Pro-life Democrats can give McCain the edge
Last year when almost everyone in the Washington, D.C. beltway was telling me that pro-lifers had to “get real” and “sign on” to the inevitable candidacy of Rudy Giuliani, I wrote a
March 7, 2007 piece explaining that he would never be the nominee because he was not pro-life and that the Republicans would not be foolish enough to nominate him, because he would lose to the Democrat. In a
previous article I touched upon the pro-life issue and the 2008 election. In both articles I used a very common sense and well known reality when speaking to the demographics. Serious Pro-life Democrats vote for the Pro-life candidate. If the candidate is Republican, he gets their vote. So when I read that 20 per cent of the
Obama supporters or the
Clinton supporters will vote for McCain in the general, I am not surprised.
Now this does not mean that Senator McCain has an automatic lock on these voters. Some of these Pro-Life Democrats are very conservative and do not like some of his positions regarding campaign finance reform or ESCR. Many of these Democrats are Catholic and their politics are more center/left than the Arizona Republican and he will have to persuade then that he cares about their concerns. See Robert Reilly’s excellent article on addressing the Catholic vote. Some of these Catholic Democrats are Hispanic or Latino and they have been told by their leadership that their allegiance lies with the Democrats, even though they are more socially and economically conservative than the public positions of the Democratic Party. Some of these Pro=life Democrats are very suspicious of Republicans in general and do not believe that voting for one will make any difference in the issue. They look at the last 35 years with a great deal of frustration.
Now understand that I have been strictly addressing pro-life Democrats. This group of voters has been disenfranchised by their party since 1976. Because of the extreme nature of the party on the abortion issue and the exclusion of pro-life democrats in party politics until recently, pro-life democrats had nowhere to go. But in 2006, some party leaders selectively allowed or promoted pro-life democrats in various races. The truth is that the McCain campaign can benefit from the extremism of both Obama and Clinton on the issue and draw a significant number of democrat and independent voters.
Pro-life leadership throughout the country has long known that on the subject of abortion, the pro-life position has an edge of anywhere from 4 to 9 points in most jurisdictions and that given a reputable candidate and all things being equal, the pro-life nominee can benefit from the pro-life position. I suspect that the many in the Republican Party know that although it generally requires a lot of education and detoxification from the expensive Washington political operatives who are afraid of that simple truth.
There will be a serious focus in the media on this percentage of either Obama or Clinton voters who will vote fro McCain in the general. You will not see many articles address the linchpin voters of this demographic. But with the continued infighting and politics of destruction being waged by the two democratic senators, this next month will prove to be very interesting.
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