Pat Robertson 1988

[Robespierre's Jaw]

Let's assume that noted televangelist preacher Pat Robertson somehow defeats his main rivals, incumbent Vice President George Bush and Kansas Senator Bob Dole in the Republican primaries to become their nominee in 1988 and in the process faces off against Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis in the general. The nomination of Robertson leads me to three questions.

1. Who would have Robertson selected as his running mate?

2. How would have Robertson performed in the General against Governor Dukakis?

3. If Robertson lost (which seems quite likely), how badly would the Republican base (with the exception of the Religious Right) be damaged by the nomination of Robertson?

[dunn]

354-184 Dukakis

[Frozen Sky Ever Why]

Any state that voted for Robertson should have been burned to the ground and covered with salt.

[Scam of God]

With hindsight, I'd have voted for Pat, just to ween this country off conservatism when the Reagan-induced recession of the early 90's turned into a full-blown Depression on his watch.

[Nixon in '80]

Any state that voted for Robertson should have been burned to the ground and covered with salt.

[Neinrein]

354-184 Dukakis

Uh, you're underestimating Dukakis here.


Pat Robertson would have lost every Southern state. Southern whites who are not Evangelicals (myself included) do not like Evangelicals and we sure as hell will not vote for a Southern Baptist preacher, a memo to Huckabee is in that. Notice that in most Southern states, in white primaries, he couldn't break 40%. Tells you where the loyalties of the white population lies. Harrison County hasn't voted for the national nominee since 1960 and a Democratic nominee since 1968 (Mississippi regulars went in for Wallace), but Dukakis vs Robertson, Dukakis pulls Harrison County with close to 70%, and I say this as someone who would have voted against Dukakis if he had not been Catholic.


Seriously, you'll find out just how Evangelical the south really is if they nominate Mike Huckabee, because the idea of a Southern Baptist minister being President makes non-Baptists in majority Catholic towns like me cringe. I voted for the first Republican governor of my life a year back because Eaves was doing all he could to reach out to the Evangelical fundamentalists, even though I liked that he was a lawyer, that and, Barbour did do a bangup job with Katrina


Only states I could see Robertson winning, 1988 standings, would be Utah and Oklahoma. The races might be close in the South, but it would end up being the reverse of Carter 1980 because that many people would come out just to vote against the Baptist preacher, and the idea that Robertson would carry Catholic Louisiana, where a large section of the state actually went for Dukakis against Bush, simply preposterous, and you can win Louisiana as a Republican without getting a certain number of votes in suburban New Orleans and Robertson would have been creamed there, and I can say this because I live 45 minutes east of the Louisiana/Mississippi line

[Neinrein]

Your disconnect with reality is showing.

Ever been to Biloxi. Our old neighborhood before the storm was very tight nit, 85% Catholic. Whenever a family that was say, Baptist from upstate, moved in, we would be neighborly to them, we wouldn't be rude, but, let's just say, we never went out of our way to make them feel welcome, because quite frankly, if we had wanted to live around people like them, we'd be living in another part of the state.

Even now, the only Baptist neighbor I have now is one of those Baptists that calls themself a Baptist but acts more like a Catholic.

I can say with absolute certainty as someone who voted in 1988, if Pat Robertson had been the Republican nominee then, he would have been absolutely throttled in Harrison County. Harrison County voted against Jimmy Carter in large part because he had been a Southern Baptist minister and for a lot of the old timers, the memory of the 1960 election had been far too fresh. You also forget that in 1988, there were almost no Congressional Republicans of any kind in the South, most of these people had only voted Republican for Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan. If you had given them the chance to vote for say, Fritz in 84, many Southerners would have bit that bullet and in 1988, if the ticket is Dukakis/Bentsen vs. Robertson/anyone, Dukakis wins Louisiana in a landslide, and he wins everywhere that is culturally like it. Also probably wins Texas in that scenario.


What view of the South do you honestly have to think that Robertson would have carried it as a Republican in 1988, and what were the circumstances for you on the ground in 1988. I remember in 1988, our main argument was, Dukakis is a Catholic, but it was hard to make that stick against George Bush. If we had been running against Robertson, not only would that have stuck, but Robertson signs would have been vandalized all over the place, because in 1988, Biloxi was still a city where the gambling was all in bars operating against the law, and where the Sheriff had been on the take from said bars for generations. Moral crusaders usually fall flat on their ass on the Mississippi coast unless you're talking about something like abortion. It's why Evangelical Mississippi hates us, but gladly takes the money our casinos bring in. It's interesting that the casinos are all on the coast and in the Delta, never in good Evangelical areas of the state.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

Why does everyone think all southern Republicans are economic liberals? I have yet to meet anyone who wants higher taxes, anti-business regulations, and more social welfare.

