Did Rove put gay marriage on the ballot to get people to vote?

[Kimstu]

furt: *I live in Florida, as swingy a state as they get. I go to a semi-RR church. I teach part time at a religious-affiliated college. Gay marriage was not an issue anyone was discussing. *

Not that you heard of, maybe, but according to the Florida Sun-Sentinel, it was definitely one of the GOP campaign issues:

The Rev. O’Neal Dozier recently spent a weekend knocking on doors in West Palm Beach’s black community canvassing votes for President Bush.

“The results were very mixed,” said Dozier, pastor of Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach. “At one house they’d tell you, `I’m not interested. I’m going to vote for Kerry.’ But at the next house, they would sit and listen.”

Dozier, who was appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush to Broward County’s judicial nominating committee in 2001, said his pitch might emphasize the Republican Party’s abolitionist roots. If the family regarded themselves as Christians, he would focus on the president’s opposition to homosexual marriage and abortion.

Bottom line: the President made gains across the board among voters, regardless of their degree of religious commitment but he made his largest gains among less religious voters.

Sure, but all that shows is that the whole post-9/11 terrorism theme was a more important campaign issue than anti-gay sentiment, which I think we already knew. It doesn’t indicate that anti-gay sentiment wasn’t used as a campaign issue.

[annaplurabelle]

Cite:

Religious vote fuels victory for GOP

Luxuriating in polls showing they had supplied the winning margin for President Bush in a narrow, second-term victory, evangelical leaders across the nation and in Georgia said Wednesday they expect Bush and a strengthened Republican Congress to follow through with the social agenda laid out in the campaign — from school choice to incorporating a ban on gay marriage into the U.S. Constitution.

Of 12,649 voters who participated in exit polls nationwide, 76 percent of Bush voters said “moral values” was the one issue that mattered most in their selection. Georgia followed in lockstep: “Moral values” was the top concern among the state’s voters, followed by the war on terror. Issues touted by Sen. John Kerry and other Democrats — the economy and jobs and the war in Iraq — ranked third and fourth, respectively.

Exit poll results indicate 23 percent of the 120 million voters who cast ballots Tuesday identified themselves as white, conservative evangelicals. More than three-quarters of them voted for Bush — a bloc roughly matching Democratic support among African- Americans.

“This is an impressive number,” said John C. Green, a politicial scientist at the University of Akron. “My gut is that at least in the swing states — in particular, Florida and Ohio — this was up from 2000.”

Another indication that evangelicals may have come to the polls in greater numbers was the increase in voters who identified themselves as ideologically conservative, up from 29 percent in 2000 to 33 percent in 2004, said Carroll Doherty, editor of the Pew Research Center.

“The one thing we know is that, generally speaking, Republicans matched Democrats in getting their people to the polls. The mere fact that Republicans are able to get voters out suggests there was some increase in turnout of evangelicals,” Doherty said.

Politicians, religious leaders and academics all agreed that the national debate over gay marriage — Georgia and 10 other states had concurrent referendums on the issue — played a crucial role in the Republican turnout.

Green, the politicial scientist at the University of Akron, said the fresh issue gave religious conservatives a shot in the arm. “A lot of the Christian right organizations were clearly in decline before this came up,” he said.

Bobby Kahn, chairman of the Georgia Democratic Party, this summer played down the impact of a statewide referendum on gay marriage, thinking the emotional issue would be swallowed up by the presidential tempest.

Bush won Georgia with 58 percent of the vote while the anti-gay marriage amendment garnered 76 percent.

“I think I was wrong,” Kahn said Wednesday.

My emphasis. Haven’t vetted these numbers so I’d appreciate if anyone can verify or debunk.

If furt is right, someone should really inform Ralph Reed.

[Miller]

@Kimstu

JM: Does that make it [right]? No, it doesn’t.

JM: Does that make it a dirty trick? I don’t really think so.

Sorry, but I’m not understanding you here. I thought that your first remark was an acknowledgement that it was unethical for the GOP to play to anti-gay prejudice (while recognizing that it wasn’t the party’s campaign strategists who first initiated the anti-SSM amendments) in order to inflame religious-right voters.

I agreed, and commented that I thought it was no shame to the Democratic party to have been beaten by unethical tactics; the shame belongs rather to the victors who used such tactics.

Now, if I understand you correctly, you’re saying that the GOP tactics weren’t unethical. So which is it? I don’t mind if we disagree on this point, but I’d like to be clear about it.

I can’t speak for John, but the way I see it, favoring the SSM ban was immoral, but using it for political purposes was not unethical. The Republicans made institutionalized homophobia part of their platform, which is inexcusable. But the manner in which they pursued that end were in line with the principles of our political process.

Am I making any sense? Let’s use the death penalty as an example. The death penalty (in my view) is immoral. However, there is still a difference between a cop arresting a suspect, questioning him, testifying against him, securing his conviction, and ultimatly putting him in the electric chair - and the same cop dragging a suspect out of his car and putting a bullet in his brain in the middle of the street. One approach uses the system to achieve an immoral end, and the other circumvents the system to achieve an immoral end. The first category is immoral, but ethical. The second is immoral and unethical. In this election, the Republican tactics (at least on this issue, and to the extent of my current knowledge) fall into the first category.

[Walloon]

Politicians, religious leaders and academics all agreed that the national debate over gay marriage — Georgia and 10 other states had concurrent referendums on the issue — played a crucial role in the Republican turnout.

OK, where are the statistics that support that belief?

The whole point of Freedman’s article is that those impressions and beliefs of the “politicians, religious leaders and academics” are not borne out by the facts.

[annaplurabelle]

@Walloon

OK, where are the statistics that support that belief?

The whole point of Freedman’s article is that those impressions and beliefs of the “politicians, religious leaders and academics” are not borne out by the facts.

Well, Walloon, you’re a fact-based kind of guy. Did you happen to crunch any of these numbers yourself, or are we to depend on dueling media cites?

As I’ve said, I haven’t vetted these numbers myself. But meanwhile, the Evangelicals obviously think they were the ones who tipped this election.

How this bodes for Bush, or what his actual plans are, is interesting, but probably the subject of another thread.

[John_Mace]

@Kimstu

Sorry, but I’m not understanding you here. I thought that your first remark was an acknowledgement that it was unethical for the GOP to play to anti-gay prejudice (while recognizing that it wasn’t the party’s campaign strategists who first initiated the anti-SSM amendments) in order to inflame religious-right voters.

I didn’t think it was a "dirty trick’ because gay marriage is something Bush actually is against, as are most Americans. I would’ve called it a “dirty trick” if Bush really didn’t care either way, but pretended that he did just to get people to vote for him. And, given the significant margins by which these amendments passed (even in Oregon), this is clearly an issue that goes will beyond the “religious right”.

I used the Dean/draft example because I strongly suspect that Dean knows how improbably it is that the drat will be reinstated. I could be wrong, and if I am, then it would be a legitimate tactic.