Giuliani may generate conservative third-party campaign

September 30, 2007

About a year ago, I was working on a Washington Monthly piece about the historical oddity of admitted adulterers running for president as Republicans. I ended up speaking with about a half-dozen prominent conservative leaders affiliated with the religious right movement — include representatives of Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council — most of whom told me that Rudy Giuliani, if he won the GOP nomination, would cause an unprecedented rift in the party.

With the former NYC mayor still leading in national polls, some of these same conservative groups have reportedly started making preparations to support a third-party campaign. Salon’s Michael Scherer has the story.

A powerful group of conservative Christian leaders decided Saturday at a private meeting in Salt Lake City to consider supporting a third-party candidate for president if a pro-choice nominee like Rudy Giuliani wins the Republican nomination.

The meeting of about 50 leaders, including Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins and former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, who called in by phone, took place at the Grand America Hotel during a gathering of the Council for National Policy, a powerful shadow group of mostly religious conservatives. James Clymer, the chairman of the U.S. Constitution Party, was also present at the meeting, according to a person familiar with the proceedings.

“The conclusion was that if there is a pro-abortion nominee they will consider working with a third party,” said the person, who spoke to Salon on the condition of anonymity. The private meeting was not a part of the official CNP schedule, which is itself a closely held secret. “Dobson came in just for this meeting,” the person said.

The far-right WorldNetDaily reported something similar, explaining, “Not only was there a consensus among activists to withhold support for the Republican nominee, there was even discussion about supporting the entry of a new candidate to challenge the frontrunners.”

If this doesn’t make the Republican Party nervous, it’s just not paying attention.

It didn’t get too much attention at the time, but there was some talk in far-right circles that Bush was insufficiently loyal to the religious right agenda, and that former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore might make a suitable candidate.

Indeed, this wasn’t discussed until well after the 2004 campaign, but Karl Rove was reportedly quite concerned that Moore would throw the election to the Democrats.

There was … great trepidation in the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign that Moore would enter the 2004 presidential election and siphon off enough voters to throw the race to John Kerry.

[Karl Rove] allowed the campaign to intervene in Alabama to make sure that Moore’s replacement as chief justice wasn’t announced until after the filing deadline for third-party presidential candidates, for fear of offending Moore and provoking him to enter the race. (emphasis added)

And that was with Bush, who is pretty conservative. A Giuliani candidacy is obviously far more serious, given his scandalous personal history and his previous support for abortion rights, gay rights, gun control, and stem-cell research.

Let’s also not forget that there’s already a vehicle in place for a further-right campaign — the ridiculously right-wing Constitution Party has a spot on the presidential ballot in 41 states, and a party leader was on hand for the Utah meeting yesterday.

Stay tuned.

The Republican paty of today isn’t the Republican party of a year ago. A lot of things are in disarray as compared to how they’d like them. They’ve got a struggle ahead of them.

We need to be prepared to take advantage of it.

  • It’s all talk. They’ll fall in line at the end of the day regardless of who the GOP candidate is. And they’ll come up with a pithy reason such as, ‘(Pro-) Life doesn’t matter if you’re dead (because of the horde of IslamoFascistHitlerStalinBinLadens).’

  • The alliance between country-club Republicans and social-issues Republicans has held together for a lot longer than I would have expected. At their cores, these two groups have nothing in common. Most Republican officeholders have pandered to the social-issues crowd during their campaigns, but have disappointed them on policy initiatives.

    Bush has delivered more for the social-issues Republicans than anyone else has – banning stem cell research, signing the Terry Schiavo law, abstinence education, scads of right-wing federal judges, and two odious Supreme Court appointments. Was this due to Bush’s own religious convictions, or due to Karl Rove’s political calculations? Or both?

    The Republican presidential nominee, whoever he is, will probably be much more tilted to the side of country club Republicans. (Huckabee hasn’t got a prayer.) When the religious right sees its influence slipping away, I think there will be a strong movement towards a socially conservative third party. And once the old Republican alliance is broken, their residual animosity will prevent the alliance from being rebuilt – for at least a generation.

    It’s good news for Democrats, and should be fun to watch.

