Bob Altemeyer sees the leaders of the religious right going with Rudy Giuliani.
Put yourself in James Dobson’s, Jerry Falwell’s, Pat Robertson’s, and Richard Land’s, shoes right now.... You lead the most potent, sizeable, zealous, manipulable voter bloc in the country, which you have cultivated with great care. And the best you can come up with as a candidate is Newt Gingrich! (George W. Bush, among his many failures, did not groom a successor. But how many aspiring dictators do?)
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What are your alternatives? Right now, it’s to get the best deal you can get for delivering your voters to Giuliani. Giuliani would then stand an excellent chance of being the next president. A big presidential victory in 2008 could give the GOP control of the Congress again.
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We can write Falwell’s, Dobson’s, etcetera’s endorsement script right now, can’t we? "My friends, I have talked with Rudy Giuliani face to face about these things that his enemies are saying he believes in, and I can tell you those stories simply are not true. The old Rudy Giuliani is not the man running for president of our wonderful country now. We have to remember that through Jesus’s grace any of us can change, and this man is on the path to the Light. I looked him right in the eye and I asked him, ‘Do you support abortion? Do you support killing innocent children before they are born?’ and he said, ‘Of course not. I favor life, like almost everybody does.’... So the next time you hear someone saying something bad about this man, just don’t listen. Just don’t listen. Click the mute button and look away. They’re only saying it to confuse you."
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If you can’t get the rank-and-file worked up because of their admiration of Giuliani, you can sure as hell scare them out of their wits about the Democratic candidate. The fear card can trump everything else....

He cheated on his wife.
Posted by: | April 15, 2007 at 04:01 PM