Perkins: You Don't Beat a Liberal With a Moderate

Seems I'm not alone in stating that the Republican Party will lose, with our without a third party, if they nominate Guiliani for president.

Mark Silva quotes Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, at the Baltimore Sun:

“I don’t envision the majority of social conservatives actively moving toward endorsing a pro-abortion rights candidate,’’ he said. “This issue runs strong, and just to sing the simple ABC song – Anybody but Clinton -- is not enough to rally social conservatives who have been working for 30 years to support a culture of life.’’

Voter turnout will be greatly affected by the party's choices of nominees, he says. And conservatives will find "little difference'' between Giuliani and Clinton on a November ballot.

“My experience has been that you don’t beat a liberal with a moderate, because what you have is a motivated base on the left and a lack of enthusiasm on the other side,’’ he said. “In the eyes of many social conservatives, on social conservative issues, there is little difference between the two…

"When you get to a point where you have two candidates who are pretty much indistinguishable on those core social issues, then yeah, it’s kind of hard to see why you should vote for one over the other.’’

According to the piece, Perkins says he doesn't think it'll come to that, and I tend to agree.

Perkins says he expects the options for values voters to be more clear after the Washington Briefing I'll be attending next week.

“Support has not solidified for one of these candidates,’’ he says – but the “Values Voter Summit’’ planned in Washington on Oct. 18-20 should help advance that cause. With perhaps 2,000 or more expected to attend and hear each of the Republicans speak for 20 minutes, they will close the conference on that Saturday afternoon with a straw poll.