Yesterday, Sarah Palin made clear her intention to do as much as she could to impose her extreme religious views on the rest of us:
Even Fox News can’t deny that an overwhelming majority of Americans are pro-choice. It seems odd that at this point in the race a candidate would chose such a divisive and unpopular issue on which to campaign. In October of 2004, Bush and Cheney made no mention of their extreme anti-choice views in their sump speeches.
This late in a campaign, major party candidates shouldn’t need to appeal to the extreme fringes of their parties. They should instead be reaching out to the moderate swing voters who will decide the election.
Many have argued that Palin’s cultural pitch is aimed at conservative Catholic Reagan Democrats in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania that McCain and Palin need to win. That’s wrong for at least three reasons:
1. Like the majority of Americans, most Pennsylvanians and Ohioans support abortion rights. If the five percent of OH and PA voters who polls show are still undecided, it’s unlikely that abortion is at the top of their agendas — if it was, they would’ve selected their candidate.
2. Palin’s abortion argument will alienate more socially liberal swing voters in places like Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Florida that McCain also needs to win, reducing his support elsewhere even if he increases it in other regions.
3. Polls suggest that in this election, even Evangelicals care more about the economy than social issues.
For a Republican to campaign on an issue as unpopular as abortion at this point can really only appeal to that party’s fundamentalist base. It seems to me that the most logical explanation of McCain’s return to Republican red meat is that with his slide in the polls, his base of support is crumbling. That would make sense since in an attempt to be all things to all people, he angered economic conservatives by suggesting that the US socialize mortgages. Elsewhere, Republicans are already beginning to blame him for what they view as an inevitable loss.
I’ve been saying that this race isn’t over and that it’s going to get much closer as November 4th nears. I still believe that. But I can’t imagine a reason other than extremely bad internal numbers that would cause the McCain campaign to lurch this far to the right when it should be moving to the middle.
The time for base consolidation passed months ago. It only seems reasonable to conclude that the McCain campaign believes it’s in real trouble and is feeling pressure to make sure the base turns out so that down-ballot Republicans don’t suffer in what they project will be a big Obama win. It may also be trying to keep the race from becoming an embarrassing Obama landslide.
Finally, Sarah Palin may be making her first speech of the 2012 Republican primary. Allah thinks it’s possible and he’s usually right about Republican politics.
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