Top 4 GOP Candidates Refuse "Moral Values" Debate

Much as tonight's laughable GOP debate has garnered media and blogosphere attention today, it may have been easy to overlook yet another telling GOP debate story: the snubbing of a social conservative so-called "values voter" debate. This debate, scheduled for September 17th and hosted by ultra wingnutty ValuesVoter.org (I refuse to provide a link), will be attended by most of the 2nd-tier contenders for the GOP nod, but will be avoided by McCain (though he's pretty much 2nd-tier now), Romney, Giuliani and Freddy.

The Murdoch-infested New York Sun has the story:

If self-styled "values voters" have felt snubbed by the Republican presidential candidates this election season, that snubbing is now official.

Mayor Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, and Senator McCain are all declining to participate in a September 17 debate in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., that's being hosted by an umbrella social-conservative group called ValuesVoter.org. Social conservatives will be upset; other conservatives might well be heartened by the waning power of the religious right.

A number of second-tier Republican candidates have confirmed attendance at the event, according to the news site WorldNetDaily.com, whose editor, Joseph Farah, is slated to moderate the debate. They include Rep. Duncan Hunter, Mike Huckabee, Rep. Tom Tancredo, Senator Brownback, Rep. Ron Paul, and John Cox.

Much as the top-tier GOP candidates scrambled tonight to please the Neanderthal Christianist mirror-image of the Taliban that comprises an increasingly large portion of the Republican base, their refusal to attend this event was extremely telling: several major players in the Christian Conservative movement including anti-feminist icon Phyllis Schlafly will be asking questions, and the debate will be streamed over the Internet and on satellite television. In many ways--from media coverage to political environment (strong activist base), failure to attend this debate would be similar to a Democratic candidate refusing to attend YearlyKos. It's a duck of extremely significant proportions.

Not that Rudy McRomneyson aren't stuck between a rock and a hard place:

Without any of the top-tier candidates in attendance, the ValuesVoter.org debate is unlikely to garner much attention from the mainstream press. The question is whether skipping the debate will hurt the Big Four more with the base than attending it might have hurt them with the rest of the country. Given the agenda of those who will be asking the questions-- anti-abortion, anti-stem-cell-research, anti-judicial-independence, anti-immigration, and pro-censorship--it's likely the Fantastic Four made the right decision.

While they may have saved themselves from the stinging questions from these nuts, they haven't escaped the wrath of the base for evading the forum. Just look at the thread over at FreeRepublic:

Freeper Sun:

What a bunch of chickens.

Now we know that Rudy McRomney are part of the RINO establishment.

Freeper puroresu:

If social conservatives are losing power in the GOP, then the GOP is history and we’ll be a full socialist nanny state in twenty years.

Freeper jsdude1:

Lets see the Republican Party (and their liberal donors) Win without Christians..I WILL ACTIVELY PORTRAY THEM AS TRAITORS/AND CAMPAIGN FOR THE CONSTITUTIONL/LIBERTARIAN CANDIDATE-AGAINST THEM!! If they support a liberal RINO as Republican POTUS Standard Bearer-08.

Freeper Man50D:The Republican party has been incrementally replacing Conservative core values with Socialism for many decades. Conservatives are the minority RINOS because they have been pushed out of the party. Consequently the GOP and the Socialist Democrats are essentially one party. Conservatives only logical alternative is to leave the GOP and unite with the large number of unaffiliated Conservatives.

Freeper AD from Springbay:

If this: GOP Candidates Snub Social Conservatives is true in September of 2007 then this: GOP Candidates Fail to Win Election in December 2008. As a 'social conservative' I'm tired of being a Republican step-n-fetchit.

Of all the candidates to take heat from the Freepers, however, Freddy seems to have come off the worst, because he would have been expected to attend:

Freeper GhostofFreepersPast

That’s a deal breaker for me. Fred is on my won’t vote for list rigth along with Rudy McRomney. Game time is over. These are the issues I take most seriously.

