Quote:
Originally Posted by Cadaverous Pallor
The thing is, if one really believes that abortion is the killing of a baby that should have the right to live (which I do not, just illustrating a point), or that opposing gay marriage rights is just as wrong as prohibiting interracial marriage, it changes the game. If a candidate supported your economic policies but was a self-declared racist, would you still vote for him? Don't tell me there are no make-or-break issues.
|
Of course I wouldn't vote for a declared racist, but I think you are comparing apples to oranges, at least in the time we are living in today.
At the funeral of Robert Byrd, Bill Clinton said we needed to cut some slack to him because he joined the KKK so he could get elected. That is really quite a statement about the times and area he was living in. There has been a complete paradigm shift in that while it may have been an asset in the 1940s to be in the KKK in certain areas of the country, today it would make someone so unelectable that a given main stream party would never nominate someone or select that person in a primary to run in the general.
Today, whether you like it or not, the country is mostly anti same sex marriage, and pretty evenly split on abortion. Be default this does not make those people unelectable, as there is not an overwhelimg sense of moral right and wrong on either side of the issue. We all have our beliefs on those two issues, and I don't think any of us would consider ourselves out of the mainstream on them.
This is why I said, at least in political terms, being a one issue candidate more often than not ends up hurting you. Let's say someone like ISM decides that since Obama is against (or at least has not supported) gay marriage that he will not vote for him (I don't recall if he said he did or didn't), and ISM holds such name recognition and clout in the gay community that he convinces every homosexual in the country to vote against Obama or at very least abstain. Obama then loses by 1% point or some other hypothetical number.
In reality, who is more likely to appoint a supreme court nominee in favor of same sex marriage on a constitutional basis? Or to sign legislation that would repeal DOMA? So not voting for that candidate hurts ISM. Yeah, maybe he wasn't the perfect candidate, but he was the one who was going to do more for ISM and his pet issue than the other guy, who might actaully work against that issue.
And we could do the same example with abortion, taxes, gun rights, ad infinitum. There is no perfect candidate.
In speaking that way, I am going to find myself voting for John McCain in the republican senate primary in AZ and then again in the general. I don't like his opponent (for a variety of reasons), and I am 100% certain I will not vote for the democrat opposition, because no matter how much I dislike McCain, my core values are WAY more in line with him than with his unnamed opponent. Everyone here who has read anything political before the last Presidential knows I do not like McCain at all....but why shoot myself in the foot on several issues just because I don't agree with him on several other?