You don’t have to be crazy to vote in a Republican Primary, but it sure helps

I continue to watch the ever-growing Republican pander to the rapture believers and the voodoo economics crowd.  Pandering is disgusting no matter which side of the aisle does it.  However, the Republicans have a special form of it because it involves reality denial not empty promises.  It’s obvious that Republican primary voters have views clearly based in an alternate reality.  Republican candidates develop two alter egos to deal with the disconnect.  So my question is can any Republican Presidential Wannabe make it through the primary without sounding so many Republican Dogwhistles that they are sure to turn off independent voters? This is especially germane given those dog whistles are anathema to Democratic and Independent voters alike.  Let me demonstrate.

Several political analysts have noticed the widening gap between Republican politicians, their primary base, and polls on issues from the public at large.   First, there’s Mitch Daniels who said earlier that the Republican Party had to call a truce on social issues only to turn around as governor in Indiana and do a wildly unpopular thing.  He just signed a law in Indiana to defund Planned Parenthood (h/t to Beata).  He may have the party elite in his pointy little head, but he’s probably lost women. Rick Ungar at Forbes called this a “cynical move [that] will likely prove useful in the coming primaries”.

However, there is a world of difference between the nomination process and the general election that follows – something Governor Daniels will discover should he become the Republican standard bearer.

In a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll, we learn that –

Among women overall, 56% found it “mostly or totally unacceptable” to “eliminate funding to Planned Parenthood for family planning and preventive health services.”

Among women 18–49, 60% found it “mostly or totally unacceptable” to “eliminate funding to Planned Parenthood for family planning and preventive health services.”

That means that are at least 56% of women out there who are going to understand that Governor Daniels is directly responsible for denying critical care to women who have nowhere else to go to get it.

Add to this the fact that approximately 25% of all American women have, at some time or another, utilized the services of Planned Parenthood and one quickly understands that Daniel’s support for this legislation is not going to play well with female voters.

Then there’s Romney who is trying hard to prove his credentials to that same rapture set.  I was not surprised to read the numbers on how powerful the evangelical set has become in Republican politics.  They asked for them, after all, with the Nixon Southern Strategy and moves to capture “Reagan Democrats”.  The problem is that none of the pro-business Republicans want anything to do with the great unwashed that those strategies brought to the party.  They wanted their votes but that was basically it.  They had hoped that pandering to evangelicals with empty promises would work for them. It does work for Democratic politicians.  It was obvious there was going to be ongoing problems when most evangelicals sat out an election rather than vote for John McCain whom they consider apostate.  Mormon and former typical NE Rockefeller Republican Romney gives them the creeps. Ron Brownstein writing for National Journal says Romney has an evangelical problem.

The reason is that with Huckabee off the field, the former Baptist minister’s core constituency—the evangelical Christians who represent nearly half of the GOP’s primary electorate—are now back in play for all competitors. If Romney can’t defang the resistance he encountered from those voters in 2008, he faces the threat that they will eventually consolidate behind another contender, such as former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, with potentially wider support than Huckabee demonstrated last time. “The risk for Romney is that some other candidate with broader appeal may attract them, someone who could stitch together a majority coalition in a way that Huckabee was not going to do,” says veteran GOP pollster Whit Ayres, who is working for potential presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman.

Even many Republicans underestimate the centrality of evangelical voters in the GOP’s nominating process. In 2008, self-identified evangelical Christians constituted 44 percent of all Republican presidential primary voters, according to a cumulative analysis of state exit polls by former ABC polling director Gary Langer. Candidates who rely almost entirely on evangelicals—such as Huckabee, Gary Bauer in 2000, and televangelist Pat Robertson in 1988—have never come close to winning the GOP nomination. But evangelicals are plentiful enough that any candidate whom they deem completely unacceptable faces a formidable obstacle—and not only in the Deep South, where they are most heavily concentrated.

Evangelical Christians represented a majority of 2008 GOP primary voters in 11 of the 29 states in which exit polls were conducted. In Iowa and South Carolina, two states that along with more-secular New Hampshire have proved decisive in Republican nomination contests since 1980, evangelicals provided exactly 60 percent of the vote. In 10 other states, including many outside the Deep South, evangelicals represented between one-third and 46 percent of the vote.

Assuming this problem doesn’t go away with the May 21st rapture, Romney and others will still have to woo the Krewe of Iron Age Myth. Here’s the portion of the article detailing their precise issues which basically have to do with defining life at fertilization, defining all GLBTs as damnable, and ensuring no “foreign” people ever reach US soil. Also, they hate preppies. This explains why Dubya’s fake NASCAR persona went over well.

Romney has encountered two levels of resistance from evangelicals: doubts that he is truly committed to conservative positions on social issues such as abortion, and theological tension over his Mormon religion. That latter problem was especially pronounced in the South, where Southern Baptists and Pentecostals, two groups particularly leery of Mormonism, make up at least two-thirds of Republican evangelicals, notes John C. Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron who is an expert on religion and politics. Class issues compound Romney’s challenge. Polls suggest that his smooth, boardroom manner plays better among college-educated than noncollege Republicans, and in many places evangelicals tilt toward the latter.

PBS’s Glen Ifill has noticed the return to dogwhistle politics.  This quote pertains to Newt Gingrich who rightly labelled most of these extreme Republican policies as “right-wing social engineering”. Republicans spent the next week making Newt come to jayzus. Newt’s rhetoric let the dogs out and definitely showed that today’s Republicans sold the big tent a long time ago.

