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News

A social conservative’s evaluation of Tuesday’s election results

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New York

First, social conservatives lost the special election in New York’s 23rd district.

Excerpt:

Doug Hoffman, the upstart third-party Conservative candidate for the special election in New York’s 23rd congressional district, conceded defeat to Democrat Bill Owens early Wednesday morning.

The final tally showed Owens beating out Hoffman by 4,000 votes, 49 percent to 45 percent. On social issues, Owens has identified himself as “pro-choice” regarding abortion, but on marriage, he indicated that he favored President Obama’s position: against same-sex “marriage,” but for civil unions.

[…]While polls on the eve of election-day showed Hoffman having pulled ahead by at least five points, Scozzafava’s weekend endorsement of Owens after the implosion of her own campaign, which had the blessing of national GOP leaders, may have proved the game-changer.

Scozzafava has close ties to the labor unions – her husband is a labor organizer – and channeled that on-the-ground support into Owens campaign. The Albany Times Union reports that powerful New York unions poured in hundreds of thousands of dollars to oppose Hoffman.

That’s a lost seat in the House of Representatives. And labor unions opposed the socially conservative candidate.

Maine

Next, social conservatives won against same-sex marriage in Maine.

Excerpt:

Maine voters handed traditional marriage supporters a major victory Tuesday night after rejecting a same-sex “marriage” law that the state government approved six months ago.

Though signed by Democratic Gov. John Baldacci, the law never went into effect, and remained in limbo after the success of the ballot initiative calling for a people’s vote.

Had the law been upheld, Maine would have been the sixth U.S. state to allow homosexual “marriage,” after Iowa, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

As of early Wednesday, the law was defeated 53% to 47%, despite polling data leading up to the vote showing the race in a dead heat.

[…]Same-sex “marriage” has now lost in all 31 states in which the question has been put to a popular vote.

Traditional marriage is the view that children should be raised by their own mother and father in a stable marriage. Same-sex marriage denies that children should have a right to be raised by a mother and father biologically related to them. See my previous post to understand why people oppose same-sex marriage. And here’s my case for the pro-life position.

Virginia

Social conservatives were elected as governor, lieutenant-governor and attorney general in Virginia.

Excerpt:

Virginia’s state elections saw a sweep for pro-life candidates into the state’s highest offices. Pro-life Republicans captured the offices of governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general by wide margins.

Pro-life Republican Bob McDonnell handily beat his pro-abortion Democratic opponent Creigh Deeds. Election night returns showed McDonnell cruising to victory, garnering 59 percent of the vote to Deeds’ 41 percent with 99 percent of precincts reporting in.

[…]Pro-life Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, a Republican, also handily won re-election with 57 percent of the vote, to 43 percent for his pro-abortion Democratic challenger Jody Wagner, with 99 percent of precincts reporting.

[…]Pro-life Republican Ken Cuccinelli also beat out his Democratic and pro-abortion challenger Steve Shannon for the office of attorney general, 58 percent to 42 percent with 99 percent of precincts reporting.

[…]”The Virginia Society for Human Life looks forward to working with all three of these stalwart pro-life leaders, as well as pro-life members of the State Senate and House of Delegates, to enact laws that will safeguard the right to life of unborn children and support their mothers, and protect older people and those with disabilities from denial of lifesaving medical treatment, food and water.”

Great news for social conservatives.

New Jersey

A pro-life, pro-family Republican was elected as governor of the strong Democrat state of New Jersey.

Excerpt:

Incumbent Democrat Gov. Jon Corzine conceded defeat last night to pro-life, pro-family Republican Chris Christie in New Jersey’s governor’s race.

Christie fought a hard-won battle against the incumbent Corzine and third-party candidate Chris Daggett, winning 49 percent of the vote. Corzine, whose bid for re-election received huge assistance from President Barack Obama, who personally campaigned for him in New Jersey, came in second with 45 percent of the vote, with Daggett trailing in third with six percent.

resident Obama had attempted to rally support behind Corzine by tapping into the popularity that garnered the President 57 percent of the vote in New Jersey in 2008. However neither Obama’s personal charisma, nor Corzine’s outspending Christie by almost 3-1 – $30 million to $11.5 million – could save the incumbent governor from defeat in an election that mainly turned on the economy and job stagnation, crippling fees and taxes (especially sky-high property taxes), and fiscal irresponsibility in Trenton that has run rampant during Corzine’s tenure.

[…]During the brutal campaign fight, Corzine, who was endorsed by abortion-provider Planned Parenthood, had attacked Christie in ads for the latter’s support of a constitutional amendment banning abortion and his opposition to embryonic stem-cell research.

Corzine is a big proponent of embryonic stem-cell research. However, New Jersey voters, frustrated with the state’s failure to close a $3 billion budget gap, rejected in November 2007 a $450 million ballot initiative to support a project that would have funded embryonic stem-cell research facilities. The setback was a political humiliation for Corzine, who had broken ground for the Christopher Reed Pavilion in October with the words “to the future,” only to have the voters shelve the project a month later.

