W. James Antle III:
Ever since James Dobson threw down the gauntlet against the Republican Party nominating a pro-choice presidential candidate, the focus has been on the intransigence of the religious right. Obdurate evangelical zealots are said to be tearing down GOP frontrunner Rudy Giuliani and paving the way for Hillary Clinton’s presidency.
The real story is how feeble and ineffectual conservative Christian opposition to Giuliani has actually been. Less than four years after the phrase “values voter” entered into the political parlance, the GOP seems poised to nominate a thrice-married, pro-choice supporter of civil unions. In the not too distant past, Giuliani favored Roe v. Wade, taxpayer-funded abortion, and keeping partial-birth abortion legal—all positions to the left of those taken by such legendary Republicans for choice as Gerald Ford and Barry Goldwater.
How have the supposedly intolerant paladins of the religious right reacted to the possibility that Giuliani will be the Republican standard-bearer in 2008? By saying maybe they’ll vote for a third party and maybe they won’t.
Now there’s decisive leadership.»
Left Behind
Pretty much.
Religious conservatives might have avoided their presidential dilemma had they not dawdled for almost a year as their bete noire built up a lead in both the national polls and delegate-rich primary states. Now just months away from the Iowa caucuses, they are still dividing their support among four or five alternative candidates for the Republican nomination.
I’ve complained for years that people seem to stand around on the sidelines these days until the last minute before noticing that they don’t like the way things are going. In the 2006 election cycle, conservatives got angry with the congressional candidates offered by the Republican Party long after the process of selecting those candidates had run its course. If the outcome of elections is important to you, you have to get interested in what’s going on at the very beginning—not in mid-October of the election year.
And with presidential election campaigns starting earlier and earlier, now even mid-October of the year before the election isn’t early enough.
James Dobson and Donald Wildmon didn’t get in on the process when the prospective candidates were forming exploratory committees, as truly influential conservative leaders ought to have done. As a result, they have been marginalized. And they have only themselves to blame.
