Earlier today I spoke with a Republican political strategist intimately familiar with the ins and outs of the religious conservative community. He’s skeptical of this pro-life third party talk, and laid out why.
He noted that James Dobson, in a New York Times op-ed, had noted that at the meeting of pro-life leaders in Utah last week, there was a consensus about refusing to support a pro-choice candidate like Rudy Giuliani, but there was not a consensus about forming a third party.
“How far is Dobson going to get without Jonathan Falwell [Jerry Falwell’s son], or Pat Robertson, or a good chunk of these other leaders in the movement? This only works if you have everyone on board, and there just isn’t a consensus.” The strategist didn’t see a consensus emerging as the race progresses, either.
He also noted that the third-party bid was supremely risky. “If you run, say, Mike Huckabee as a third-party bid, and you get one percent, what does that get you? You would have to do at least as well as John Anderson did in 1980 (7 percent), if not as well as H. Ross Perot in 1992 (19 percent).”
He also suggested that efforts to form a third party are hindered by the fact that it’s not yet clear that Rudy Giuliani will be the nominee. “If it’s not Rudy, all of this is moot, there’s no problem.” Unfortunately for fans of the third party idea, they’re unlikely to know if Giuliani has won the nomination until March or so. The strategist pointed to the laws in Texas:
Independent candidates for President file applications with the Secretary of State. The application must be submitted with a petition, and both documents must be filed no later than the second Monday in May, May 12, 2008. For 2008, the petition must contain 74,108 signatures of registered voters who did not vote in the presidential primary of either party. The first possible day to circulate the petitions is March 5, 2008.
“H. Ross Perot could [gather the signatures in the limited time], but he’s H. Ross Perot,” the strategist said.
This strategist believed that if Rudy Giuliani gets the nomination, he could defuse a lot of the tension on this issue if he picked a staunch conservative with serious street cred in the pro-life community.
The strategist mentioned a conversation with a figure he described as ‘one of the largest Catholic pro-life donors in the country’. “He said, ‘I can’t support Rudy, and I won’t vote for him.’ I asked him, ‘What if he picks Rick Santorum as his running mate?’ Then he said, ‘well, that’s a different story!’”
“If a Rick Santorum or a Mike Huckabee goes to James Dobson and says, ‘look, before I accepted the offer to be his running mate, I looked this man in the eye. I sized him up, and I know he’ll be a help to us. He gets us. And if you sink him, you sink me,’ then how can he go on?”
Then, he noted, religious conservatives weren’t huge fans of George H. W. Bush… until he picked Dan Quayle as his running mate. He pointed out that Bush did himself a world of good not just when he picked Quayle, but when he took on the media’s criticism of Quayle. This strategist said he could easily see a similar scenario, where Giuliani picks a Santorum or Huckabee-type figure; the Katie Courics and Keith Olbermanns of the world rip the nominee, and Giuliani comes out swinging in defense of his pick.