It’s unclear who the former House Speaker thought he was speaking to, but the dog whistle was heard by conservatives who immediately chastised him for undercutting a fellow Republican. “You’re an embarrassment,” one Iowa Republican scolded him in a widely-circulated YouTube video.

Gingrich said this was not what he meant, but in dog-whistle politics, what is heard often matters more than what is said. Days later, he apologized to Ryan.

During the same television appearance, Gingrich also said he did not mean to send a coded message on race when he told a Georgia Republican Party dinner days earlier that President Obama is “the most successful food stamp president in American history.”

Outrage ensued. Many African Americans saw racial code directed at the nation’s first black president. Gingrich called that suggestion “bizarre.”

Leave aside for a moment that in order for this to be code, the listener would have to automatically assume that most if not all food stamp recipients are black. This, as it happens, is not true, and Gingrich insisted he was making an argument about the state of the economy, not the skin color of food assistance recipients.

There may be some merit to his explanation, but it got lost in the din of the whistle, which sparked debate mostly among liberals and African Americans — who seemed least likely to be the remark’s intended targets.

Newt has been thoroughly chastised for not carrying the current party branch water bucket.   Another place where the Republican party seems clearly out of step with the majority of Americans is allowing gay marriage rights.  Independents opinions have pushed support solidly over the 50 % mark.

For the first time in Gallup’s tracking of the issue, a majority of Americans (53%) believe same-sex marriage should be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages. The increase since last year came exclusively among political independents and Democrats. Republicans’ views did not change.

No Republican primary candidate will pass the evangelical litmus test with a position running contrary to their narrow interpretation of an obscure reference in Deuteronomy.  There are only two presidential contenders that support gay marriage.  That would be Fred Karger and Gary Johnson.  What!?!?  Never heard of them?  You probably never will either.  They will be eviscerated by the jayzus lovers.   At best, you’ll hear that neo-confederate argument of State’s Rights from Ron Paul that represents a variation of the theme of legal slavery. State’s Rights is basically code for ‘southern states get to ignore the civil rights of others unless the Supreme Court–now stacked with theocrats–disallows it’.  It’s a grand compromise ala slavery.

It’s possible that most Americans won’t notice the fall out from the Huckabee bow out.  Huckabee clearly had the evangelical market cornered.  Now these folks are scattering.  That means there’s a grab for them and the rhetoric will become appalling. Evangelicals may go for the fembots, if either of them enters the race. Both potential Republican women candidates have that classic know-nothing bravada that allows them to say outrageous untruths convincingly. However, no serious Republican money will ever reach Quiterella or Michelle the Mouth. Ask me if I care a fig about Quiterella having fire in her belly?

Then there’s the absolutely no new taxes fanatics.  Look at the public’s poll numbers on raising taxes on the very wealthy and leaving medicare and medicaid alone which is the dogwhistle Newt Gingrich refused to blow before he was forced to blow it.  Republicans and the Club for Growth (sic) keeping running against the public on this issue too which is why Nancy Pelosi is up there in Wisconsin reminding voters of the Ryan plan as I write.

The McClatchy-Marist poll, conducted as Democrats and Republicans were touting their own long-term budget visions, also found the country largely pessimistic about America’s direction.

On taxes, the poll reported that roughly two out of three registered voters — 64 percent — would be in favor of increasing taxes on annual income over $250,000. President Obama reiterated in his deficit-reduction speech last week that he favored allowing taxes to rise on families in that income level.

Independents favored that plan of action at roughly the same percentage as the country at large, with more than eight in 10 Democrats also behind the idea. A majority of Republicans, 54 percent, opposed it.

The poll was conducted both before and after Obama’s Wednesday speech, with support for higher taxes on wealthier Americans picking up afterward.

Meanwhile, fully four in five registered voters oppose cutting Medicare and Medicaid. The House GOP’s fiscal 2012 budget, largely crafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), makes fundamental long-term changes to both health entitlement programs, converting Medicaid into a block grant and turning Medicare into a type of voucher system.

Democrats (92 percent), Republicans (73 percent) and independents (75 percent) all opposed cuts to the two programs, the McClatchy-Marist poll found.

How long can Republicans push plans that go against poll numbers like that?  Rachel Maddow points out that a solidly Republican New York Congressional District may put a Democrat in the House on the issue.  Maddow also pointed out that Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown is running quickly away from saying that he’d vote for the Ryan plan if it hit the senate floor which it will do sometime this week or next.  It is also rumored that Mitch McConnell will not whip his members when the vote occurs.  Some of these old dudes remember the third rail.

Karl Rove’s American Crossroads PAC is about to spend $650,000 on the Medicare referendum that is the special election for New York’s 26th Congressional District, Roll Call reports. The idea is to save what should have been a safe seat anyway for Republican Jane Corwin, who came out in favor of the Paul Ryan Medicare plan and has been having a barrel of fun ever since.

Yesterday, House Speaker John Boehner paid a visit. Today, Mr. Rove brings the money. Producer Mike Yarvitz finds two bits from the local Buffalo News — headline: “GOP leaders rally to Corwin, but where are the Democrats?” — for a sense of scale. Quick read: It’s a lot of money.

So, whose likely to really win this Republican Presidential Primary Extremist Extravaganza?  Two Guesses.

No wonder the President is on the road with speeches made to burn political capital.  None of the above appears the best choice for any one that doesn’t want the right’s agenda.