Christie, on the other hand, received a critical endorsement from New Jersey’s foremost pro-life GOP Congressman Chris Smith. The pro-life leader’s approval for Christie, who admitted at the beginning of his campaign that he used to describe himself as “pro-choice” until the birth of his own children led him to embrace the pro-life position, was followed by the endorsement of New Jersey Right to Life.

[…]Both of Christie’s challengers, Corzine and Daggett, indicated that they would sign a bill legalizing same-sex “marriage” if given the opportunity.

So again, Barack Obama campaigned on behalf of the anti-life, anti-marriage Democrat candidate, but the Republican pro-life, pro-marriage candidate won the election. Social conservatism is as real to me as fiscal conservatism or foreign policy conservatism, so I am overjoyed that social conservatives won elected offices in 3 out of 4 states that voted for Obama, who is anti-life and anti-family.

Commentary

Six prominent Jews explain why most Jews are so liberal

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From Commentary magazine. (H/T Robert Stacy McCain via ECM)

Excerpt:

Since nature abhors a spiritual vacuum, Podhoretz concludes that the religion of liberalism—that is, faith in the powers of government — has replaced Judaism in the hearts of Jews. . . .
Why, asks Podhoretz, do Jews cling to this belief if it no longer serves our interest? . . .
If I may be allowed so vast a sweep of generalization, Republicans, conservatives, are the party that feels comfortably at home. We need not attach a value to this observation; you may approve of this sensibility or not. But for Jews, unease is our mother tongue. . . .
— David Wolpe

Jewish liberalism endures, Podhoretz concludes, because turning conservative, in liberal eyes, is nothing short of heresy—or worse, apostasy.
— Jonathan D. Sarna

Most American Jews, on the other hand, seem to have learned from an early age that to be Jewish is to be a liberal Democrat, no matter what. . . . [T]he loyalty of American Jews to the Left has been unaffected by the failure of the Left to reciprocate that loyalty.
— Jeff Jacoby

In many cases, Podhoretz notes, left-wing politics took the place of a Judaism that felt to new American immigrants like a business suit on a beach: conspicuous, constraining, ridiculously out of place. . . . On this reading, emotional, facts-be-damned Jewish liberalism is a gravestone marking the death of religious faith.
— David Gelernter

But my own tentative personal resolution, reached after reading Why Are Jews Liberals?, is this: I’m going to stop worrying about American Jews. They’re not worth the headache. Either they’ll come to their senses or they won’t, and there’s not much I (or anyone else, I suspect) can do about it.
— William Kristol

For most American Jews, the core of their Jewish identity isn’t solidarity with Israel; it’s rejection of Christianity. This observation may help to explain the otherwise puzzling political preferences of the Jewish community explored in Norman Podhoretz’s book. Jewish voters don’t embrace candidates based on their support for the state of Israel as much as they passionately oppose candidates based on their identification with Christianity — especially the fervent evangelicalism of the dreaded “Christian Right.”
— Michael Medved

But what McCain writes himself is also worth noting:

Thus, for the past several years, we were treated to endless liberal jeremiads against “abstinence education,” as if the sex-ed curriculum in public schools were the single most important issue in national politics. The propaganda purpose of this liberal campaign was to suggest to people who think of themselves as sexual sophisticates that the GOP is actively promoting ignorance.

If you wish to identify the source of the Republican Party’s electoral weakness among under-30 voters, this is it — even though, as I say, this perception of the GOP as “anti-sex” (or “pro-ignorance”) is strictly a function of liberal propaganda. GOP leaders have failed to recognize the damage inflicted by this propaganda, have failed to clarify the policy issues involve and have, at times, unwittingly played to the negative stereotype of Republicans as uptight, repressed, and clueless about sex.

Depicting the “Christian Right” as an especially benighted and menacing component of the Republican Party has, as Medved notes, a particular value in discouraging Jewish Democrats from reconsidering their political loyalties. To any liberal, the conservative is always the Other. But by depicting the GOP as dominated by the “Christian Right,” the Otherness of conservatism is effectively doubled — if not, indeed, magnified exponentially.

Never mind that evangelical Christians are overwhelmingly pro-Israel and philo-Semitic. The liberal propaganda depiction of evangelicals as backward ignoramuses, taking their marching orders from a handful of TV preachers, accomplishes its intended purpose — to evoke a distinctive cultural revulsion among Jews, and to conjure up nightmare visions of an American Kristallnacht.

So, I think two of the problems are 1) religious bigotry and 2) fears of irrational policies. And I think I know how to fix that.

Where are the studies and arguments that socially conservative policies are actually good? Good for people’s happiness, good for reducing government expenditures, and good for individual liberty itself? I wonder whether any conservatives can even articulate the argument that strong families and abstinence are needed precisely to make sure that government doesn’t have to grow to deal with the consequences of family breakdown and pre-marital sex, such as violent children and STDs?

I have noticed the exact same thing that the article describes is happening with Hindus. A combination of religious bigotry and contempt for policy positions embraced on ignorance. It’s not the fault of Jews and Hindus – we in the conservative movement need to do a better job of explaining the reasons for our positions in non-sectarian terms. E.g. – if homeschooling really is better as a policy, then we should have the studies to show that it produces better grades.