Neither was Ronald Reagan.”
This sort of language also resonates with other conservative wings of the party, like some members of the antitax faction who do not want to get bogged down over whether Mr. Romney is now sufficiently sincere in his opposition to abortion.
“Romney has a one-way, one-time migration on abortion to explain,” said Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform. “Senator McCain, meanwhile, was a Reaganite on taxes and then drifted for six years and now wants to come back. Same on guns. Same on judges. He was a two-way migration on several issues, and a lot of conservatives will have a hard time with that.”
Yet on a fundamental matter like the life of a fetus, some social conservatives say, the turnabout by Mr. Romney is worthy of skepticism.
“I know people can change, but sometimes when people want to be president, they speak of a change that has not occurred,” Mr. Wildmon said. “I like to go with a person whose words match their actions.”
Mr. McCain’s campaign is counting on a sharp split among social conservatives in the 2008 primary. Mr. Brownback and Mr. Huckabee, his strategists believe, lack the money and organizational strength to mount serious bids that would galvanize social conservatives. Meanwhile, Mr. McCain and Mr. Giuliani are portraying themselves as conservatives on taxes and national security.
“If someone can make a credible case to the social conservatives and have a position on Iraq that appeals to the broad majority of Republicans, you may see an election where the social issues, the moral values issues, are not as central as they were in the past,” said Matthew Dallek, the author of “The Right Moment: Ronald Reagan’s First Victory and the Decisive Turning Point in American Politics.”
Mr. Dallek notes that Mr. Reagan, as governor of California in the 1960s, took steps to support abortion rights and raise taxes. Yet he became a unifying figure for social conservatives because of his staunch anti-Communist credentials, and because he came to embrace their positions opposing abortion rights as well as tax cuts.
“Social conservatives may come to see one of the leading candidates as solid enough on their values issues, while keeping the national focus on the major issue of the day — defeating Communism for Reagan, and fixing Iraq and winning the war on terror for a McCain or a Romney,” Mr. Dallek said.
Yet this outcome seems an unlikely prospect to some political analysts.
In a survey of voters in the 2006 elections, the Pew Forum found that so-called values issues like opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion rights mattered the most to white evangelical Protestant voters. Forty-five percent of them ranked values issues highest; 17 percent chose the war in Iraq; and 12 percent cited illegal immigration.
“White evangelical Protestants are not only still a real component of the Republican Party, but they are also concentrated in key primary states like South Carolina, Florida and Virginia,” said John Green, a senior fellow in religion and American politics at the Pew Forum. “They are not going away, and it’s too soon to say how fractured they will be.”
posted by LeBlues @ 11:54 AM,
