George Stephanopolis

This Week: George Will Tells Social Conservatives To "Grow Up"

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On This Week with George Stephanopolis, the roundtable discussion turned to the recent "threats" by the Religious Right (who apparently renamed themselves Social Conservatives) to run a third-party candidate as a result of their distaste for the all-but-presumed Republican candidacy of Rudy Giuliani.  

While Claire Shipman suggests that this may be a tactical way for the Dobsons and Perkins of the Religious Right to re-assert to the Republican party the need to cater to them, seeing as the Republicans can't possibly win this election anyway, so splitting off the vote is more statement than a way to win, George Will has just one thing to say to them: Grow up.

Social conservatives should grow up. If they want to rally around somebody, why don't try that? Huckabee needs support and money now. If the social conservatives are half as important as they think they are, they would rally around one of these people [..] And then decide what you care about. If you care about judges, then you're gonna get satisfied by Giuliani, then get in line and play politics. But there's a vanity in this group right now. They call themselves "values voters." I've news for them: 100% of the American electorate are values voters; they vote their values...And this, this, kind of semantic imperialism that they have where they say "we vote values". Everyone else votes what?

Anyone have an idea why the Religious Right isn't throwing their support behind Huckabee?  Seems like he'd be just their type of candidate




This Week's In Memoriam

This Week's In Memoriam notes the passing of track & field great, Al Oerter, Virginia Congresswoman Jo Ann Davis and actor Lois Maxwell who played Miss Moneypenny in numerous James Bond Films. Also listed are the names of 14 service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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