{"id":13436,"date":"2007-11-01T10:22:47","date_gmt":"2007-11-01T14:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13436.html"},"modified":"2007-11-01T10:22:47","modified_gmt":"2007-11-01T14:22:47","slug":"republican-rank-and-file-open-to-third-party-bid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/republican-rank-and-file-open-to-third-party-bid\/","title":{"rendered":"Republican rank-and-file open to third-party bid"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’ve seen a growing body of evidence of late that far-right social conservatives really are prepared to break with the Republican Party if Rudy Giuliani is the GOP’s presidential nominee. An LAT\/Bloomberg poll<\/a> released last week, for example, found that Giuliani is still the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, but “about one-third of GOP voters said they would consider supporting a third-party candidate in the general election if the party nominee supported abortion and gay rights.”<\/p>\n

A new survey<\/a> conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found even more striking results.<\/p>\n

[A] solid majority of Republican white evangelicals (55%) say they would at least consider voting for a conservative third-party candidate if the general election is between Giuliani and Clinton. Overall, 44% of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters say they would consider backing a third-party candidate who holds more conservative positions than Giuliani on social issues like abortion and gay marriage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, more than half of white evangelical Republicans are prepared to withhold support from the GOP next year — and according to the data, these evangelicals comprise more than a third of the party.<\/p>\n

No wonder Giuliani is trying to reposition<\/a> himself as pro-life.
\n
\nThe closer one looks at the Pew results, the more unhappy<\/a> the Republican Party appears. Nearly 70% of Dems are happy with their party’s presidential candidates, while only 50% of Republicans can say the same thing.<\/p>\n

Even more importantly, Hillary Clinton backers side with their candidate because they like her. Rudy Giuliani may be leading the GOP field, but his supporters aren’t motivated by their affection for him at all.<\/p>\n

Clinton’s supporters are much more positive about her candidacy than are Giuliani’s. Roughly three-quarters of voters who favor Clinton (76%) say their choice is more a vote for<\/i> the New York senator, compared with 20% who say their choice is mostly a vote against<\/i> Giuliani. By contrast, Giuliani’s support is divided fairly evenly between those who see their choice as a vote for Giuliani (46%) and those who say it is a vote against Clinton (50%). (emphasis in the original)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Giuliani’s position as the GOP frontrunner appears to be built almost entirely on the notion of electability, and Republicans don’t seem to agree with him on policy matters at all. As Pew’s report noted, “Giuliani’s stances on issues are cited less as a reason to support him than has been the case for any presidential candidate since 1992.”<\/p>\n

If Giuliani’s Republican rivals don’t use this to undermine confidence in Giuliani’s campaign, they’re missing a huge opportunity. A year before the election, a majority<\/i> of the party’s most loyal voters, and a near-majority of the rank-and-file, are already open to voting against the party. That’s amazing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve seen a growing body of evidence of late that far-right social conservatives really are prepared to break with the Republican Party if Rudy Giuliani is the GOP’s presidential nominee. An LAT\/Bloomberg poll released last week, for example, found that Giuliani is still the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, but “about one-third of GOP voters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13436","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=13436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}