  • It’s about time the Rethugs had their ‘come to Jesus” reckoning. A very long time coming. As the Okie so assiduously points out, the cloth coat, country club Republicans and the religious talebangicals have nothing in common. Librals will be able to work with the traditional country club Republicans. No one can work with the fundamentalist, to them compromise is always weekness. And if you aren’t on their path to heaven then you are doing the devil’s work.

    So long talebangicals, we hardly knew ye. And good effing riddance.

  • Oh please, if there is a God, let Him let this happen! Then we can send these pathetic fundamentalist morons back to the tent to roll around in the sawdust (and if they roll fast enough, they may not get bit by the rattlesnakes).

  • Actually, this is a good strategy for Dobson and his ilk – if they want to maintain their grip on the GOP. If Rudy gets nominated after they’ve made such a stink about him NOT being acceptable, they need to make sure he loses in the general. Otherwise their support is revealed as nothing but vapor. If they can’t actually get the Evangelical Conservatives to vote the way they want them to vote, they’re basically impotent and can be ignored by the power brokers in the GOP.

    So get a third party candidate out there to Hoover up the votes and when Giulianni loses (when, not if), make sure that the media narrative talks about how little support he got from Christian conservatives and how much support they threw to a third party candidate. That reinforces the power of Dobson and company without them actually having to exercise any real power.

    The “upshot” of this is that the GOP ends up moving more towards the crazy fundie wing of their party for the foreseeable future. OTOH, if the GOPers nominated someone “acceptable” to the crazy fundie wing and that person lost, it would cause the GOP to move away from the crazy fundies. Dobson has it in his best interest for NO acceptable crazy fundie candidate to enter this race – he knows that the GOP is about 90% likely to lose in the fall and he wants to be able to say “they would have won if they’d listened to me” instead of “they lost because they listened to me”.

  • A split in the Rethug party has to happen if they want to survive. The religious fascists have to be cut off, which is now inevitable because they have peaked politically. Blacks, Hispanics and the young won’t vote for a Rethug. The 25% of the vote represented by the Jesus freaks has to be written off by everyone. They’ll either stay home, or vote for their own white guy. While I hold absolutely no book for Guiliani (on the contrary I want to see him go down in flames), he may be the only hope the Rethugs have at the moment, given the sorry field of candidates they have. Even Ginghrich has backed out (The $30M isn’t there, surprise, surprise).

    There were the Reagan Democrats; hawkish, disaffected Dems who couldn’t stomach the politically naive Carter in 1980, and who gave us the first eight years of the Gipper. Guiliani is moderate enough socially to pick up a lot of the anti-Hillary vote, hawkish enough to appeal to the war crowd. He could create enough of a realignment to compensate for the lose of the religious wingnuts, and anti-Hillary crowd are not a small number. Guiliani will be a contender if he doesn’t have to cater to the basketcases.

    Sensible Rethugs, if there are any left, should welcome the split because the Dim-Dems won’t know how to handle the magnificent gift they have been given if there is a third party candidacy on the right. Guiliani as president, however, will be President-Junior back on speed, and most likely will take us the final step down the road to a dictatorship.

    There is also a threat on the left for the Dim-Dems. The anti-war crowd, of which I am one, is thoroughly disgusted with the Dims, and may try to field its own candidate. Of course it could be Nader, and who needs that. In any case, in the absence of some sort of ‘attack’ on the ‘homeland’, the ’08 election could easily be a four way race, with all the action in the middle and in the shadows of vote caging, and outright stealing ala Florida and Ohio.

    We are well on the way to becoming openly the Banana Republic the Rethugs so fervently wish for.

  • One of the major reasons that the Reskunklican Party is in such disarray at the national level is because Liberals, Progressives, and yes—even the BlueDogs—set their differences aside and focused on their common foe. Sort of a “we’re all enemies of the One enemy” mentality that forged the unholy alliances between Christian conservatives, moderates, and liberals that gave rise to the Moral Majority.

    Theocons had their rallying points in their houses of worship, where they successfully narrowed the message to an “us-or-else” mantra. They lost that advantage with the advent of the ‘Net and online discussion groups. A church meeting cannot go on, 24/7/365; the “tubes” can.

