Mr. Electable? Not So Fast!
Written by Sean on November 1st, 2007According to a new poll released by the Pew Research Center, Sen. Clinton thumps Giuliani by an eye-popping eight points. The poll, which has a smaller margin of error than most due to its large sample size, shows Clinton leading Giuliani in every region, including the South, sharing families with incomes over $100,000 evenly, and holding things close among men and regular church-goers. Suffice it to say, this is not what Giuliani’s backers, whose primary argument for his primary campaign is that he can defeat the junior Senator from New York, wanted to hear.
If the main argument for Giuliani’s candidacy is now collapsing, as this poll suggests, why, then, would conservatives, with whom he agrees on next to nothing, nominate him? Yes, all of the major candidates have their problems, but all besides Giuliani offer something for conservatives to get excited about, be it Thompson’s federalist principles, Huckabee’s social conservative leadership, Romney’s general (albeit recent) conservatism, or McCain’s veteran status. What’s more, each would provide a clear contrast to Clinton and, in all likelihood, turn out a larger share of conservatives for down-ballot races.
At this point, I’m in the “Any Republican will lose the Presidential election” camp, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t care about the 2008 elections. What we need is the strongest candidate for the down-ballot races. Republicans need a clear contrast to Clinton, who will rack up huge margins in traditionally Democrat areas, so that the Democrats in the House who hail from districts that they do not represent will get punished for being guilty by association. If Rudy is the nominee, not only will we lose the White House, but it will also depress turnout for Congressional and state races, which means that we will have a bigger deficit in the House, lose state legislative elections that we should win, and the Democrats will have more say in drawing up the Congressional districts in the next census. We can’t afford to lose all that just because a few liberal Republicans think Rudy will lose by a smaller margin than the other Republicans.
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These are “preliminary” results, so I read them with a grain of salt. But your analysis is dead on anyway. Personally we are so far away from the general election that picking someone based on their polling numbers against Clinton is silly. If the election were held today, the Republicans would lose.
But the election is one year away!
We need to put the candidate that makes the most sense for the Republican Party and then work to get that person elected. The candidate does need to be electable, but most of the candidates running are.
I think Rudy makes no sense because of what you pointed out–he is really out of the Republican mainstream. I think he is electable, but so are the remainder of the “top teer”. Let’s pick one of them and then work to get that person elected.
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I believe that’s now two people who don’t know how to spell difficult words like “tier”.
Did all of you ride the short bus to school together?
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Much as Hillary’s status has galvanized the Right to unite against a common enemy, several Republican “top tier” candidates would galvanize the Left. Most Democrats, myself included, would be pretty horrified at the prospect of another religious conservative in office. However, I would likely vote for McCain or Giuliani before I voted for Clinton.
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David, you mind pointing out what has horrified you, policy-wise, about Bush being a religious conservative?
Keywords: policy-wise
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Langley,
First of all, the terms of your question are restrictive, as the President’s policies are not all that define his impact in the world- how he presents himself is also very important, and, however little this may actually play into his policies, the perception of a so-called “extremist Christian” in charge of our country is a large part of why many in other parts of the world hate us, and domestically it does little to improve relations between the many groups that make up our pluralistic society.
However, you asked for policies, and I’ll try to name some. I’m sure I could think of more if you’d like.
1) Abstinence only education. This clearly comes from his roots as a religious conservative, and is simply bad public health policy. Study after study shows that it doesn’t make people less likely to have sex, just less safe sex, and that safe sex education doesn’t make people morel ikely to have sex, just more safe sex.
2) The “teach the controversy” debacle regarding so-called “Intelligent Design”, which he wanted to be policy but even most Republicans wouldn’t let him. As a trained scientist, I find it pretty ridiculous that a nonscientist and nonteacher tried to tell science teachers how to do their jobs.
3) The so-called “Defense of Marriage Act”. What gets me about this one is that he knew it wasn’t going to pass and introduced it completely to pander to his supporters in the Christian right. This is an absurd non-issue that he brought into focus because of his religious conservativism. In today’s world, we have troops actively engaged in combat in two countries, a great deal of people who think that killing us will get them into paradise, China on the rise, an illegal immigration system that’s out of control, and millions of children dying from preventable disease, and what is Bush working on? Stopping the big bad gays from being able to get health insurance, family memberships to the YMCA, and visitation right in hospitals to their loved ones.
This is just a short list, none of which are generally regarded as Bush’s worst mistakes. These are just the first few that came to mind.
