At NRO, Michael Walsh tells conservatives to “do what Democrats do” and “lay off the social issues.” I’ve already argued against this in a previous post, but there’s another problem: Social issues outperformed Romney nationwide, with the exception of Florida. Chuck Donovan of the Charlotte Lozier Institute has the chart:
pic_corner_110712_KC
Whatever orthodox believers make of the GOP, the party by no means can do without them. Before Republicans start sending social conservatives the Dear John letters, a reminder: It’s not me; it’s you.
November 7th, 2012 | 8:27 pm
Grasping at straws. The GOP itself lacked a majority to rally around a social issue oriented conservative; Romney’s only national momentum was when he tacked surprisingly to the center 5 weeks ago. The writing is on the wall, sad to say.
November 7th, 2012 | 10:04 pm
Unfortunately, Liam’s right. Entropy only goes in one direction. The “heat death” of our culture is imminent. I give it about a century give or take a decade or so before the whole country looks like Detroit. No culture can withstand the rot and degeneration ours is experiencing.
November 8th, 2012 | 9:28 am
The Republicans had been out of power for several generations when the social conservatives, leaving the Democrat party in droves as it became the party of abortion and godless social engineering, gave the Republicans a few shots at running the country. The establishment Republicans then repeatedly blew it, not delivering all that much to the fiscal conservatives or the social conservatives to whom they owed their opportunity – they had just used them to get into power, appeasing them in the party platform only. There would be no substantial application of the positions enunciated in that platform to actual policy.
The chart above only indicates the response of the American people to a Republican presidential nominee who was either incapable or unwilling to make the case for the contents of the party platform on the social issues. Of course Obama won that debate – Romney was for the most part silent in regards to the social issues. Phony mischaracterizations of the social issues are powerful if left unchallenged – that is all the chart indicates.
November 8th, 2012 | 9:37 am
The Democrats seemed to succeed with social issues only because Romney and the Republicans abandoned that ground to them. As a result, it was the secular liberals who set the agenda and terms of the debate. If only Romney had made clear, confident and vigorous defenses of socially conservative positions, I think a substantial part of the electorate would’ve broke his way. As it was, he avoided those issues like the plague and suffered accordingly. (For e.g., I was dismayed when Romney completely avoided the Chick-fil-ay controversy – here, I thought, was a perfect opportunity to score points on the question of religious freedom and freedom of speech) So I think it’s a big mistake to take as a “lesson” from this defeat that conservatives should abandon social issues.
November 8th, 2012 | 10:19 am
What are your thoughts on this graph? The trend is clear.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324073504578105261821381952.html#project%3DGAYWED_HIGHER%26articleTabs%3Dinteractive
November 8th, 2012 | 11:36 am
Nekliw: I’m no social scientist and interpreting such data is tricky. Yes, the trend is clear – support for same-sex marriage is increasing, especially among the young. But my question is: how deep is that support? Granted my evidence is anecdotal, but most of the time when the issue comes up among friends or family, the support for ssm is basically given with an air of “whatever” – very few, outside of gay activists, seem to support it passionately or with any real thought. Don’t get me wrong, the trend is not good. It makes it ever more difficult in such a corrupt moral atmostphere for a committed Catholic like myself to pass on the faith to his son. But the “enemy” is also weaker than we think; we need to evangelize the culture. For too long, Christian and other conservatives thought that winning political power was enough; meanwhile, secular liberals in entertainment, the media and, most of all, education, were quietly seducing the population with the lures of sexual freedom and dependence on the state. We must take a page from their book and try to influence the culture one person at a time.
November 9th, 2012 | 11:16 am
I’m from suburban Chicago and campaigned for Joe Walsh for Congress. Walsh explained repeatedly in Town Halls that while he was fully committed to pro-life position, the election for Congress wasn’t about abortion, but Jobs, the Economy, and Constitutionalism. Tammy Duckworth hit him repeatedly on abortion though and I think Walsh made a grave error here. Abortion certainly was a factor in the election and rather than fully engage the issue, Republicans chose to kick the can down the road. Worse, when pressed, candidates sounded unprepared and insensitive. Thoughtless to the extent a Secular Humanist like myself felt like shouting Nat Hentoff please, make a defense Gentlemen. One doesn’t need God or Religion to defend life. The lesson here is all the issues count in an election and candidates need to be ready to engage them all.
November 10th, 2012 | 5:29 am
I must agree with Mr. Schmitz. In my analysis of the exit polls, I found that the astonishing Democratic turnout advantage was largely due, not to the efficiency of the Obama youth/minority machine, but more to the fact that pro-lifers were shockingly underrepresented at the polls. They did not show up to vote in their usual numbers.
The effect of these “missing pro-lifers” on the final results was significantly larger than the effects of the larger, more liberal Hispanic vote. It certainly cost Mr. Romney the election.
I cannot say why pro-lifers were so much worse than their pro-choice counterparts at getting out to vote this year, but the answer to the problem is almost certainly not to declare a “social issues truce” and try to focus entirely on the economy. If we are going to take positions on social issues, we must be willing to fight for them when the Democrats make them election issues — or our base will be outflanked and demoralized come election day.
My exit poll analysis is here: http://bit.ly/WO7uY4 . I invite comment or critique from those who don’t agree with my findings.
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