[Scam of God]

Why does everyone think all southern Republicans are economic liberals? I have yet to meet anyone who wants higher taxes, anti-business regulations, and more social welfare.

It's just the Toothless Wonder shilling for his Chosen People and trying to pretend that they aren't really theocratic - they're just misunderstood... really.

He and you and I know damn well that Robertson would have hit over 60% in three-fourths of the Bible-belt.

[Neinrein]

Your disconnect with reality is showing.

Ever been to Biloxi. Our old neighborhood before the storm was very tight nit, 85% Catholic. Whenever a family that was say, Baptist from upstate, moved in, we would be neighborly to them, we wouldn't be rude, but, let's just say, we never went out of our way to make them feel welcome, because quite frankly, if we had wanted to live around people like them, we'd be living in another part of the state.

Even now, the only Baptist neighbor I have now is one of those Baptists that calls themself a Baptist but acts more like a Catholic.

I can say with absolute certainty as someone who voted in 1988, if Pat Robertson had been the Republican nominee then, he would have been absolutely throttled in Harrison County. Harrison County voted against Jimmy Carter in large part because he had been a Southern Baptist minister and for a lot of the old timers, the memory of the 1960 election had been far too fresh. You also forget that in 1988, there were almost no Congressional Republicans of any kind in the South, most of these people had only voted Republican for Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan. If you had given them the chance to vote for say, Fritz in 84, many Southerners would have bit that bullet and in 1988, if the ticket is Dukakis/Bentsen vs. Robertson/anyone, Dukakis wins Louisiana in a landslide, and he wins everywhere that is culturally like it. Also probably wins Texas in that scenario.


What view of the South do you honestly have to think that Robertson would have carried it as a Republican in 1988, and what were the circumstances for you on the ground in 1988. I remember in 1988, our main argument was, Dukakis is a Catholic, but it was hard to make that stick against George Bush. If we had been running against Robertson, not only would that have stuck, but Robertson signs would have been vandalized all over the place, because in 1988, Biloxi was still a city where the gambling was all in bars operating against the law, and where the Sheriff had been on the take from said bars for generations. Moral crusaders usually fall flat on their ass on the Mississippi coast unless you're talking about something like abortion. It's why Evangelical Mississippi hates us, but gladly takes the money our casinos bring in. It's interesting that the casinos are all on the coast and in the Delta, never in good Evangelical areas of the state.

Population of Biloxi: 50,000
Population of Mississippi: 3,000,000

Your town is by no means representative of the state.  Close to 1/3 of the state is Baptist while a little over 100,000 is Catholic.  If gambling is what makes your town liberal, it's not liberal.  It also barely voted against Jimmy Carter in 1976 (with a margin similar to other Republican victories over Democrats) and has voted Republican by an average of over 60% since 1960, when it barely voted for Kennedy.  They voted against Carter in 1980 because Reagan was far more conservative.  And if it's so friendly to Catholics and hateful of Baptists why did it give 63% to Bush over Kerry?  Robertson would have wiped the floor with any Democrat in the Deep South.  And a fun fact: David Duke got more votes in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana than he did in the rest of the country combined.

You're the one with a warped view of the South.  Perhaps you need to take a step out of your "85% Catholic" town and see what the rest of the South is like, because it's not like little old Biloxi by your description (which is no doubt embellished).

Goes without saying that Kerry was pro-choice, and most people here don't really follow politics until a month before the election, so, most people would have never known that Bush had spoken at Bob Jones, and I've never claimed Biloxi was liberal, I said, it wouldn't have ever voted for Pat Robertson, it wouldn't have, especially not in 1988. As of 1988, there were only 3 post-Reconstruction elections where a Republican had won more than 52% of the statewide vote in Mississippi, the election of 1964, the election of 1972 and the election of 1984.