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Bill Clinton was the one who signed the Defense of Marriage Act, smart guy. Bush went on a jihad to add an amendment to the constitution on this matter a couple of years ago (despite knowing with certainty that it would never make it through congress). Perhaps that’s what you’re thinking of.
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David,
I’m not sure exactly what policy you are referring to with reference to abstinence-only education - did he issue a national mandate or something requiring it? In my health class in high school it wasn’t abstinence-only…
With regards to Intelligent Design, first of all, the Federal government shouldn’t be involved in education in the first place - so in a way we agree in a round-about way. On a local level, I’m personally of the belief that evolution and Creationism are two explanations of the same thing (I don’t think they are mutually exclusive), but in a science class evolution needs to be taught (while noting it is a theory) but I don’t see why a teacher can’t at least reference creationism, even if just in one sentence saying, “I’m going to teach you the scientific theory behind this, there is also a belief in a Creator having a role in this, which you are free to believe - I’m here to teach the science.”
I am also against the federal marriage amendment, once more, because the federal government shouldn’t have a role in it. People in their respective states should decide what they want to do about allowing or not allowing gay marriage or civil unions.
I think part of the problem that you’re getting at is not that Bush is a social conservative, it’s that he puts his social conservative beliefs above the principles of Federalism and limited government. While I am a social conservative, as you’ve just seen I pretty much agree with you on every point you made because I believe in most of these issues being handled on the State level.
By the way, the federal defense of marriage act was passed and signed under President Clinton. I’m sure you were refferencing the attempt to pass a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage under this President though.
On a side note, I enjoy having rational discussion with you and others on the other side who can be reasonable and have a good conversation. It’s good to have you around because if it was only people like Publius I would stop caring.
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“I’m not sure exactly what policy you are referring to with reference to abstinence-only education - did he issue a national mandate or something requiring it? In my health class in high school it wasn’t abstinence-only…”
You seriously haven’t heard of this?! Hence the benefits of at least occasionally reading the media/blogs of “the other side.” Apologies in advance for just copying and pasting this info, but the form letter I sent out today via Advocates for Youth says it more concisely and accurately than I would from memory:
“I am writing to express my outrage over the $28 million increase to abstinence-only-until-marriage program funding included as part of the FY08 Labor-HHS Appropriations conference report.
The Democratic leadership has now approved a staggering $141 million in abstinence-only-until-marriage funding - the highest level ever for these ineffective and harmful programs.
Every single day in this country, 10,000 young people contract a sexually transmitted infection, 2,000 become pregnant and 55 acquire HIV. Research clearly shows that comprehensive sex education is more effective at helping young people to delay sexual initiation and to use contraception when they do become sexually active than are abstinence-only programs. In fact, a recent congressionally mandated evaluation of abstinence-only
programs showed them to be wholly ineffective. Further, a 2004 report by Congressman Waxman’s oversight committee demonstrated that 80 percent of
these programs include medically inaccurate and biased information.
…
I stand with the overwhelming majority (83 percent) of Americans who support giving young people all the facts. ”
Not to mention that, even if you wait for marriage, *you still need to know how to control your reproductive capacities and stay healthy.*
If you don’t like the government spending money without results, then you should really be against abstinence-only (mis) education.
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Langley,
I also enjoy such rational discussion. In the spirit of such discussion, I’d just like to add to the evolution component (the others I agree with what you’ve said, or Becky already covered what I would say).
Evolution is a theory. However, the word “Theory” in science means something different then it means in everyday parlance. In science, it means a hypothesis with an enormous amount of evidence behind it- most hypotheses never make it to the realm of “theory”.We also have things like the “germ theory of disease”, or the “theory of gravity”- these have stood the test of time, as has evolution.
I am a Biology T.A. at Duke, and when I covered evolution with my students, I prefaced it by saying three things:
1) I consider myself to be religious and I have no issues whatsoever with evolution
2) Creationism and Intelligent Design are NOT science. That does not mean that they are wrong (although Intelligent Design IS wrong, for different reasons, which I’d be happy to cover if you care), but it means they have no place in a science class
3) If anyone has any issues with this I’d be happy to discuss them outside of class.
Anyhoo, thanks for responding.
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Also, my “b” on the Defense of Marriage Act… I was thinking of the constitutional amendment.
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David —
Also TA-ing here! You just reminded me that, when I was teaching what’s basically a writing/rhetoric class, I used the word “theory” (as it’s used in the concocted debate around intelligent design) to illustrate the logical fallacy of equivocation… changing the definition of a word in the middle of an argument.