They'd Rather Switch Than Fight
The predictable move right by Republican -presidential candidates.
by Fred Barnes
The Weekly Standard
03/05/2007
The sudden embrace of social conservatism by top Republican presidential candidates has been widely misunderstood. It's been portrayed, particularly in the media, as political pandering of the first order-and nothing more. True, there's a large element of pandering when a candidate switches positions on abortion, gay marriage, and other social issues with an eye to gaining votes. But for a Republican seeking his party's nomination, shifting to the right on social issues is hardly shocking. Rather, it's quite normal, it's absolutely necessary, and it's likely to work.
There's a bonus in all this for social conservatives. Switchers on social issues usually stay switched. Ronald Reagan and the elder George Bush did so after becoming pro-lifers. All those Democratic presidential candidates in the 1980s and 1990s who switched sides on abortion from pro-life to pro-choice have stayed put. Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, says you only get to flip once on social issues. If you switch back, "you're in no man's land," a politician without a political base.
The newly minted social conservative who's made the most drastic move is former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. He's flipped on abortion, gay rights, and embryonic stem cell research, as Jennifer Rubin detailed in these pages a few weeks back ("Mitt Romney's Conversion," Feb. 5). Senator John McCain of Arizona has changed his view on Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, from supporting it to favoring its reversal. And Rudy Giuliani, the ex-mayor of New York, has sought to take the edge off his social liberalism, even suggesting he'd nominate Supreme Court justices who might overturn Roe v. Wade.
It was Democrats with presidential ambitions who transformed the switch on social issues-especially on abortion-into a normal political event. Over the two decades after the Roe v. Wade ruling, the two parties sorted themselves out on abortion, Republicans emerging as the pro-life party, Democrats the pro-choice party.
More recently, one party has become reliably conservative on the broad range of social issues (Republicans), the other mostly liberal on those issues (Democrats). This, in turn, has forced presidential candidates of both parties to align themselves accordingly. So a stampede of Democrats who sought their party's presidential nomination after 1980 abandoned their opposition to abortion. The list included Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Dick Gephardt, Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich, Tom Harkin, and Jesse Jackson.
For all those Democrats, switching was necessary, since a pro-lifer has little or no chance of winning the Democratic nomination. It's the same for Republicans, only in their case it's a pro-choice candidate who has the extreme disadvantage. Were Democrats somehow to anoint a pro-lifer as their presidential candidate, that would surely prompt a pro-choice challenger to run as an independent or third party nominee. With Republicans, a pro-choice nominee would spark a pro-life candidacy.
For Democrats, switching is painless. They not only put themselves on the side of party activists and liberal interest groups, they get right with elite opinion and the media. For Republicans, it's anything but easy. When they switch and endorse social conservatism, elite opinion is appalled and the press plays up their supposed insincerity.
Both Newsweek and liberal columnists have taken umbrage at Romney's move to the right. McCain and Giuliani too have been taken to task in the press. Nothing like this happened when Democrats changed sides. Their switch on abortion was greeted by quiet media acceptance.
"I don't remember any attacks [on Democratic switchers] from the side that benefited from their conversion," says Republican strategist Jeff Bell, coauthor with Princeton professor Robert P. George of the forthcoming book Social Conservatism. This is largely true for Republican switchers now. With some exceptions, social conservatives accept their changes as genuine or at least steps in a positive direction.
"I want to give them the benefit of the doubt," says Perkins. Liberals and the press, however, can't see a lurch toward social conservatism as anything but a crass political maneuver. "Conservatives don't see it that way," Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention told Newsweek. "They see it as someone who has seen the light." Perkins applies that to Romney, saying he "may have seen the light."
Because Romney's switch is the most sweeping, it's received the most attention and the most press criticism. Romney has explained that a conversation with a Harvard scientist in 2004 led to his changed view of abortion and embryonic stem cell research.
The scientist said, according to Romney, that killing 14-day-old embryos was not a moral issue. This pushed Romney to regard all human life, from conception, as worthy of legal protection.
Just as he'd been publicly pro-choice, Romney had also been a champion of gay rights. He changed after the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 2003 legalized gay marriage in the state. Whatever the motive, Romney's flips have conveniently put him in sync with Republicans nationally.
McCain gets credit from social conservatives for his pro-life voting record in Congress. Now he favors overturning Roe v. Wade, the opposite of the position he took in 1999. Nonetheless, McCain said last week that it's "a false claim to say I have changed my position." Reversing Roe v. Wade is consistent with his anti-abortion record, he insisted. On gay marriage, however, social conservatives fault McCain for refusing to back the proposed constitutional amendment that would bar same-sex marriage.
Giuliani has the most difficult task in appealing to social conservatives because he hasn't repudiated his support for legalized abortion and gay unions. But he's tried to soften the blow. In an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News, he said he believes "in a woman's right to choose," but implied that as president he would appoint justices like Antonin Scalia who might overturn that right. "I would appoint judges that interpreted the Constitution rather than invented it," he said.
On marriage, Giuliani said, it "should be between a man and a woman." As New York mayor, he signed domestic partnership legislation and still favors legal recognition of gay unions. "We should be tolerant, fair, open, and we should understand the rights that all people have in our society," he said.
There's one issue on which social conservatives admire Giuliani: his strong opposition to Islamic radicalism and eagerness to lead the fight against it. "The threat of Islam is a moral issue," says Perkins. "That's in the mix with the social issues."
The rush of Republican candidates to social conservatism points up a striking political fact. "It tells me the movement is surprisingly healthy," says Bell. The movement is a somewhat amorphous body that is dominated by religious conservatives. "It's so much a part of the Republican party that people feel the need to come to terms with it," Bell adds. And when presidential candidates do just that, they're likely to be rewarded.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
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