Social outcasts?

[moonshaz]

Republican candidates are retreating from debates on abortion, gay marriage, and contraception.One month before the midterms, the general election debates are underway. Aiming at a broad electorate, candidates are looking for issues where the public agrees with them and dodging issues where they might lose votes. Democrats aren’t talking much about

Comments

[that_which]

Nixon took on the defecting dixiecrats and traded the traditional Republican slightly-less-bad stance on racial issues for southern votes. Reagan made cause with evangelicals because there weren't enough people with the Republicans on economic issues. Then, Karl Rove said that Bush stopped pretending to be the centrist he ran as in his first term because Rove decided there weren't enough swing voters to make a majority, so he had to rile up the hard right to vote in greater numbers by crushing Democrats into the dust. The idea was to start a riot and change the rules to stay in power permanently before most folks got a chance to vote on it

[moonbladem]

Geez... LiveJournal ate my post before I could post it.

Anyway, the gist of what I said was, that I hope the Democrats keep hammering the GOP candidates on the social issues, especially where they have a record of voting against gay rights and women's issues.

So they're shying away from even talking about social issues. Keep hitting them over the head with it anyway. A great talking point would be the recent court decision that forced dozens of abortion clinics in Texas to close.

[tabaqui]

They're only backing off on the 'legitimate rape' type of comments because they see how unpopular that shite is. However, no bland, vague statement that seems quasi-pro-woman/birth control/choice is going to actually inform their future votes. They want to win - and once in, they'll just revert.

[blackjedii]

Gillespie refused to engage. He pleaded for privacy (“My religious views, really, Senator, should not be at issue”), blurred the candidates’ differences on birth control (“I believe actually we should make contraceptives easier to obtain”), and deflected questions about Roe. “There’s not going to be a vote to overturn Roe,” said Gillespie. “That’s a Supreme Court decision. I’m running for the United States Senate.”

I had to think about this - besides the fact that there is even a slight possibility of him taking Warner's seat

and this pisses me off to no end

Like it's such a deflection and it's so stupid because you KNOW what your constituents want; you KNOW what the letter of the law says; you KNOW what people expect from you when you're running for office.

But God forbid you actually represent the will of your district and have to compromise on your "religious views." I mean it's not like you're, idk, voting on behalf of Virginia or something you just want the cushy job and the nice benefits.