Will James Dobson follow through on his threat to vote third party if Giuliani gets the Republican nomination? Obviously, his immediate strategy is to damage the electability case for Giuliani and prevent him from getting the nomination in the first place. But what if the Republicans nominate Giuliani anyway? Scott Lemieux thinks Dobson isn't ready to pull a Nader on the GOP:
One has to question, however, whether or not this is a seriousthreat. My default assumption that Christian conservatives, in MichaelTomasky's phrase, "are far smarter than these left-wing lions of ideological chastity" ...if push came to shove, though -- granting that a pro-choice Republican winning would be a disaster for the forced pregnancy minority -- I'm pretty sure that Dobson will not be indifferent about whether Giuliani or Clinton makes at least the next four years of federal judicial appointments.
I wouldn't make it a matter of Christian conservatives being smarter -- differing attitudes towards authorityexplain why we've usually seen more splintering on the left than theright. It's easier to herd sheep than cats, and believers in religious and nationalistic authority fall in line more easily than lefty radicals. But that's all in service ofScott's broader point.
Matt Yglesias disagrees:
