Real Clear Politics has run a pretty good article on the pros and cons of Romney picking Bob McDonnell for Vice President. The article quotes Quentin Kidd as saying that McDonnell’s social issues record could hurt Romney among some women and “If independent-minded women get energized against McDonnell and Romney, that could really spell doom.” I think that such a worry isn’t just overblown, it gets the probabilities backwards. I don’t think that the McDonnell thesis things ends up hurting him. Not only is McDonnell great at talking about it, he has a terrific family story about supporting professionals careers among women within his own family. If interviewers try to pin this on him, he can smack them down (without seeming mean), garner sympathy for himself, and smoothly transition to the economy while reminding everyone that the opposition is more interested in old term papers than the long-term unemployed. We’ve seen him do this in 2009.
The other issue is abortion. The idea that a reasonably competent Romney campaign gets hurt on the abortion issue strikes me as pretty crazy. It isn’t that a Romney/McDonnell ticket (or a Romney/Whoever ticket) couldn’t be hurt by abortion. It’s that they would have to mishandle the issue to lose. For better or worse, abortion isn’t an especially high salience issue for most currently persuadable voters. The economy is obviously a hotter subject. If Obama and his media allies try to paint a Romney/McDonnell ticket as anti-abortion extremists, they open themselves up to easy shots about trying to switch the subject from Obama’s economic failures. There is also Ramesh Ponnuru’s point that “Most voters are willing to support a pro-choicer or a pro-lifer, but most voters don’t want their leaders to seem obsessed with the issue.” I actually don’t like that since I strongly disagree with the abortion policy status quo, but it sets up an interesting dynamic. The persuadable population doesn’t want candidates who seem obsessed by abortion. In order to paint Romney and McDonnell as abortion extremists, the Obama campaign and their media allies will have to focus on the abortion issue themselves. They will have to be the aggressors in a situation where the public tends not to like the aggressor. It would allow Romney/McDonnell to say well we’d like to talk about the more pressing issue of the economy but…
And here is the most important thing. It is absolutely crazy for a guy who supports partial birth abortion and sex selective abortion (and presumably partial birth abortions for purposes of sex selection – that’s an ad just waiting to be made by some anti-abortion group) to pick a fight on abortion with a prepared adversary. The average voter doesn’t know about Obama’s extremism on abortion, and is more concerned about the unemployment rate anyway. An abortion fight picked by Team Obama presents his opponents a free chance to:
a) talk about Obama’s extremism without having to be the ones to bring up the issue
b) make a temperate and articulate statement of pro-life principle – McDonnell is good at that
c) make Obama look like he is trying to avoid talking about the higher salience economic issues and
d) transition back to the economy.
I’ve seen the Democrats try to run this play before. They tried to run it against Romney in the 2002 governor’s race and Scott Brown in the 2010 Senate race. It didn’t work either time. The Democrats looked like some combination of extreme and out of touch with everyday concerns. Trying to switch the issue to abortion from a position of the left-fringe failed in Massachusetts. Romney and Brown were pro-choice (Brown still is), but the national politics of abortion are to the right of the Massachusetts politics of abortion and national public opinion is moving in a pro-life direction. If Romney has an articulate, economy-focused, likeable running mate (in other words not Rick Santorum) who is also strongly pro-life, Romney shouldn’t worry about Obama trying to turn the election into a fight about abortion. With some preparation, Romney can win the abortion argument and use it to help win the economic argument too.
June 1st, 2012 | 8:43 pm
You are really overcomplicating things. Issues either poll well or they don’t. Either way rhetorical dancing is not going to turn an electorally poor issue into a good one or vice versa.
June 2nd, 2012 | 3:57 pm
Will that’s true, but there is more to it than those truisms. Partial birth abortion might poll badly (in that most people are against the procedure being legal), but that doesn’t mean that those voters in play who oppose partial birth abortion want to hear Romney bringing up the issue out of the blue when they would prefer hearing the candidates talk about the economy. Now if the Obama camp forces an abortion debate, counterpunches on Obama’s abortion extremism then they have an opening
Same thing with McDonnell’s thesis. McDonnell has had a family and public service life since writing the thesis. He could tell a plausible story about how his views have changed, that he has supported women’s professional careers within his own family and in pro-jobs laws he has supported and that the real threat to women’s careers is the persistent high unemployment of the Obama years. So of that would be spin (fingers will be pointed at who is responsible for what in the employment situation), but a lot of it is also fact and context. I’m pretty confident that McDonnell could explain himself satisfactorily to the persuadable fraction of the population. He has done just fine with swing-voter Virginians who have heard a lot about this issue. I’d be a lot less comfortable if it was Sharron Angle.
June 2nd, 2012 | 6:31 pm
At some point or another we are going to need* a push of the Federal government out of the social sector, and a real take over of social conservatism at the state level. And getting public discussion moving in that direction now could be useful. I am afraid we won’t move in that direction. How then, are we to ever achieve anything of value in this nations politics? Because I don’t think Obama is the end of liberal social changes.
June 2nd, 2012 | 7:48 pm
“At some point or another we are going to need* a push of the Federal government out of the social sector, and a real take over of social conservatism at the state level.”
I’d say deal, but how do we get from here to there on say the abortion issue where the Supreme Court has imposed a radical abortion regime through ROE and CASEY (only slightly moderated by (CARHART)? That doesn’t mean all kinds of state-level political activism isn’t a good idea, but getting the federal government out of the issue (other than in those cases where federal policy is inescapable) would require a major political triuph at the federal level (though a true minimization of the federal power over abortion policy would also mean the repeal of the federal ban on partial birth abortion.)
August 1st, 2012 | 9:19 pm
[...] try to campaign against McDonnell’s pro-life principles and the Virginia ultrasound bill. Bring it on. If Obama wants to spend the election talking to an economy-minded electorate about abortion from [...]
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