How The Wedge Issues Cut
A campaign about Iraq and jobs abruptly shifts to the fraught
territory of God, gays and guns. But will the values debate help
Republicans this year?
By
JOHN CLOUD
Sunday, Oct. 17, 2004
In the summer of 1988, Vice President George H.W. Bush was
foundering. His opponent in the presidential race, Massachusetts
Governor Michael Dukakis, was doing well in the polls. That fall,
however, pro-Bush forces deftly used wedge issues—particularly crime
and the specter of encroaching liberalism—to cleave white
working-class voters from the Democratic Party. The nastiest and most
effective '88 political ad featured the hardened visage of convict
William Horton, a murderer who had fled Massachusetts during a prison
furlough and then stabbed a man and raped his fiance. Republicans
said Dukakis had turned his state's prison gates into "a revolving
door." Dukakis pointed out that he had actually ended the furlough
program, but his protest was late and languid. Bush won comfortably,
54% to 46%.
At the start of the 2004 campaign, it seemed that Bush the son would
also use wedge issues to repel a Massachusetts rival. Earlier this
year, just as John Kerry was celebrating primary victories, the top
court in his home state affirmed a decision unpopular in most of the
U.S. that legalized marriage for same-sex couples. The court ordered
the state to begin issuing marriage licenses to gays by mid-May.
Social conservatives despaired at the ruling, but Republicans savored
the idea that, all summer, newspapers would run pictures of men
kissing each other on Cape Cod. It would help frame Kerry as a
liberal.
Eager to energize evangelical Christians—4 million of whom White
House adviser Karl Rove believes stayed home on Election Day
2000—George W. Bush said he would work to pass a U.S. constitutional
amendment banning gay marriage. But as the race got under way, the
Bush campaign had to decide whether to portray Kerry as a committed
lefty or a squishy flip-flopper. Though both caricatures were used,
the G.O.P. campaign focused far more on the question of whether Kerry
could provide steady leadership in uncertain times. Saying that Kerry
takes multiple positions has now made it harder to claim he's on the
wrong side of wedge issues.
Voters are not convinced that he is on the wrong side. A new TIME
poll, conducted after last week's third presidential debate (see
chart, pages
36-37), suggests that wedge issues, which normally work to the
Republicans' advantage, are not a big G.O.P. plus this time. Asked
whom they trust to handle "moral-values issues such as gay marriage
and abortion," more voters chose Bush (44%) than Kerry (42%), though
the difference was within the margin for error. In early September
the numbers were 51% to 37% in Bush's favor.
As we saw in the last debate, in Tempe, Ariz., Bush is fighting to
reclaim the wedge. He called Kerry "a liberal Senator from
Massachusetts" and conjured liberalism incarnate, senior
Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, three times. Bush brought up
his own support for the anti-gay-marriage amendment and used the
word marriage 11 times. He called "partial-birth" abortion "a brutal
practice." For his part, Kerry turned in the most overtly religious
presidential-debate performance—for either a Democrat or
Republican—in memory. Although only a few months ago he was
reluctant to discuss his faith—it's "personal" and "private," Kerry
told TIME in March—he invoked the Almighty no fewer than 10 times in
Tempe. Kerry is clearly hoping his faith can caulk any fractures the
Republicans try to create with wedge issues over the next two weeks.
To be sure, most voters won't decide their vote based on social
issues. According to the TIME poll, only 12% say values issues are
paramount in this election. Even Bush-Cheney strategist Ralph Reed,
who witnessed the potency of values politics as head of the Christian
Coalition in the 1990s, says that this year "the overwhelming
majority of voters are going to vote on jobs, the economy, Iraq,
terrorism and health care."
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