McCain More Vulnerable than Rudy

Political prognostication is a sport destined to achieve a non-perfect record.

Ask Kevin Drum, and he's damn good.

Drum agreed with predictions made last November that after Pat Robertson's endorsement of Rudy Giuliani, other rightwingers would jump on board the Rudy train. Drum wrote, quoting Rich Lowry:

Just talked to a top social conservative. He says, hinting that more prominent social cons will end up going with Rudy, 'There's plenty more where this comes from.' On the impact of the Robertson endorsement on the race: "What it does for Rudy is it says, 'It's OK to vote for Rudy.' I think there will be more of that, pre-nomination and post-nomination." On conservative evangelical voters and Giuliani: "If Rudy is the nominee, they're going to vote for him — period."

"This strikes me as right. The real core issue of the Christian right has always been 'moral decay,'" wrote Drum.

Did not work out that way with Rudy. No mass of Christians leaped behind him because Pat Robertson said so. And let-them-eat-cake McCain presents even more problems than Rudy, never mind that the GOP establishment hates the guy.

Drum's contention that the religious right voters focus on their conception of moral decay is accurate to a point, but religious right voters are sufficiently independently thinking (I know) that they will not, in overwhelming numbers, automatically and on command fall in line for a GOP candidate who does not speak their language and who is insincere.

As much as I personally disagree with the religious right on just about every aspect of their descriptive views, these voters hold much more nuanced world and ethical views than Drum and Lowry would have you believe; and, more than some Republican operatives may realize: Genuine views.

George W. Bush connected with these voters, and as much as W. is a truly repulsive political and ethical leader, he is genuine in his religious convictions.

In enough churches of the religious right, it's not all authoritarianism and 'our leaders say we must vote for this man to save the world from Satan'.

The churches are a community: People coming together to help an elderly lady paint her house; people coming together and talking about a personal problem; sharing a success; comforting a church member in a crisis; and solving non-political issues about quality of living.

I spoke to several people in Wisconsin at the fundamentalist Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) church in 1998, and wrote a piece scathing and somewhat mocking in tone for a Milwaukee LGBT civil rights periodical.

But as noted then, the church was very community-oriented and a lot of people did a lot of work to help one another out.

Sure, there will be some, possibly many (especially in the south), among the religious right voters who will pull a lever for the Republican nominee, when enough political propaganda and brand pressures are applied.

But there will also be many more, and more than enough to sway an election, who will dedicate their energies in places other than a polling place and political campaigns when they feel insulted and used by John McCain or Mitt Romney; and they may be found in the political offices where you might not expect them to be residing, like in the Democratic nominee's.

[This article appeated in a slightly different version entitled Rudy Can Fail on Nov. 9, 2007.]

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