So-Cons will drag McCain-Palin over the line of victory.

Namely, I’ve written a diary at a time when I don’t have enough free time to respond fully and thoughtfully to the comments people make on it.

I am tied up with family and yard weeding today. I promise to address any comments tomorrow night, once I’m safely ensconsed in my hotel and have figured out the wireless settings.

Strength and honor, y’all.

(BTW—Anteater, I hope and pray you’re right).

Social conservatives are indeed out in force, knowing the stakes. I for one believe Obama cost himself the election in the 3rd debate when he acknowledged “Roe v. Wade hangs in the balance”.

Not every powerful politcal force is strong enough to carry every election. Especially in America where both parties rely on coalitions whose success is wrapped up in their ability to coalesce every 4 years and press their winning issues to the fore.

The Pro-Life vote remains a powerful force. Of the 9% of voters who vote solely on the issue of abortion, they break for the Pro-Life candidate by a 7-2 margin.

Candidates endorsed by Right to Life organizations have an incredible winning percentage against “Emily’s List” candidates.

So we beat our counterpart in the opposing coalition. But the election is, as we know, more than a referendum on one issue. We will do all we can, and are, I promise you.

Could you refresh my memory?

If I ever said that social conservatives or pro-lifers were sufficient, on their own, for a Republican victory nationwide, then I misspoke. I do think, however, that they are very much a necessary part of any victorious Republican coalition.

I’m quite sure that if McCain were pro-choice, he’d be much further behind than he seems to be now. I’m also quite sure that if he were more comfortable speaking about “social conservative” issues—and hence willing to call out Obama more strongly on his support for legal infanticide, for instance—then he’d be better situated in the polls. Do you disagree?

Sorry for the delay. I missed your reply when it first went up. You’ve refreshed my memory somewhat (and thanks for that, but I’m afraid I still don’t recall what I said in particular. My apologies, then, if I’m repeating myself.

I believe the Jeffrey Lord article you’re referring to is this one. But I don’t buy Lord’s logic. He blames Bork’s defeat on the loss of seven GOP Senate seats in 1986, but Bork lost 42-58. Even if all of the class of 1980 Senators had retained their seats (very unlikely), and even if they had all voted to confirm (even more unlikely, considering who they were), Bork still would have lost 49-51. And he wouldn’t have faced a noticeably friendlier Judiciary Committee even if the Republicans were still in the majority, since most of the same Democrats would still be on the committee, as would Arlen Specter.

Further, Lord seems to blame all the close Senate losses in 1986 on pro-lifers exclusively. Why single them out? In close election losses, slightly larger turnout from any group would tilt it the other way, and blame must be spread across the whole party, though the candidate himself must always bear the most responsibility.

Which brings us to Allen. I’m not a Virginian, so I don’t know what was going on on the ground there, but from looking at the exit polls in 2004 and 2006, it looks to me like social conservatives came out just as if not more strongly for Allen in 2006 as for Bush in 2004. The exit polls didn’t ask about abortion or social conservatism directly, but proxies like more-than-weekly church attendance seem to indicate this. An even greater pro-life turnout would have swung the seat to Allen, but it also would have swung to him if he hadn’t said “macaca,” if Bush had fired Rumsfeld a few weeks earlier, or a million other things.

To blame the Allen loss on pro-lifers or social conservatives would also be to overlook the fact that, contrary to stereotypes, Virginia is not a particularly pro-life or socially conservative state. These 2005 numbers indicate that Virginia is only the 29th most pro-life state in the union, below the 2004 blue states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and perhaps Minnesota—this despite the fact that it is home to a number of prominent evangelical institutions. Likewise, Colorado, despite being Dobson’s base of operations, is even less pro-life than Virginia, ranking behind those other 2004 blue states, as well as Wisconsin and Hawaii.

On the other hand, you mention Louisiana and Arkansas, which are two of the most pro-life states in the nation, behind only Utah. The Louisiana seat will probably remain Democratic, and the Arkansas one definitely will, due to the lack of a challenger (shame on Mike Huckabee for not running). But while Pryor and Landrieu were both originally elected in strongly pro-life states, they were also elected in traditionally Democratic states: both went to Clinton in 1992 and 1996, and both have a long and continuing history of going Democratic in statewide elections. It’s outrageous that these two are in the Senate in part as a result of the most trivial concessions to pro-life sentiment, but the fault for this must not be lain at the feet of the (I assume) vast majority of socially conservative or pro-life Republicans, who voted against them, but rather on the small minority of pro-life Democrats who voted for both these two and the many other pro-choice Democrats who have won in these states. But this latter group is hardly part of the Republican coalition.

I’m afraid I can’t give you any first-hand assurances about how hard the social conservative or pro-life movement is trying this time around. I’m not religious, and so I tend not to get a lot of the memos about what’s going on in those circles. I can only assume, based on their track record, that pro-life and social conservative voters will come out in force for McCain, to a degree somewhat greater than their share of the population at large. From what I can tell at this point, conservatives of all stripes are set to support McCain strongly; it’s only the squishy moderates who can’t be bothered to vote for the squishy moderate.

And as for my point about McCain’s comfort about speaking about social conservative issues, I was not referring to his ability to get pro-life votes, as I’m sure he will at about the level other recent GOP candidates have. Rather, I was referring to his ability to get the votes of people who are pro-choice, the vast majority of whom, unlike Obama, nonetheless oppose infanticide. I think that if McCain were more fluent in these issues, he would not have let Obama get away with his evasions on the infanticide issue nearly as well as he seems to have been.

Always a pleasure, smagar. Sorry again for the delay.

Once again, a superb and classy reply. This is the kind of thing that Redstate is known for, and DailyKos probably never sees.

I think you’ve summed up this discussion pretty well, so I’ll close here.

May we have lots of luck over the next three weeks. (I threw in an extra week for recounts).