Also, I suspect you aren't Catholic when you quote that statistic to me because as most Catholics know, between 30-40% of our faith community is not recorded because a substantial number of Catholics are the kind that only go to church for the Easter Vigil and Midnight Mass, or some other Christmas and Easter combination. As far as the Diocese of Biloxi is concerned, I was not a Catholic in 1988, never mind the fact that I had been confirmed at St. Micheal's, because I was one of those Easter-Christmas types and because at that point in my life, I did not register with a parish because I didn't want to be bothered with requests for tithing. We have ethnic societies here that accomplish the same networking effect as parish or KOC membership and they don't ask you to attend church every week

Carter's margin of loss to Reagan in 1980 was 11,000 votes. A difference of 1.4%. Carter's margin of victory in 1976, was 15,000, or 1.7%. We're not talking about a great shift in the vote here. Truth be told though, a lot of that vote that shifted was among the younger votes who had voted for Jimmy in '76 because of Charlie Daniels, Lynyrd Skynyrd and every other band that rode alongside Carter's campaign that year. I never said the town as a whole was 85% Catholic. It's 25% Black, and other than Bishop Howze, there are hardly any black Catholics around here. You need to realize that any quote of the number of Baptists in the state will be tempered by the fact that in every Deep South state, a fair number of Baptists are black Baptists. Only areas I know of that have any kind of black Catholic communities would be in Louisiana, and Mobile (where our bishop was originally from).

Republican voters when they vote Republican are going to be all white, so you have to factor that in when you talk about this. Also in 1988, the Evangelical movement in Mississippi was not that strong. The governor of the state was Ray Mabus. Mississippi at that point had not had a Republican governor since Reconstruction. Stennis was still our Senator, and everyone was shocked when Lott actually won. Lott wouldn't have won without Bush's coattails, and if hell had frozen over and Robertson had been the nominee, Lott would not have campaigned with him, because Lott counted on the votes of people from the coast who found Robertson categorically offensive.

And I know what the rest of the South is like, a lot better than you, and I know in parts of the South that are actually Evangelical like north Mississippi, there is a difference between the people who are "fire-breathers" and those who call themselves Baptist because they have to for career and networking purposes, but who don't exactly believe all of that and who if you go to their home you'll find things that a real Baptist wouldn't have, like a liquor cabinet. A lot of the attorneys in north Mississippi are like that, because you can't really go through college level education in this state without picking up a bit of an alcohol habit (and I didn't even go in this state, I went to Tulane throughout). A real Baptist, the kind who would have voted for Robertson (and only half of these would because the other half are black), would be the kind of person who doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, doesn't dance who listens to only "Christian" radio and who watches televangelists religiously. Hate to bust your bubble but those people are nowhere near the majority in this state, not even in Northeast Mississippi

Kerry was a bad candidate and a majority of the nation's Catholics rejected him for Bush. Of course, Kerry also had major Catholic politicians in this area who were Republicans highlighting the fact, which is true, about all the condemnations of him that had been issued by the bishops over abortion. Dukakis never had that problem. Dukakis's problem was never abortion. Dukakis was competitive in this state, very competitive and it was shocking. He lost that election because of that murderer he had given furlough to and because in the debate, he said that if his wife had been raped and killed, he wouldn't have had vengeful thoughts towards the man that did it. This is a state of real men and women who like real men, that comment killed him. If Dukakis had not been Catholic, that comment would have lost him my vote.

[Neinrein]

Should also point out that Gene Taylor, Dirk DeDeaux, etc, none of these guys came out for Kerry in 2004. Kerry couldn't even get public support from Catholic Democrats here unless they were trial lawyers not up for elective office so why would you expect him to do well. In the Catholic community here, that abortion is the big issue, they push it in the schools. When I was in school, we never heard about it, but all the kids today have the pro-life walks, the candlelight vigils, etc, they are trained into it from the time they are little children. I'm a moderate on the whole thing, but none of my kids are, ask them and they'll tell you it's murder and all abortion doctors should be sitting on death row because that is what they have learned at school.

You base your claim that Robertson would have wiped the floor with Dukakis based on nothing and you do it based on the situtation on the ground in 2008 not the situation on the ground in 1988, and you seem not to understand that for every Evangelical voter that would have come out for Robertson, another voter, someone who might not have normally voted, would have turned out just to vote against him. If you are not an Evangelical in this state, you don't like them. The tension here is not as bad because we don't have that many of the, but go up to Jackson, Tupelo, Meridian and you see it. The voters who would have been Robertson would have been those who live what the Baptists call "lives of sin", those who have been offended when asked if they have "been saved". It may have been close but I have to believe he would have lost. There were still strong Democratic county organizations back then because at that point, every county in the state except for Hinds and Rankin were run by those organizations. Hinds now is again but only because it became majority black.

