Earlier this week I posted that if I had to make a choice and vote for one of the Democratic front runners I would grudgingly choose Hillary Clinton. What if I was a Democrat and had to choose one of the current front runners from the Republican candidates? For sake of brevity of argument I will pose that the front runners from whom to choose are Giuliani, Huckabee, McCain and Romney—at the risk of raising the ire of the RonPaulsters and Thompsonites, at this point they are very far behind with ever reducing chances of being on the November 2008 ballot.
There is no candidate on the GOP side that should appeal to a party-base Democrat on a range of issues, as there are none on the Democrat side appealing to all or most issues with party-base or even centrist Republicans. With that in mind, which of the GOP candidates should appeal to the most Democrats on the most number of issues?
Huckabee is out of the running: he supports increased defense spending, overturning Roe v Wade, No Child Left Behind, the Bush tax cuts and a Constitutional Amendment on declaring marriage can only be between a man and a woman. Oh, and he has that Evangelical Christian thing that many secular Democrats abhor.
Romney is similar to Huckabee on many issues and is out of the running as well: He supports overturning Roe v Wade and letting each state determine legality of abortion, supports a Constitutional amendment declaring marriage is between a man and a woman, supports No Child Left Behind, not only supports Bush tax cuts but would cut taxes further and would increase the size of the military by 100,000 troops. Also for the strict secularists and those against faith being part of a politician’s value system, he is Mormon.
Giuliani comes close on several social issues but not close enough to get the vote: he is for domestic partnerships but not vocally in favor of same sex marriages, he personally is against abortion but understands and accepts its practice (with exception of partial-birth abortions) and legality. Then he diverges: he would reform the tax code and put in further tax cuts, cut government spending and reduce the size of the Federal government (i.e. cut programs and positions), would strengthen border enforcement and wants ID cards for non-citizens, is against a timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq and would reshape and resize the various Cabinet level departments.
McCain comes in with very Democratic credentials on many issues: He co-authored McCain-Feingold which most conservatives abhor as a trampling of free speech, he voted against the Bush tax cuts (although his reasoning was sound: he would vote for tax cuts only if accompanied by reduction in spending), he supported Bush’s plan to provide a form of amnesty to illegal aliens already in the United States, and many Republicans—especially far-right GOPers—feel he already is a Democrat given his consistent reaches across the aisle in the Senate on many issues. Reasons against are similar: primarily more tax cuts and he was one of the first at the start of the Iraq War to call for more troops on the ground—which has proven effective since it happened last summer with “the surge”—and would continue our presence there. Balancing that stance, however, he is against all forms of torture and specifically waterboarding.
In the end, the Republican candidate that should most appeal to Democrats, or that they would oppose the least, is Senator John McCain.
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