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May 29, 2007

What is Norquist Up To With This?

The values- and morality-challenged Grover Norquist, who, in addition to his proclivity for money laundering, is also suspected of being a client of the DC Madam, was asked recently by Rolling Stone to comment on the concerns people have over whether any of the Republican presidential candidates will win the approval of people like James Dobson and religious "values voters." In my book, that's the equivalent of asking Ted Kennedy to comment on whether the Democratic front-runners would be successful in winning over members of MADD. Nevertheless, he had some interesting observations – made even more interesting by the fact that his observations are at odds with his own record.

Norquist first defined social conservatives and then argued that James Dobson's opinion of the candidates is not, in the real world, particularly relevant:

What brings social conservatives to the Republican party is not some list of 20 things that James Dobson would like to see. It’s a much lower threshold. Social conservatives are best understood as a parents-rights movement. They don’t like guys throwing prophylactics at their kids in public schools. They don’t like their faith being made fun of, they want to be able to send their kids to private schools or home school. They are worried about raising their kids in their own faith and being left alone. On the abortion issue, pro-lifers need the same thing the chamber of commerce wants: serious judges. If you promise them that, credibly, you can have their support. And each of the Republican candidates passes that threshold.

You can make the argument that some candidates would be more enthusiastic about going further on the social conservative agenda, and some may well excite the leadership of the social conservative movement, but I don’t believe that it moves votes. Take a look at how McCain and Giuliani and Romney are polling. Who are the three top guys? Pat Robertson sees two pagans and a Mormon. Everybody’s heard that Giuliani dressed up in drag. If my analysis was wrong, would he be polling as well as he is? Romney is a Mormon, which evangelicals see as theologically flawed, and McCain picked a public fight in 2000 with Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Those are the three Republicans polling the best!

If 40 percent of the GOP base truly had Dobson’s 20 point test then a candidate such as Huckabee should be one of the frontrunners. He’s not, and that’s why I think my analysis is the correct one. The press is going to want to talk about and solicit quotations from self-appointed leaders about how unacceptable certain of these candidates are. I don’t think that translates. You have to convince people that one of these candidates would work actively against their privacy zone on faith and childrearing. And I’m not sure that anyone of them is going to fail that test.

If I may summarize, Norquist's point is that while religious "values voters" might not be elated with any of these candidates, all the perceived unhappiness of the Christian Right with this election is actually just a lot of blustering by their leaders. The reality is that the candidates with whom they should be the least happy are ahead in the polls and the reason is that the concerns of the religious right - primarily that they be left alone - can be satisfied by any of the candidates. My intuition says that this has got to really gall a lot of Christians, who are no doubt still incensed that Norquist dared to meet with the Log Cabin Republicans back in 2005.

I'd like to believe that Norquist is right (it's easy to find many others who would immediately say he is wrong) and move on. But something about his mixture of talk on the Christian voter issue and dissing of John McCain in virtually the same breath is all too familiar. But I'm getting ahead of myself just a little.

See, Norquist had no sooner brushed aside concerns about Christians' acceptance of a Republican candidate than he returned to attacking his old nemesis, John McCain:

Our friend McCain’s challenge is, having been elected as a Reagan Republican and running in 2000 as a Reagan Republican, he — for reasons I don’t understand, but it looks like pique at Bush — voted against every one of Bush’s tax cuts. Now he says he wants to continue the Bush tax cuts and never would vote for an increase. So that’s the big question mark. He’s not running as a candidate who’s against lower taxes. But in the last 6 years he kind of went AWOL on the fight. But now he wants to run as a guy who won’t raise your taxes and supports the tax cuts.

Don't forget that Norquist's feud with McCain is all about campaign finance reform – stopping people like Norquist from doing that which they specialize in doing. Norquist and his allies have a well-deserved reputation for using the Christian Right's networks to spread their influence, and James Dobson has been all-too-willing to allow it – and to criticize John McCain for the same campaign finance efforts that Norquist opposes.

The question I find myself asking is why would Norquist on the one hand be so obviously working with James Dobson to try to build his own conservative voting coalition (see "I Smell Grover Norquist") and then on the other hand act as if James Dobson's views on the appropriateness of Republican presidential candidates for the Christian Right really isn't all that important? There are many tantalizing possibilities … and I would not expect that his reasons are anything less than meticulously well thought-out.

Posted by Becky at May 29, 2007 02:50 PM