February was the month in the primary calendar that spun the GOP primary field off the deep end into non-jobs subjects national Republicans (and likely nominee Mitt Romney) would rather never discuss again. Examples include the morality of contraception, whether higher education is a ploy to brainwash the nation’s youth into becoming liberals and extremely tough talk on immigration.
Most Republicans want to drop talk of social issues and instead settle into a nice discussion of how horrible Obama is at everything independent voters like (read: gas prices, job creation, taxes.) But if the candidates are putting themselves on a strict economics-only diet, the race’s turn into the Deep South is akin to dropping them into a cupcake factory. Or at least a red meat factory.
The race now moves to approaching primaries in Alabama and Mississippi, where the conservatism is of the uncut variety. What’s worse for Republicans eager to abandon the topics polls show are turning off women, independents and Latinos, those states favor Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. Romney hasn’t done well in the South so far (see: South Carolina, Tennessee and the surprising Ron Paul vote in Virginia) and though he’s spending money in the Deep South primaries and won the endorsement of Mississippi’s governor, no one really thinks the contests are about him.
So that means a brighter spotlight on two candidates who love a good social issues fight, and two states with Republican voters who might have an appetite for one. The candidates themselves are trying mightily to stay focused. Romney is knocking the debt. Newt Gingrich is pumping gas and Rick Santorum is promising to be on his best behavior.
“I can tell you that just in the past few weeks I’ve become a better candidate,” Santorum told an Alabama TV station Thursday. “You know, you’ve got to stay focused on the core issues that are important to voters and communicate that in a way that’s, you know, convincing. ”
But all three have slipped up in the face of controversial social issues fights — and the landscape ahead of them is full of those temptations:
⢠Alabama is home to one of the toughest anti-immigration laws in the country, a product of the state’s ultra-conservative legislature. The law is controversial even in Republican circles (Jeb Bush has said it “turned off” Latino voters) and the candidates may find themselves being forced to take sides.
⢠Mississippi’s usually conservative electorate is best known in the past year for rejecting a proposed “personhood amendment” to the state’s constitution that would have clamped down on abortion rights and made some forms of contraception illegal. But pro-life advocates are taking another run at amending the state’s constitution with a ballot measure. Romney supported the Mississippi measure, and Santorum is in favor of it, too. As they try to distinguish themselves from one another, they may find themselves stuck in another fight over women’s wombs.
Republican strategist Ford O’Connell, who’s helped Republicans win in both states, told TPM that the national candidates need to tread lightly.
“You can’t really avoid talking about social issues in those states,” he said. “There are certain code words you can use down there that don’t come back to haunt you in the rest of the country.”
“If they go out there and shoot from the hip, they could obviously damage themselves in other regions,” O’Connell said.
Republicans down in the region get a little defensive at the suggestion they’re going keep the primary focused on the cultural stuff. Phillip Stutts, a GOP consultant based in Alabama, said social issues will play a part, but the economy and other more general election-friendly issues will trump everything else in his state before the run-up to the March 13 primary.
“It’s the same core in Alabama and Mississippi [as it is in other parts of the country],” Stutts told TPM. He said voters want to know about “authenticity” and who can best take the fight to Obama.
“It has less to do with social issues than I’ve ever seen it down here,” he said.
Gary Palmer, president of the Alabama Policy Institute (which he described as his state’s version of the Heritage Foundation), said people in his state are excited to play a big role in the GOP nomination fight for the first time in a long time, and he insisted the issues in the Alabama primary were going to be energy and jobs.
“I think people down here would rather be able to buy red meat and to do that you need a job,” he said. “It’s not quite as stereotypical as some people might think.”
But Palmer acknowledged that the state’s electorate has a social streak.
“That’s an issue with a number of people,” he said. “But I think it’s probably a side issue. I think it will motivate some voters, but again, most of the people are going to be focused on the economy.”
Pollsters agree that the No. 1 issues in the region is the economy, just as it is everywhere else. But the numbers also make clear that Southerners are still motivated by social issues.
Exit polling from the previous Republican primaries is unequivocal — voters named the economy as their No. 1 priority, and the budget deficit is a solid second. Illegal immigration and abortion are far behind. But when asked whether the candidates’ religious beliefs mattered, the results differed by region. In Michigan, 56 percent of Republican voters said they matter a great deal or somewhat, while 44 percent said they didn’t matter much or not at all. But in Georgia, that split was 72-28. In Tennessee, it was 76-23. Ohio was in between.
Those data points confirm what the experts told TPM — it’s the economy. But credibility on social issues can’t be ignored, especially in the Southern contests.
“To say that social issues are more important than the economy would definitely be going too far,” Michael Dimock, associate director of research for Pew. But that doesn’t mean they will be nonexistent, either, Dimock said.
This could present a problem for Romney — which is why he has already declared the contests an “away game.”
“I think for many socially conservative voters there have always been doubts about Romney,” he told TPM. “He’s got a credibility problem with those voters, and he’s heading into territory where there are a lot more voters like that.”
Bruce Haynes, managing partner at Purple Strategies who has worked in the Deep South for Republicans, agreed.
“It’s not as much a Southern thing as it is a cultural thing,” Haynes told TPM. “He’s [Romney] connecting well with certain groups of Republicans that care about economic issues, and finding a candidate that can beat the Democrat. He’s not connecting with the base of the party, who are more concerned with other issues … those who are more emotional and less rational in their choices.”
“Emotional” voters are indeed an obstacle for Romney — and for the GOP as a whole. At a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor Thursday, Republican strategist Whit Ayers — who was working for Jon Huntsman until he dropped out, and is now unaligned — told reporters that the social fights have taken their toll.
“I think the nominee focuses the debate on the issues he believes are most important to most people,” he said. “And that does not include some of the side issues that dominated the headlines over the last month.”
Ayers said there’s a good chance all will be forgotten by the time of the general election if Romney’s the nominee and can guide the discussion away from the social issues. But with each passing month of the long primary fight, Romney’s window to make that transition is closing.
And Alabama and Mississippi likely won’t help Romney take this stuff off the agenda.
“The redder the meat thrown to the tea party folks in Mississippi, the happier they’re going to be,” said Rickey Cole, executive director of the Mississippi Democratic Party. “I looked at Gingrich’s and Santorum’s schedule traveling Mississippi and they’re going to the places where the tea party is the strongest. … As long as these guys are fighting in this primary, it’s a race to the right to see how far you can go to throw enough red meat to to the radical right to get to the delegates.”
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