SoCons Unite Against Rudy?

It feels like ages ago when the conventional wisdom posited that Rudy Giuliani could never win the Republican nomination because of the his positions on God, Guns and Gays (not to mention Abortion). Well, 7 months later, not only is Rudy still in the race, but he's raising more than his rivals and leads almost all of the national polls.

Given that the primaries begin in a mere 14 weeks, this revelation has many prominent social conservative activists panicking. After all, the SoCons have been the most powerful group within the GOP since 1980 when Ronald Reagan beat the more moderate George H.W. Bush for the nomination. What then does it say that the party would turn around 28 years later and nominate a candidate that would be further to the left than Bush Sr.? When faced with this question, SoCons have to then ask themselves whether it would be preferable to lose the election outright to the Democrats by forcing the GOP to nominate a more traditional conservative or to allow the GOP to select what they view as a heretic. The latter option would implicitly concede that the power of the movement is severely weakened if Giuliani would be able to overcome their objections and win the nomination. That would set a dangerous precedent for future elections.

Thus it's not surprising to see that key social conservatives have begun floating the idea of forming a third party to block Rudy from winning the Presidency (were he to win the nomination) by throwing the election to the Democrats:

Alarmed at the chance that the Republican party might pick Rudolph Giuliani as its presidential nominee despite his support for abortion rights, a coalition of influential Christian conservatives is threatening to back a third-party candidate in an attempt to stop him.

The group making the threat, which came together Saturday in Salt Lake City during a break-away gathering during a meeting of the secretive Council for National Policy, includes Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who is perhaps the most influential of the group, as well as Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, the direct mail pioneer Richard Viguerie and dozens of other politically-oriented conservative Christians, participants said. Almost everyone present expressed support for a written resolution that “if the Republican Party nominates a pro-abortion candidate we will consider running a third party candidate.”

The participants spoke on condition of anonymity because the both the Council for National Policy and the smaller meeting were secret, but they said members of the intend to publicize its resolution. These participants said the group chose the qualified term “consider” because they have not yet identified an alternative third party candidate, but the group was largely united in its plans to bolt the party if Mr. Giuliani became the candidate.

Of course, this would be a blatant attempt to intentionally sabotage the Republican Party and it is highly doubtful that it would attract Perot-levels of support. But, if the third party effort pulls even 3%-4% (Nader 2000 levels) from Rudy's total, that would be enough to do the job.

Primary Politics

There's something positively American about primaries. They serve as a way for the Average Joe (or Jane!) to register their opinions about who they think is a better candidate. Primaries separate the winners from the losers, the strong from the weak, the men from the babies...well, you get the idea. It just feels right. Gone are the days when men in the cloak rooms sat together to hammer out who they thought would be the best nominee. Gone are the days that a candidate can win the nomination without winning a single primary (I'm looking at you, Hubert Humphrey). Today, it's natural to think that the candidate who gets through the primary process victorious is a better politician because of it.

A Brief History of American Political Realignments

It is my belief that as we are approaching what will soon become known as the 2008 Realignment. As such it is important to understand that this moment in time does not exist in a vacuum, but has come about because of several historical events.

The Republican Party was created by radical abolitionists, out of the muddled wreckage of the Whig party. After the Civil War, the radicalism was replaced by corporatism, while the Democrats became the party of aggrieved Southerners and Western reformers.

It’s no accident that President William McKinley and Sen. Mark Hanna are Karl Rove’s role models — their Gilded Age divide and conquer manipulations advanced the corporate agenda, and kept the reformers at bay. Had President McKinley recognized Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive impulses, he would never have been on the ticket.

Through the Post-Reconstruction to WWI era, the Progressives were generally Republicans, while the Populists were generally Democrats. After the GOP-Theodore Roosevelt (Bull Moose) rift of the 1912 election, the GOP became the Conservative party, while the Democrats embraced both the Populists and the Progressives.

Wilson’s betrayal of the Progressive Movement by taking the US in WWI led to Conservative backlash of the 1920’s — the economic managerial incompetence of the Hoover Administration (not the crash of 1929) led to the Great Depression, and the election of Franklin Roosevelt.

The re-alignment of 1932 lasted until 1968, but even when FDR carried all but two states in 1936, the serpent remained under the table. His victories depended on the Dixiecrat Solid South, which stayed Democratic until LBJ embraced the Civil Rights movement. It was then that the great re-alignment began to happen: the South and rural America became solidly Republican, whereas the Northern cities became Democratic bastions.

