Ghosts of 1992?
Focus on the Family founder James Dobson reports on the outcome of a Salt Lake City meeting between 50 "pro-family" evangelical leaders:
After two hours of deliberation, we voted on a resolution that can be summarized as follows: If neither of the two major political parties nominates an individual who pledges himself or herself to the sanctity of human life, we will join others in voting for a minor-party candidate. Those agreeing with the proposition were invited to stand. The result was almost unanimous.The other issue discussed at length concerned the advisability of creating a third party if Democrats and Republicans do indeed abandon the sanctity of human life and other traditional family values. Though there was some support for the proposal, no consensus emerged.
A three-way race, according to one pollster, would look something like this:
If Rudy Giuliani wins the Republican nomination and a third party campaign is backed by Christian conservative leaders, 27% of Republican voters say they'd vote for the third party option rather than Giuliani. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that a three-way race with Hillary Clinton would end up with the former First Lady getting 46% of the vote, Giuliani with 30% and the third-party option picking up 14%. In head-to-head match-ups with Clinton, Giuliani is much more competitive.
There are a couple reasons to find this encouraging. First of all, if evangelicals want to make abortion the sole issue on which they choose their candidates, then they shouldn't compromise themselves by simply voting for whoever the GOP nominates. If that is the principle they wish to take a stand on, then they really should form a third party. This way, the parties more accurately represent their constituents. The second reason, from the point of view of the left, is that this finally splits the coalition that allowed the GOP to dominate national politics for nearly 30 years. I'm sure many rank-and-file Republicans who value party over issues, will vote for whoever the nominee is. But this is quite different from those of us on the left--myself included--who will vote for Hillary Clinton but would prefer someone else. For the evangelicals, they cannot simply hold their nose and vote for Rudy (or Thompson). It is a matter of principle. And all of this is starting to make 2008 look, at least superficially, like 1992.
The key difference between then and now, of course, is that the third-party candidate would not have general appeal. A lot of people voted for Perot because they thought he represented change. But the would-be evangelical third-party candidate of 2008 would appeal to very specific people, and completely repulse the rest. This all but guarantees that the Clinton of 2008, like the Clinton of 1992, would receive a plurality of the votes. And, in a sense, Giuliani would be the incumbent, as Bush I was, because his policies are essentially a continuation and expansion of those of an unpopular president. Indeed, it is quite bizarre to find ourselves in this hypothetical--but highly plausible--situation that so much resembles the past.
But it is all hypothetical. While Dobson's report seems to guarantee a specifically pro-life third party candidate, that candidate does not yet exist. One suspects that filing deadlines could easily be missed and organizational chaos could ensue in this endeavor. And for all we know, Mitt Romney could win in Iowa and gain the momentum necessary to become the GOP candidate, nullifying the necessity for the third party candidate in the first place (Romney's transparently phony conversion to the pro-life set is another topic). But even this is still good news for Democrats, since all the frontunners poll even better against Romney than against Giuliani, who has the advantage of name recognition. Although, becoming the GOP nominee would change that instantly for Romney, and so on...
Which is to say, the dynamics of this race are still largely unknowns, and can't be distilled down to simply (Hillary's got it locked." She may indeed have it locked. We'll find out next year. But all of these trends and hypotheticals pile even more evidence on the sense that Democrats are poised to utterly dominate the 2008 elections at every level, despite their inability to really challenge the administration this year. But that is a different story.