Randall Terry: President Rudy Would Be Worse Than Hillary
Via Matt Yglesias, Randall Terry of "Operation Rescue" renown has now come out and explained why conservatives need to defeat Rudy at all costs and why even President Hillary would be better than Rudy for the "pro-life" movement:
As President Giuliani would be the de-facto head of the GOP; he would systematically destroy the political power of the pro-life movement within the GOP; he would pressure the party to take the pro-life plank out of the party platform; he would declare the "abortion issue" is divisive, and should not be part of federal races; he would make the GOP the mirror image of the DNC regarding child-killing, thus insuring that there is no pro-life party.
I still think there's at least a possibility that all this chest-thumping will end up having been little more than an effort to strengthen the hand of conservative leaders in advance of the inevitable moment when they sit down to cut their deal with Rudy. But the fact is, there's no way of reconciling a Rudy candidacy with the pro-life leadership's chief imperative: That is, maintaining control over the nominating process.
Indeed, if Rudy is nominated and the pro-life leaders succeed in breaking the GOP nominee by defecting, that could actually end up enhancing their power. And oddly enough, a President Hillary could help in that regard, enabling them to argue that political disaster is the result when they aren't heeded.
I do not know about that Greg...The pro-life thing is the heart and soul of the Christian right. If they compromise on that, won't they be selling their "souls" to the "devil" and nullifying their very raison d'être. There is, in fact, quite a bit of logic in Terry Randall's basic argument: A President Rudy, as the pro-life head of Repub party, could effectively eviscerate the pro-life movement from within!
October 11, 2007 5:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
yeah, I generally agree. it's just hard for me to overcome my cynicism. I do think it's more likely that they'll bolt in the end, cause there really isn't any choice for them...
October 11, 2007 5:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
True, and a cobra president would mean big money rolling into pro-mongoose organizations, and a werewolf president would be a boon for the silver bullet lobby, and so forth. These are the kinds of thoughts we consoled ourselves with in 2000 and 2002 and 2004--"well, once they get a good look at what Dubya's America, they'll be beating down the doors of the DNC!" And then they did.
I say we drink to the continued good political fortune of the pro-life movement--always at the bottom of the ladder, and thus always with nowhere to go but up.
October 11, 2007 6:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Religious Right seems very serious about the third-party challenge. Check Dobson's latest comments on the issue. They don't sound like someone who is hesitating much on what to do.
October 11, 2007 6:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
What these guys really fear is far more than a pro-choice GOP nominee, it's one that wins. It's why they're willing to splinter the GOP vote in the general election and make statements like Terry's.
If Rudy is nominated and wins, it is the deathblow to guys like Terry. Not because of their movement, but because of their power. If Rudy were to win without kowtowing to the pro-life faction, they're done.
Every future GOP candidate will know that it can be done without the Tony Perkinses, James Dobsons and Randall Terrys of the world. And they fear that more than anything.
October 11, 2007 6:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
The perception of having a pro-choice Republican win without kowtowing to them would be a great blow but what they really care about is not what Rudy believes or even says but what he does -- especially in the way of appointing judges.
The pro-life people do not understand modern science very well. When cloning has reached the point we are able to clone human beings it will mean that any cell in the body that is alive and retains a full complement of DNA is a potential human being whether or not that cell was created by sexual union as is a fertilized egg. What becomes of their arguments then?
October 11, 2007 8:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree completely. Not because I'm with R Terry on the issues but because anything that will derail Giuliani and his riding the 9/11 Train to Prez glory is fine by me. Giuliani is not up to the job of Prez as he is underwhelmingly qualified. No foreign policy experience, no military experience, and yet he staggeringly presumes to be commander in chief and deal with foreign countries as prez. not ready for primtime.
October 11, 2007 8:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
WHOEVER is the Democratic nominee cannot let Guiliani (if he is the nominee get away with wishy washy answers about stem cell research, womens rights, gay rights. Then he cannot get both the fundies votes and the undecidides.
October 11, 2007 8:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
WHOEVER is the Democratic nominee cannot let Guiliani (if he is the nominee get away with wishy washy answers about stem cell research, womens rights, gay rights. Then he cannot get both the fundies votes and the undecidides.
October 11, 2007 8:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
WHOEVER is the Democratic nominee cannot let Guiliani (if he is the nominee get away with wishy washy answers about stem cell research, womens rights, gay rights. Then he cannot get both the fundies votes and the undecidides.
