Am I just too cynical and jaded to be surprised?
Still, I am shocked that Republicans are willing to signal their utter disregard and disrespect for social conservatives by considering Giuliani as a tenable candidate. They used to think we were a force that had to placacted. Now, they have gauged our resolve and realized they can treat us with impunity since we will set aside our principles in the name of pragmatism.
The black vote is much the same way in the Democratic Party. When
you all but unquestioningly support a political party, they will take
you for granted much the same way that a spouse that is allowed to
outright abuse another spouse with impunity will take the abused
spouse's acquiescence for granted. Social conservatives are only now
starting to find out what the more libertarian wing of the Republican
Party has found out the hard way in the last seven years of Republican
ascendency. The other wings of the party are simply fed up with both
libertarians and conservatives. Nothing more bitterly shows this than
the way that so many "mainstream Republicans" revile Ron Paul. They don't just simply disagree with him, but acknowledge him as a good Republican, but rather they hate him and much of what he stands for.
Together, social conservatives and libertarians probably don't make up even half of the Republican vote. It is probably closer to thirty percent. We are, in many respects, the "black vote" of the Republican Party because so many of us just give the Republican Party what it wants, when it wants, without consequences.
Libertarians, however, are smarter than social conservatives. We will at least often go out and register a protest vote for the Libertarian Party when all else fails. Social conservatives, as a general rule, will either sit at home or "hold their nose." There are only two outcomes from that. Either their voice will not be heard at all, or it will be heard in support of someone who stands at odds with their stated beliefs. It never occurs to most social conservatives to go to the polls and vote for a third party like the Constitution Party, so that their voice is heard, while still not supporting either a Democrat or Republican they cannot support.
No one respects someone who says that if they cannot immediately get their way, that they will shut up, stop negotiating and go home. This is what social conservatives do. If they do not get their way from the Republican Party, they shut up and go home for a good cry.
Recently, several Christian conservative leaders attempted to fire a warning shot by making it clear that Giuliani is a completely unacceptable candidate. And how did the social conservative movement respond? By denouncing these committed pro-lifers and reassuring the GOP that, though we may not like it, we'll willingly vote for a pro-abortion candidate since he is the "lesser evil."
It is hard to take someone seriously when they simultaneously rant about societal evils, and then vote for someone who they admit they view as a bonafide evil in office. Guiliani's list of reasons for being unqualified for social conservative and libertarian votes is a mile long, and a mile wide. Anyone who would vote for him, under the guise that he is substantively less evil than Hillary Clinton, is either delusional or a hypocrite. The only answer to such a nomination is vote, in record numbers, for a minor party like the Constitution or Libertarian Party. That is the only way to say that the social conservative vote still matters.
**Joe's post.
This reminds me of something I've first observed some time ago.. A political system with two polarized parties (that get the vast majority of votes) tends to degrade quickly.
What happens is that as the two major parties start to learn that they can do whatever they want and a good majority of their members will vote for them. The polarity gives them that security. With this security (ie. the Republicans knowing that the social conservatives will go nowhere else), they feel more free to roam a bit. They may stray from their original principles and generally act irrationally, but they don't care because they know they have a solid voter base.
Interestingly enough, the tendency in this sort of a dillema is to have the two parties drift TOGETHER as they chase votes of the people who do have somewhere else to go.. the people who are drifting between the left and the right.
This is where the power of a third or fourth party comes in. People need to stop voting for the best choice that has a chance of winning. Why? Because they are fueling this horrid scenario and giving a party (ie. the Republican party) the basis to do what they are doing. We need to teach the major political parties that if they annoy us and act like they are acting, we will go so far as to even vote for party that will get only 0.0001% of the popular vote rather than vote for them.
American libertarianish conservatives need to forget being pragmatic Republicans. Vote by ideals. Otherwise you are contributing to the brekadown of the Republican party. You are giving them the security to be foolish by voting for them whatever they may do just because you don't want the other side in.
I'm leaning towards not voting at all. None of the front runners are guys I'd trust with my car, let alone my country. The Dems are worse, but not by much.
You ought to go out and vote for a minor party. You do know, DBS, that every vote they get helps them get closer to being able to skip most states' ballot access laws, right?
But some of us pro-lifers don't view Giuliani in office as an evil at all, because of his commitment to appoint constructionist judges, which, lest we forget, is the single, the only, the solitary mechanism by which the executive can affect the current status of abortion.
Ron Paul's commitment to pro-life notwithstanding.
And, this is the general we're talking about, with the primary still to come, which is why the Dobson et. al. threat to vote for a third party is monumentally ill-timed and transparently self-serving. Endorse the candidate who *does* fit your principles. If that candidate doesn't win the primary, then might be the time to declare your rebellion. But I still believe that in this particular case, a split and thus an HRC or BHO presidency would be worse than a Giuliani one.
Joe Carter hit it on the head with his rebuttal of that point. Giuliani will appoint what he, a NYC law-and-order liberal, understands to be a strict constructionist. It won't be the same sort of "strict constructionist" that real conservatives or libertarians would recognize.