    If the focus can remain on “that One enemy;” if the spotlight can be forced into the dark corners and cobwebbed nooks that are the Reskunklican Party, then the majority of those who once sided with the old MM crowd will shy away from this current flock of GOP nitwits like it was a plague—of Biblical proportions. A split like that translated into Dems winning big—both in ’08, and well beyond….

  • I wouldn’t be so sure the Repubs are ready to break apart. Under the guiding hand of Rove they became the American equivalent of the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. In fact Rove wrote of his admiration for the Bolsheviks who were the smallest of the many political factions vying for power. Indeed, Bolshevik means “minority” in the Russian language. Rove admired them for their organization, fidelity to dogma, relentlessness, ruthlessness, focus, and absolute loyalty to the Party and it’s ultimate goal: to obtain and hold on to power. Also, they are anti-democratic. And they’ve been open about it. All that confident talk of a permanent Republican majority essentially means one-party rule which is not democratic. Also they trashed habeas corpus the foundational principle of all western democratic tradition dating to the Magna Carta. That alone proves their anti-democratic bona fides, not to mention all the illegal spying on us. A great example of the bolshevikization of the Repubs is the pathetic spectacle of John McCain giving a big bear hug to Bush at the 2004 convention after the slime Bush’s campaign threw on him and his family in the 2000 primary. No better example of political groveling like a whipped dog could be apparent. It reminded me of a Stalin show trial when loyal party members confessed to crimes they couldn’t possibly have committed for the “good of the party.” Then they were taken out and shot. Gotta admire the Repub propaganda machine though. After that sorry episode McCain somehow got labeled a “Maverick” by the MSM. That’s good marketing. The Repub party is completely amoral and the end, retaining power at any cost, justifies any means they use to get there. That’s the Bolshevik way.

  • This would be one of the greatest gifts the Democratic party could ever receive. I doubt this nominee would even have to do really well to cause damage, at least in most states. The nominee from some third party would probably poll about evenly in all states, or perhaps slightly higher in some of the more conservative ones. Even if it’s just five percent, in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, and Michigan, it’s probably be enough to easily throw most states to the Democrats. I’d also suspect that in places like Virginia, it’d make them even more competitive than we could ever dream.

  • Holy crap, that would be most excellent. They already have the second string GOP loons waiting to be anointed. Brownback is out because he’s RC. Keyes has the requisite hatred of everything, but he’s got too much of a tan for the average Talevangical and Tankkkredo would piss off the non-Caucasian fundies.

    sHuckabee seems ideal, but given the usual pattern for his type he probably has a harem stocked with hookers of all genders and species tucked away some where.

    However, I’m sure Tim is right because Fuckus on the Family etc really only give a shit about the power to vicariously grind peoples’ faces and Rud!e would give them lots of that.

    Oh well. I can dream.

  • this would just be another incentive for the Bush administration to go to war with Iran, declare martial law and cancel the elections entirely-be careful what you wish for in these times!

  • Indeed, Bolshevik means “minority” in the Russian language. — R.T. Thaddeus, @10

    Sorry, RT, but it doesn’t. “Bolshe” means “more”; “Bolshoi” Theatre means “Great Theatre”. It’s “menshe” that means “less”. And it’s “Mensheviks” — the minority, or the party of “little people” (middle class) — who conducted the first, bloodless, revolution in Russia, in 1905, (I think; it’s been years since I had to study USSR’s history in high school). I have no idea whom Rove admired but, if it was the Bolsheviks, then he did not admire minority.

    The thing is that Bosheviks were not majority in the sense we think about it now — not a majority in the Duma (Parliament), since they were an illegal party. They took their name partly as a joke on the Mensheviks (a legitimate party of the bourgeoisie) and because they felt they were representing the majority of the population. The Soviet Revolution shared many facets with the French one, including the tensions among the 3 classes. And including the 2-step sequence, where the middle class first weakened the upper (the landowning aristocracy and the clerics) and was then, in turn, destroyed by the lower (powerless peasants).

  • The real question is as th erepublican party collapse, who will the U.S. function as a one party state with the Democratic Party? Is Chicago, DC, or Mass. the examples of what politics will be like when the Democratic Party is the only relevant political party?

    The other question is what will happen to the Democratic Party when all of the former republican party voters start voting in the Democratic primary?