October 11, 2007 8:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
My prediction: Rudy will come out with some bullshit about seeing the light and appointing "constructionist" judges, and the religiosos will say hallelujah. These people are all wildly full of shit, and their sheep will trundle into their church vans to vote against the Democratic Satan just like 2004.
October 11, 2007 8:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think he's correct. The Christian Right has been able to cow the Repubs into believing that the way to the only route to the nomination is thru their anti-choice toll road. If Rudy is able to win the Repub nomination on a pro-choice platform, that will kill the myth that you have to be anti-choice and be beholden to the Christian Right to win. This opens the door for other Repubs to reject the whole theo-con dogma, which kicks them to the curb(out of power). Politicians like to follow the winning script, and if Rudy wins the nomination with his position on abortion and his marital history, others are likely to follow and present themselves as more moderate.
October 11, 2007 9:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Is it a lock that one of the current Republican candidates will be nominated next summer? It looks like such a dismal bunch of losers at the moment. I suppose that there are those who think that properly handled, Rudy could be molded into a useful president -- after all it was done with Bush 43. It just seems so improbable, at this juncture, that he would get any serious support in the general election.
October 11, 2007 10:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think what George Will had to say about this was right on target (he seems to say something insightful every 6 months or so): if the Religious Right is sooo serious about defeating Rudolf Guiliani, then why don't they get onboard the campaign of another Republican candidate? Huckabee is almost perfect for them: he agrees with them on pretty much everything, he's a Baptist (even a former preacher!), his position on gays and abortion hasn't changed in the last couple of years, he's hasn't called Dobson an "agent of intolerance", and he's still struggling so if he wins, there would be no doubt that Dobson is the kingmaker in the Republican Party. I'd think Dobson would be drooling about the prospect of that.
So what's wrong with Huckabee? I only see two possibilities:
1). Huckabee just isn't nasty enough to get Dobson's heart aflutter. He sometimes seems almost reasonable, and that isn't very appealing at all to the authoritarian-minded Dobson et al.
2). Dobson doesn't believe that any Republican will be President in 2009. If he makes Huckabee get the nomination and then Huckabee loses (which he thinks is almost certain), there'd likely be a Republican civil war attempting push him to the side. So he actually WANTS the Republicans to nominate someone who will piss off the Religious Right so that he can claim that that is the reason that the Republicans lost. In this respect, Guiliani is Dobson's dream candidate. Any of the others would potentially be "failed to sufficiently motivate RR voters"; Guiliani would cause them to actually run against him. He can then use the resulting landslide for the Democrats to argue that they are the most crucial member of the Republican coalition. Thus, post-November 2008, only candidates who past muster with Dobson and friends will EVER have even the slightest chance of getting the Republican nomination.
October 12, 2007 2:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think that the pro-life leaders consider the Presidency in 2008 already lost. They need to make sure they don't lose control of the Republican Party at the same time, since it is the only national political institution in which they can possibly retain power.
Every future GOP candidate will know that it can be done without the Tony Perkinses, James Dobsons and Randall Terrys of the world. And they fear that more than anything.So SDHAYS, at 2:38 AM in paragraph #2 above, has got it completely correct. The problem for the pro-life leadership is to convince the Republican Party base that the loss in 2008 was caused by inadequate consideration of pro-life Republicans, not caused by the collapse of the conservative movement as a whole.
It's an interesting tactic that allows them to remain on the stage in national politics, if the leaders of the (failed) conservative movement buy it as a lifeline that lets them avoid blame within the party for the disaster they all predict for the 2008 Presidential election. It can be dovetailed with cries that Bush has failed because he was insufficiently conservative.
If the pro-life movement becomes recognized by the leaders of the Republican Party as a major liability to the success of the national party, then they will be relegated to the minors just as they were for much of the twentieth century before the Christian Coalition became big in the Republican Party.
They really want to avoid wandering for 40 more years in the desert. If that requires splitting the Republican Party and converting what might have been a hard-fought defeat for the Republican candidate into a blowout win for the Democrat, so be it. The first choice is a national political disaster for the Pro-life movement, while the second option leaves them powerful within the remaining national Republican Party which is going to lose either way.
Looks to me like Machiavelli is alive and well, operating in American national politics.
October 12, 2007 4:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
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October 12, 2007 4:21 PM | Reply | Permalink