Freeper puroresu:

Fred should participate. I don’t understand why he’d avoid this. The other three have good reason for being busy elsewhere that night.

Now, it is true that some have with some reason argued that the major candidates cannot attend every forum--but with base conservatives already worried that the probable do not respect them or their "values", every evasive move like this carries increased significance. Personally, I think it's extremely enjoyable to watch the "moral values" party of Vitter, Craig, and Mark Foley excoriate their head candidates as they attempt to dance on the head of a pin.

Pass the popcorn!

Also at MLW

¡Viva la Romney!

Now this is hilarious: in an attempt to pander to Cuban Republicans in South Florida, Republican hopeful Mitt Romney quoted one of Fidel Castro's favorite sayings in badly mangled Spanish:

Politicians in South Florida have lashed out at the former Massachusetts governor and 2008 presidential hopeful for describing the socialist saying "Patria o muerte, venceremos" as "inspiring" and for claimingthe phrase was swiped from liberty-seeking Cubans by leftist admirers of Castro.

The phrase, which means "Fatherland or death, we shall overcome," was bellowed as a political speech sign-off by the dictator for decades....

At another point in the speech to the Miami-Dade Republican Party, Romney bungled the names of prominent Cuban GOP politicians, referring to Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio as "Mario."

Romney also garnered criticism for his hard-line stance on immigration and ending the talk with the phrase "Libertad, Libertad, Libertad," a revolutionary saying made famous in the gangster movie "Scarface," which many Cubans feel plays on cultural stereotypes.

But it was the former Bay State governor's use of an infamous Fidel Castro line that sparked the most controversy.

"Hugo Chavez has tried to steal an inspiring phrase - Patria o muerte, venceremos," Romney said. "It does not belong to him. It belongs to a free Cuba."

But scholars and prominent Cubans contend the saying has always been a Communist rallying cry and that it represents the very essence of Fidel Castro's oppressive regime.

Gee--we knew he was one of them darned Taxachussets libruls, but didja know he was a pinko Commie???!!

Romney can, of course, recover from this: it's still quite early in the race, and Romney doesn't need to get Florida to win the GOP primary. Still, it will be amusing to watch him try to explain this gaffe away--and it will harm his credibility even further as a politico trying to be all things to all people.

Not a good step for a guy trying desperately to catch up with even a faltering McCain, much less a surging Giuliani for the quixotic 2008 Republican effort.

Big Trouble for GOP Candidates in '08

The bad news for the keeps rolling in for the GOP.  While the '06 elections were like a tsumani, drowning Rove's and Delay's long-dreamed-of "permanent majorities" in one wave of popular disgust, the Republican difficulties in '08 are like a high tide before an unrelenting full moon on an endless night.  They're slow, foreboding and dismal--and they're creeping up with the inevitability of an unwanted season.

The bad news I'm talking about today comes in a USAToday/Gallup poll that I found through the Hotline Blog.  It's three days old, but I haven't seen any major hay being made out of the results.  And the results are ugly for Republicans, as you can see below.

The Gallup poll asked a simple question: "If Your Party Nominated A Generally Well-Qualified Candidate For WH '08 Who Was ___,  Would You Vote For That Person?

As a market researcher myself, I would have interested in seeing party-line breakdowns for the purposes of primary battles--but you can't get everything you want.  Even so, the results are deeply instructive.  And while they may be bad for societal progress, they're also bad for Republican chances.

  Yes No

Catholic  95% 4%  

Black   94 5

Jewish  92 7

A woman  88 11

Hispanic  87 12

Mormon  72 24

Married for third time  67  30 

72 years old  57 42

A homosexual  55 43

An atheist  45 53

Now, let's take a real good look at this for a second--and see what it means for each candidate.