The Conservative movement has managed to become the dominant force in American politics for the past 40 years, but as we saw in 2006, the movement is breaking apart and is vulnerable to Liberal attacks. Case in point would be the fact that prominent Libertarian writer and Vice President of the Cato Institute Brink Lindsey wrote an article titled "Liberaltarians" last year arguing that Libertarians should not be adverse to forming an alliance with Democrats and abandoning the Republican Party. Also, just today Newsweek has an article about how Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is strongly courting evangelical voters into the Democratic party and apparently having some success.

All of this means that come January 20th, 2009 things will look very different in the country.

The Coming Democratic Majority

Back in 2002, John Judis wrote a book entitled The Emerging Democratic Majority. It was considered a juxtapostion to the 1969 Kevin Phillips book, The Emerging Republican Majority. In his book, Judis argued that given various demographic and political trends, the fact that most of the growth in the US population comes from Hispanics, Asians and African-Americans and that they overwhelming vote Democratic whereas the white population that votes Republican is relatively stagnant.

Judis's book came out a few months before the 2002 midterm elections which seemed to completely contradict his thesis. Contrary to Republican's losing their power, the party gained seats in Congress in what was unheard of at the time. Usually when a President is elected, the opposition party always gains seats in the midterm election 2 years later. Not only had the Republicans managed to win the 2002 elections, but they followed it up two years after that when George Bush was re-elected to the Presidency.

How could this have happened? The answer: 9/11. That event had a profound impact on the psyche of all Americans. It was so powerful that it managed to push all the demographics and trends to the side (at least temporarily). This was how the Republicans managed to win the 2002 election.

When it came to the 2004 election, there are 3 main reasons why George Bush was re-elected. First, the despite an increasingly unpopular war, he was considered to be Commander-in-Chief during wartime. Historically, Americans very rarely fire a president during such a period. Second, John Kerry ran one of the worst general election campaigns imaginable. Bush was incredibly vulnerable, but instead of making that the story and exploiting Bush's weaknesses, Kerry made himself the story with his flip flops and endlessly re-fighting the Vietnam War during the summer of 2004.

Time for a Third Party?

About every other presidential election cycle, significant portions of the electorate declare that they have had enough of Washington politics as usual and are ready for a fundamental change in they way things are done. Some years this feeling is more pronounced then others. In fact, I would argue that the current sentiment is stronger than it's been in at least half a century.

Come January 20th, 2009, the country will have endured 16 of the most polarizing years, perhaps ever. For 8 years, Bill Clinton ruled the country and while he was adored by his party, the opposition Republicans despised everything he stood for (even though, I would argue that Clinton was the most successful president ever in implementing conservative legislation; welfare reform, aggressive free trade, a balanced budget, and Don't Ask, Don't Tell). For the past 7 years, Democrats have almost universally despised George Bush, while Republicans (up until very recently) have stood with him.

The impact of this has been profound. The electorate is more polarized then ever. Moderates and centrists have been purged both parties or have themselves been forced ever closer to the fringes. This has left a gaping whole in the middle of the spectrum. This is why talk of a third party has reached a fevered pitch and candidates are attempting to appeal to a huge mass of swing voters.

But how logical is a third party? After the debacle of Ralph Nader's 2000 Presidential bid, many left wing Democrats have reconciled themselves to work to promote a viable Democratic candidate rather than to go out of the mainstream. But this is the dilemma that Presidential candidates from both parties face. How to appeal to their respective bases during the primaries, while still remaining viable in the general election?

More on this later.

Welcome

This is the first post in what promises to be many throughout the semester.

I like to consider myself a relatively seasoned blogger having discovered them about 2 years before their mainstream introduction in the months before the 2004 election. For those curious about what I've written in the past, my (now dormant) solo blog is The Urban Empire and currently, I am a writer for the popular group blog (averaging around 2,000 unique hits a day), Race 4 2008.

I don't consider myself to be a partisan when it comes to politics. Perhaps it's because I've been born and raised in Wisconsin, a state that has a long and storied history of politicians that have been on the leading edge of change in their respective parties, for good and bad; from "Fighting Bob" LaFollette, Joesph McCarthy, Tommy Thompson and Russ Feingold.