They Want A Fighter

by digby

I keep hearing from the religio-political industrial complex that there are just oodles of voters out there who would love to vote for Democrats and agree with their philosophy if they just weren’t so horribly hostile to religion and unbending on abortion rights. And yet it seems that even the most hardcore social conservatives are far more flexible and open minded in their voting than that:

DAVID BROOKS: I know a lot of very socially conservative people who want Rudy Giuliani. They know where he stands on abortion and gay marriage. They know all that stuff. But they like him because they think he’s a fighter.

And they buy the story, which he tells quite well, that he fought liberals in New York, he even fought my newspaper, which goes a long way in the Republican Party. And so they like that idea, and so they’re willing to support him.

They say, “He may not be a great guy, he may not agree with us, but we need that kind of guy now.” So his lead is serious. I’m not sure it will hold up. His campaign is very poorly developed, but he is now the front-runner, with the support of a lot of social conservatives who will stay with him, I think.

I think Newtie could give him a run for his money among the social conservatives, but this is essentially correct in my view. Rudy is going to have to make some sort of pilgrimage to Jesusland and explain himself so that the High Priests of Southern Conservatism can give him dispensation, but as long as he’s a bonafide liberal hater and has a chance to win, he shouldn’t have a big problem.

And then there’s everybody’s favorite most excellent maverick who presents another challenge to the prevailing view that social issues are where the votes are. His social conservatism seems to have bought him exactly zilch.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How does that look to you, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I don’t disagree with David. I would say that John McCain, of whom I confess to be enormously fond, has to be hurt by the disclosure that Rudy Giuliani is beating him by 20 points among independent voters, because those were always John McCain’s really strong base and most enthusiastic backers.

And I have to think that John McCain is, by nature and definition and total inclination temperamentally, an insurgent, a maverick candidate. And as the front-runner going into this race, he almost became the establishment candidate, and it doesn’t work for John McCain.

And I guess the only thing I’d add to that is that John McCain, fairly or unfairly, has become the face and the voice on Capitol Hill of George Bush’s Iraq war, and that has hurt him, even though Rudy Giuliani has been a backer and supporter of that war, he hasn’t voted for it, he hasn’t spoken on it. He hasn’t been as identified with it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But how much does it matter, David, who’s ahead by 20 points or behind by 20 points at this phase, March of 2007?

DAVID BROOKS: There’s a long way to go, but I do think it matters. The money is being decided now. The press is being decided now. Obviously, a lot can change, but the campaigns have to react.

McCain, as Mark suggested, has to come back to the magic. A friend of mine put it this way: What the country wants is the McCain of 2000. When McCain is offering them is the Bush of 2000, the big front-runner campaign, the big, bloated operation. And he’s got to come back to that.

So he’s got to respond to what is a genuine and substantive shift in Republican opinion. Giuliani has to respond by actually offering a campaign. People like the past of Giuliani. He hasn’t yet developed the future.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And you’re saying he hasn’t done that yet?

Brooks is wrong about McCain.

For years now we’ve been told that a lot of people won’t vote for Democrats because we don’t have the proper reverence for their family values and war fighting capabilities. But it turns out not to be true at all. These allegedly deeply principled Americans are perfectly willing to vote for hypocritical, law and order drag queens over a man whose voting record and worldview has been consistently conservative and it’s because he has been a maverick, not that he isn’t one now. You can be forgiven extra-marital affairs or being a social liberal in your past — even being gay — if you are loyal to the Party. McCain bucks the hierarchy and that is the one thing that Republicans will not tolerate.

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