Nathan Newman wrote:
>What is "building a constituency"?
-Let's take an example I've brought up before - the abortion rights -movement. It's become so legalistic, so Washington-centered, and so -focused on electing Dems that it's done next to nothing to build up -membership organizations - people that can be mobilized in large -numbers to phone, email, knock on doors. Compare this with the -Christian right, which while it's worked on taking over the GOP, also -makes itself known as an independent force to be reckoned with. Why -does W pander to them so?
Not because they are some abstract "independent force" but because they spend MORE time doing electoral work than the pro-choice movement. I agree that the pro-choice movement is too legalistic but their actual electoral apparatus is pathetic, as are most liberal groups.
Being "independent" means running your own election turnout operations and running your own candidates in the primaries. Pro-choice folks do some of that, but a pale version of the full-scale operations the Christian Coalition and other groups have run over the years.
When Dubya needed to take out McCain in the South Carolina primaries, he knew the rightwing Christian/NRA electoral folks would run their own smear campaign against McCain (conveniently giving him deniability as well and thereby leaving him less tarnished for the general election). Or they could have done the same to him if he did not tow their line. It is the fact that a GOP President cannot win an election in defiance of the Christian Right that makes them so powerful.
This is not a question of money that gives the Christian Right power-- Steve Forbes who had all the money in the world to run still decided he had to prostrate himself to the Christian Right in 2000 because of his experience getting slaughtered by them back in 1996 when he was more equivocal. They are organized, have precinct maps, and think district by district on how to win power. Unions do some of that on left but they are pretty much alone on it on a national scale.
-- Nathan Newman