Rudy loves Hillary-haters

October 24, 2007

Here are the three things you need to know about the Republican presidential race.

• GOP voters, especially social conservatives, are not impressed with their candidates.

• They despise Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

• The hate-Hillary factor trumps all.

These sentiments, culled during several days of interviews with GOP voters and strategists in Georgia, explain why the Republican Party seems uncomfortably pragmatic with a pro-choice, moderate from New York leading the presidential race.

"I think Rudy Giuliani is one of them darn moderates," hissed GOP voter Jesse Fordham, "but he has the best chance of beating Hillary Clinton."

The former New York mayor leads in national polls in what is otherwise a wide-open race for the GOP nomination. Three other candidates complete a crowded top tier: Sen. John McCain of Arizona, former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson.

A fifth candidate, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, is the best retail politician in the field — a hard-core conservative whose rhetoric puts independent voters at ease. But he's had trouble raising money, and lags in polls.

To get a handle on this vexing race, an AP crew spent some time in this Republican-leaning city a few exits north of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's hometown of Marietta, Ga., on Interstate 75. The local Waffle House is a gathering place for politically minded voters.

Terry Terrell, a pilot for a local air rescue operation, said he's a conservative leaning toward Giuliani because of the former mayor's can-do spirit in New York.

"And he can stop Hillary," Terrell said.

Walking up to Terrell's booth, Mike Murphy shouted: "Put me down for Rudy!"

A conservative voter visiting Georgia from Minnesota, Murphy said Clinton is his main motivation for voting. "She is a socialist," he said. "She is a dirty, rotten scoundrel."

Fordham sits nearby, with two eggs stacked on toast and a pile of complaints about his party.

"I wish they'd get back to the tradition of stopping spending and taking care of the working class people because we built this country," said the retired middle manager.

Fordham is leaning toward Giuliani or Romney because they appear to be the best general election candidates.

"Mitt's the only one with his original wife," Fordham said, a jab at Giuliani, Thompson and McCain — all serial husbands.

Don't count out divorce as a GOP issue.

A few blocks away from the Waffle House, Thompson drew a couple dozen Republican voters to an airport hangar for a rally. He walked into the event with his wife, Jeri, 24 years his junior.

"She's obviously a trophy wife," whispered Patrick Gartland, founder of the Christian Coalition of Georgia.

With Jeri at his side, Thompson told the sparse crowd that he is the most conservative GOP candidate.

"I was walking the walk when others weren't even talking the talk yet," Thompson said.

So we posed an obvious question: Were you walking the walk when you lobbied on behalf of an abortion-rights group years ago?

"That was private life," Thompson muttered.

Gartland was not impressed. "Private life matters," he said.

Still, the conservative said he was open to backing GOP candidates whose private life and views don't jibe with his own.

"We need to beat Hillary," Gartland said, even if that means voting for "a quasi-liberal like Rudy."

There may be a deal brewing.

Gartland and several other prominent GOP strategists noted that abortion-rights supporter Paul Coverdell was elected to the Senate from Georgia in 1992 with the backing of social conservatives. He had pledged to vote with his anti-abortion constituency in the Senate, a promise he kept.

Gartland and others said Giuliani could win the presidential nomination of the strength of such a pledge. Indeed, the former mayor has already promised to pick judges in the image of Justice Antonin Scalia.

Ralph Reed, the Atlanta-based GOP strategist who helped make the Christian Coalition of force in politics, makes a good argument for how a less-than-conservative candidate could get the nomination — even Giuliani.

It goes like this: Social conservatives almost always split their votes among a variety of GOP candidates. In the 2000 Iowa caucuses, for example, eventual nominee George W. Bush received just a third of the self-identified "religious right" voters.

To win the GOP nomination, a candidate needs to secure a mere plurality of social conservative voters — maybe as little as 25 percent — and add it to a broader coalition.

"The conventional wisdom is exactly upside down," Reed said. "The key to the (social conservative) vote is turning it out in record numbers in November. They generally don't determine the nomination because they're divided among a range of candidates."

How does it stack up now? It's anybody's ball game: Giuliani and Thompson are each backed by about one-fifth of conservatives, according to AP-Ipsos polling, with an equal share undecided and the rest spread among other candidates.

Republican pollster Whit Ayres, a Georgia native, said Giuliani had twice as much support as any other GOP candidate in a recent focus group of ex-Bush voters.

"They think he can beat Hillary," Ayres said, adding that one woman told him: "I wish Rudy were pro-life, but I am for him."

State Sen. Eric Johnson, a leading Republican in Georgia, said he's never seen the party so pragmatic.

"The ultimate goal will be to win the White House," he said, adding that when Republicans vote for a nominee "some people may have to hold their noses."

Republican voters don't love any of their candidates.

But they hate Clinton.

"Most of the people who haven't voted — women, the poor — are going to put Hillary Clinton in office," said Rick Morris, 60, while leaning on his white pickup truck outside the Waffle House, "and I'm just hoping that won't be the case."

By Ron Fournier

Source: The Associated Press

Posted by Hillary · Filed Under 2008, Commentary, Editorials/Opinion, Hillary Clinton, Interviews, News, Polls & Surveys

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