  • The theocrats meet in hyper-secrecy in Salt Lake City. Mitt Romney and Dick Cheney come to kiss the ring. The tobacco and alcohol lobby’s numero uno attack dog, now a union-buster, Rick Berman, is a featured speaker – he was just featured on “60 Minutes” in August, ”Meet Rick Berman, A.K.A. “Dr. Evil” – and all anybody can come up with is a rehash of some speculation on talk about a doomed third party run against Rudy Giuliani?

    Am I missing something here?

    More importantly, are you?

    Here’s some details on the Theocratic Hoedown in Salt Lake City.

  • I’m afraid I’m with Tim. There’s no possibility of a third-party for evangelicals. These people are authoritarians and their “religious” views follow from that, not the other way around. What they want is an authoritarian leader who appeals to their desire to be part of the group that lays down the rules for everyone else and punishes those who don’t fall into line. All the leading Goopers are jockeying for that position, but none of ’em come across as having a mainline into the jackboot current the way Rudy does. It’s inconvenient for them that he hasn’t bothered to disguise his contempt for the “values” they supposedly hold dear, but it’s no more than that.

    The giveaway? Easy: “The conclusion was that if there is a pro-abortion nominee they will consider working with a third party.” Woo hoo, look out, tough language there. “Consider.” Yeah, right. Abortion is mass murder, a holocaust worse than Hitler etc etc etc. and the most they can rouse themselves to is saying if there’s a pro-abortion nominee they might “consider” doing something about it.

    Now it is true that a lot of rank-and-filers are going to be a lot less enthusiastic than they might be about going out canvassing and organizing church busses to the polls for the adulterous transvestite from New York City. So that’s good. But by and large they’re going to fall in line. That’s what authoritarians do.

  • R.T., I will wholeheartedly agree that the Reskunks are “not ready to break apart”—but break they will, just the same. The first, tentative fissures have already appeared. They’ve lost Kennedy and Falwell to the grave. They’ve lost Dobson, who’s finally standing up for his own ethos. Their own Congressional caucus is riddled with “good men” who are either convicted, indicted, under investigation, resigned, or retired. Rank-and-file Republicans aren’t “undecided;” they’re waiting for someone they can support.

    What have they to offer? Many of the Reich blogs are anti-Mormon to begin with—or anti-Catholic. That damages “Romneyus” and “Ghouliani.” McCain has flown into the ramp again—and fallen into the flat-top’s propellor-wash. Can you hear the “chop-chop-chop?” He’s political chum for the sharks now.

    “Unaware Fred” is just that—unaware—to the point of political oblivion. His chances are about as good as that Alpha boat that got fragged by its own fish in “Hunt for Red October.”

    And “the maritally-unfaithful lizard” announced he won’t run.

    What’s left—Huckabee? Tancredo? Will they pull the ReaganGod’s casket from its crypt, and run the Gipper a third time?

    No—they’re breaking. I can feel it. I can see it when I close my eyes. They’ve one major shot at holding power, and that’s to foment some sort of coup—and hold Bush/Cheney in for a third term. But that reeks too much of the old USSR—and there are too many guys still alive who remember the Cold War; who remember that they took an oath to the Constitution, and not some politician.

    It is time for the final assault on Fortress Neocon….

  • BushCo is standing on a foundation made of lying and deceit. A foundation built on lies and deception crumbles under the weight of the truth. They can try and outrun the truth, but eventually it will catch up with them. QED. We all reap what we sow – no matter who we are.

  • Good one, the religious right picking principles over power….
    Get real.

    If a meeting did occur, it’s secrecy and importance are being exponentially amplified to wake a couple of folks up.

    “according to a person familiar with the proceedings”
    Smells like a pseudo-leak.

  • Would not be surprised if the Religious Right bolted. On the other hand, talk of a third party endorsement might well be a negotiation tactic, a bargaining chip. Fortunately, the Democrats are at least as prone to folly as the Republicans, just as likely to shoot themselves in the foot (witness Jesse bashing Obama on the Jena 6).

    Fact is we need alternatives to Republicrats and Demicans. Religious conservatives and blacks are captive constituencies of the major parties. That needs to change so that people can unite politically based upon shared economic interest. The divide and conquer politics of our ruling elite must be challenged.

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