Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Candidate Considertions, Part I

(I titled this "Part I" because I anticipate more blogs on this topic to follow over the coming months.)

I was recently discussing politics with a good friend of mine and dear brother. As one would expect, the topic of the 2008 Presidential election came up. Being that we are both staunch Republicans, each of us was interested in which candidate the other might support in next year's GOP primaries.

We both admitted our unsurety on the matter at the present, however my friend assured me who he would most likely not be voting for either in the primaries, nor the November election if need be: Rudolph Guliani.

I will concede that I understand the reasoning behind this notion: Guliani has a track-record of pro-choice and pro-gay rights advocation. Based solely on these issues, I would rather not vote for the man either.

However, I think we need to think smarter than that. The office of United States President is larger than one or two issues. As soon as February's primary election results surface, we Republicans need to unite together as a party behind the GOP's candidate, whether that be Rudy, Romney, or Fred (sorry Tancredo, Huckabee, Brownback, Paul, & McCain, but I think your chances for the GOP nod are quickly diminishing). If we do not, and instead split our votes between the GOP nominee and any other third party candidate, we are shooting ourselves in the foot.

The recent "threats" from members of the religious right, such as Dr. James Dobson, to disavow itself from the Republican Party if Guliani is the nominee and support some third party candidate is utterly ridiculous and completely ignorant of the broader landscape of American politics. Consider these powerful words from Carol Platt Liebau on the matter:

In short, if the religious right decided to support a third candidate, it would become the biggest loser in a Giuliani-Clinton contest, whatever the outcome. Even so, it is tempting for those opposed to Giuliani’s pro-choice stance to speculate that a Hillary Clinton presidency might shock the country into greater receptivity to policies espoused by people of faith. But it’s worth remembering that similar hopes, coupled with discontent with the presidency of George H.W. Bush, inspired some to vote for Ross Perot in 1992. As a result, America endured eight years of a Clinton presidency – and set Hillary Clinton on the path she’s pursuing now.
And National Review columnist John Podhoretz wrote in a recent post, "A third-party candidacy on the Right undertaken by even a minimally serious person will, it is true, almost certainly doom any GOP chances in November 2008."

Justin Taylor posted these of his own thoughts on his blog last week:

  1. I do not want Giuliani to be nominated for the Republican ticket. For those who are convictionally pro-life and want to see justice for the unborn prevail and Roe v. Wade overturned, it seems difficult to support Giuliani's candidacy at this stage when there are other viable pro-life candidates.
  2. The ballgame changes if the race comes down to a pro-choice Republican vs. a pro-choice Democrat.

  3. One has to ask whether or not it can be reasonably ascertained if one pro-choice candidate would be better than the other in terms of the cause of life. The key word, I think, is reasonable. We're not talking infallibility here.
  4. The next president will undoubtedly get to nominate justices to the Supreme Court. No one doubts that Hillary Clinton will nominate judges with a judicial philosophy at odds with constructionalism and originalism.
  5. I think there are good reasons to believe that Giuliani would appoint constructionalists and originalists, as he has promised to do--in part because I think he will want to placate the Republican base. (Even if he does this for only one term in order to win reelection, which I think is doubtful, then the next point still stands.)
  6. One must recognize that if it comes down to Guiliani vs. Clinton, a vote for a third-party candidate will undoubtedly guarantee a Clinton presidency (likely for the next eight years). Read that sentence again. Now read it one more time. I think it's incontrovertible, and I'm not sure some pro-lifers have sufficiently recognized this.
  7. The irony, then, is that being a single-issue voter on the cause of justice for the unborn can actually lead to increased injustice for the unborn.
  8. At the end of the day, perhaps we can categorize the two positions as (1) principled pro-life purity and (2) principled pro-life pragmatism.
  9. It seems that the Religious Right (by which I mean the James Dobson Republicans--the elite evangelical political influencers of soccer moms and the like) are in a pickle: Mitt Romney is a Mormon, Fred Thompson doesn't seem like a Christian, and Mike Huckabee doesn't seem electable. From my seat in the bleachers, it seems like they should pick one and stick with him.
  10. It is a valid, legitimate point that if the Republicans nominate a pro-choice candidate, then this precedence opens the door for the nomination of pro-choice Republican candidates in the future.
While I may or may not agree with all of Justin's points, I appreciate the fact that he is putting some deep thought into this election race and not taking a lazy or passive approach to choosing our nation's next potential leader.

May we all do the same as we pray for God's will to be done.


I Have Returned

I know, I know...it's now officially been over a month since my last blog post. Sad, but true. I could run off a list of excuses, but that would be both time consuming and pointless.

Instead, I can more easily summarize my absence in a word:

life.
But now I am back and am recommitting to blog at least twice a week (at least through the end of the year.)
"...Let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth."