{"id":13062,"date":"2007-09-30T12:35:44","date_gmt":"2007-09-30T16:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13062.html"},"modified":"2007-09-30T12:35:44","modified_gmt":"2007-09-30T16:35:44","slug":"giuliani-may-generate-conservative-third-party-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/giuliani-may-generate-conservative-third-party-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"Giuliani may generate conservative third-party campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"

About a year ago, I was working on a Washington Monthly<\/i> piece<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/i> Michael Scherer has the story<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The far-right WorldNetDaily reported<\/a> 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.”<\/p>\n

If this doesn’t make the Republican Party nervous, it’s just not paying attention.
\n
\nIt 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.<\/p>\n

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

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.<\/p>\n

[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<\/b>, for fear of offending Moore and provoking him to enter the race. (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And that was with Bush<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 — […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13062\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}