John McCain: Everybody is talking about McCain's perfidy and the Bullshit Express; his presence on the gang of 14 and his strong support of escalating the Iraqi Occupation; his "maverick" status or lack thereof; his pandering to the religious right and whether Dobson will or won't make up and play nice with him.

What far too few people are talking about is what will really do in McCain if nothing else: a full 42% say that they will not vote for the man simply on account of his age alone.

What's even more shocking is that the negatives against a 72-year-old  president are as EQUALLY as strong as the negatives against a HOMOSEXUAL. 

Let me repeat that: according to the poll, 72 years old = homosexual.  Nobody in their right mind would think that a gay man or a lesbian could become president today in America.  Yet conventional wisdom says that a 72-year-old McCain can be elected president.  This is the sleeper issue in McCain's presidential run, bar none.

Rudy Giuliani: Everybody talks about his social liberalism; his stance on gay marriage and abortion; whether he was actually that good a mayor; whether America really wants a mayor as president; whether 9/11 and its various ghosts can still sway that many voters.

And yes, his marriages are a big deal--but few are talking about them as  if they were the BIGGEST deal.  And they are.  A full 30% will not support a thrice-divorced man as presidential nominee.  Period.  And I would  be willing to bet that the vast majority of respondents who state that as a negatie criterion are Republican social conservatives.  That alone makes him almost unelectable (I know, it's a bad word--but I'm gonna use it anyway) in a GOP primary--and I don't really see how he wins a general election, either.

To paraphrase what we say about DLC Democrats: offer the people a choice between a Democrat and a Democrat-lite (but a secret corporatist shill), they'll pick the Democrat every time.

Mitt Romney: Well, there's no denying what his biggest issue is--and it's not his flip-flopping on abortion or gay marriage (though those will be his undoing anyway).  As everyone has been saying for some time now, his Mormonism is still his biggest obstacle.  A full 24% of Americans say that they just won't vote for a Mormon. 

No major commentary is necessary here, except to say that it's pretty hard to reach 50% of the electorate when you give your opponent a 24-point headstart from the beginning of the race.  He could still pull it out--but he'd be really hard-pressed to do so.

Finally, we have Hillary vs. Obama.  Everybody talks about how Obama's race will play against him, and talk about it as if it were a bigger issue than Hillary's gender.  And honestly, no one should read too much into the results of the poll in this regard: when even politically unaware Americans think of a woman president, Hillary comes to mind; when they think of a black president, Obama usually comes to mind (and maybe Jesse Jackson).  Thus, those who have a negative opinion of Hillary might respond negatively about a woman president in the poll--even though they might vote for a different woman president if given the choice.

Meanwhile, American voters have a habit of telling pollsters that they will vote for an African-American--and then go vote their racial prejudice in the privacy of the booth.

Even so, however, if we take the poll at face value, a female candidate starts at a six point disadvantage behind a black candidate--and statisically equivalent to a Hispanic president, which is rather surprising given that Hispanics are the GOP xenophobic target-du-jour.

Even so, NONE of the Democratic frontrunner candidates in the field have anything CLOSE to the sorts of simply inherent personal negative attributes that the GOP field does.  No divorces.  No religious difficulties.  No age issues.  We can certainly argue that society should be free of such prejudices--but it isn't.  And we'll certainly take what we can get, since such prejudices usually work against us, rather than for us.

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At any rate, this is BIG trouble for the GOP.  Their top candidates start with huge obstacles in their way--in addition to the nearly insurmountable obstacles created by Iraq, George Bush's personal identification with the GOP brand, Hurricane Katrina, economic malfeasance and generally bad government.

McCain's age is almost equivalent to homosexuality as a negative.  Giuliani's divorces are enough to kill his candidacy with one third of the American electorate.  And Romney's religion kills him with one fourth of the electorate.

Meanwhile, Hillary's gender isn't doing her favors--and may even be a bigger obstacle to her than Obama's skin color to him.

These are dark omens indeed for the GOP field, and for corporatist warmongers the world over.