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In Ohio, it’s 2004 all over again
It’s back to the future for the Republican campaign for president in battleground Ohio. Four years ago, the conservative wing of the Republican Party used the gay marriage issue to rally the troops on behalf of President Bush. The strategy worked. Republican voters came out in droves, especially from the rural areas, and gave Bush a win over Democrat John Kerry. It secured the president’s re-election bid.
U.S. Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has obviously been reading the playbook of the 2004 election in the Buckeye State. On Thursday, McCain, whose moderate views on key issues like immigration have made him suspect in the eyes of the right-wingers in the party, met with several influential social conservatives in Cincinnati and pledged to talk more openly about his opposition to gay marriage. According to the Los Angeles Times, McCain, who brought his campaign to the Mahoning Valley on Friday and declared more than once that he wants to be president of all Americans, followed up his pledge in Cincinnati by endorsing a ballot measure in California to ban gay marriage.
The senator from Arizona also told the small gathering that he would choose an anti-abortion running mate and is willing to learn more about their opposition to embryonic stem-cell research, the Times reported. In the past, the newspaper story noted, McCain has disagreed with them over the issue.
As has been suggested in this space on several occasions, Republicans know they cannot win the all-important Ohio presidential sweepstakes by focusing on issues such as the economy, health care and the war in Iraq.
Disillusioned voters
Indeed, four years ago, they realized that the GOP base was disillusioned with Bush’s handling of the war and were going to sit out the election.
The architects of the president’s re-election campaign, including some in the White House, came up with the marriage amendment ploy. They selected 11 states, including Ohio, where Bush was in trouble and placed before the voters a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.
The underlying message to the great unwashed was that an epidemic of gay marriage was on the horizon and that if something wasn’t done same-sex couples would become a threat to heterosexual unions. Many voters bought that political ploy hook, line and sinker.
Bush’s victory in Ohio made it clear that Republicans were not above toying with voters’ emotions.
McCain, making a bid for the blue-collar Democratic voters who gave Hillary Clinton such an impressive win in the March primary in Ohio, is on his way to becoming the darling of the social conservatives in the Republican Party.
“It was obvious there were a lot of changed hearts in the room,” the Los Angeles Times quoted Phil Burress as saying. “We realized that he’s with us on the majority of the issues we care about.”
Burress led Ohio’s anti-gay marriage ballot measure in 2004.
But a day after his private meeting with those whose agenda includes issues that have long divided the country, McCain came to the Mahoning Valley and presented himself as the voice of moderation. He visited the General Motors’ assembly plant in Lordstown and then attended a private fund-raiser at the Trumbull County home of developer Brian Ross.
He made it clear that he intends to put together a voting block of Republicans, Democrats and Independents, and pledged that if elected he would “reach across the aisle” to Democrats.
But drowning out that message of conciliation was his embrace of the GOP ultra conservatives.
Strategy
The resurrection of the gay marriage issue is a clear indication of how they intend to win Ohio for John McCain.
It would come as no surprise if they play the race card next — covertly, of course. Democrat Barack Obama, the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, has an uphill battle in Ohio, Not only must he win over Democrats who staunchly supported Hillary Clinton and are angry that she did not win the party’s nomination, but he must put at ease the concerns many Ohioans have about his background.
Don’t put it past the Republicans to play on those concerns.