Once again, move to the South, live in the actual South before you start making your presumptions rather than relying on preconcieved prejudices, and only the person who was intellectually dishonest would actually compare The Bush campaigns to the Robertson campaigns. Bush had been the governor of a state and the son of a president who at one point, had one a 60% victory in most of the Southern states. Robertson had never held an elective office and his sole claim to fame was he was a television preacher and as I recall that was at the same point in time that they busted that preacher over in Baton Rouge for embezzlement and gay affairs, I forget his name but it was around that time.

And whoever put the Robertson map up had him winning West Virginia when Dukakis actually did win West Virginia so I can't even fathom where they pulled that out of. Once again, try living down here before you start making comments

[Neinrein]

This is just silly now.  You can keep cherry-picking statistics and election results, disqualifying events or facts contradictory to your point, or we can have a logical objective discussion.  You can't change history and demographics to fit your own view of your state and region.

P.S. - I know the South because I live in it.

I'm thinking it may be hard to have an objective discussion because based on things you've stated, I suspect that you were probably not of voting age, or even political concious age, in the year 1988 and therefore remain wholely unqualified to comment on things that happened in 1988. I know a fair amount of history about the Redemption of Mississippi but I'll never have a full comprehension of it because all of that came down nearly a century before I was born, every loss being a state that had been home to pro-Union sentiment during the war, or a fair number of northern transplants.

You and everyone who is talking about "Robertson winning the South" is basing your postulations, including the absurd idea someone had of him taking West Virginia when Dukakis managed to beat Bush there on the political situation circa 2008 and percieved stereotypes circa 2008. And the problem with using outright statistics, and when you begin taking college level statistics you'll learn this, statistics have a limit to being accurate. In the United States, religious statistics are totally inaccurate because they base them on self-reporting by churches and churches report their congregation list total numbers. This is not like Canada which I think still has a religious census. In Canada, you can actually get a good idea because even the people who are not on a parish list, for example, if you are Catholic and only attend once a year, you'll still call yourself Catholic whereas in an Evangelical religion, you won't say yes to that question unless you are a devout, tithing, church every week member. Because Evangelical is not an ethnic thing and Catholic is.


I don't know if you were around here in 1988 so let me explain something to you. The Evangelical involvement in politics which in theory is so strong today, that was primarily took steam in the 1990s. It did exist some in the 80's, but it had never really existed before Carter. Southern politics before about 15 years ago was based on two basic things. Populism, of whatever kind, and race baiting both very secular things with nothing religious about them. Say what you will about the South, but the South has a much better record of voting for Catholic nominees when we were a despised minority then the more "enlightened" parts of the country have. Every state Smith won in 1928 was Southern, and as for Kennedy, he won 7 of 11 Confederate states. He would have won Florida if not for Tampa, Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach.

Where's the great tolerance out of the north. And how can you honestly suggest that the televangelist preacher with no governmental experience wins in a general election, when the Baptist preacher who had actually been the governor of a state for 10 years and who had a good record there, couldn't even top 40% in most Southern states save his home state of Arkansas, and we're talking about a guy who was actually a good campaigner, which Robertson wasn't. And you seem to ignore the impact of Lloyd Bentsen when you talk about 1988. Lloyd didn't matter in the final analysis because Dukakis lost, but Dukakis lost because of his own misteps and because he allowed himself to be branded as a soft, northeastern liberal. Had he run as a new Democrat, he would have taken out Bush because Dukakis had a great personal back story, honestly the best I came from nothing political story before "Man from Hope"

And one quick point, I made a misstatement. It read 25% Catholic when it should have read 25% black, and even though the intent may have been clear when I proceeded to talk about blacks and the relationship to the Catholicity here, prima facie means everything and so I want to correct that. Honestly, Biloxi is somewhere around 60% Catholic. I'd say a little more than half of the white community and then the majority of the Vietnamese community, which by now has to be in the 20s. But Biloxi is not germane to this discussion because we're changing entirely. This will be a different city in 20 years then it is now because every plan for Biloxi and Holloway is determined to make it a reality, sees this as a city of high wealth resorts, so how that will change the demographics, I couldn't tell you, though of course if we start pulling in people from the west.

Having said this, I do believe the census needs a religious category because religion is a relevant part of ethnic data because what religion you are will determine what culture you are. Also, because there are religions where you consider yourself a member with much less effort (or without being on parish rolls) and religions where you consider yourself a member only if you are "born again in the spirit" and all those other things they believe

And finally if you don't pardon me asking, exactly where in the South do you live, because you accuse me of extrapolating from where I live, but might you not be doing the same thing. I'm saying the South isn't a monolith and you're saying it is. My position is easier to defend

[Neinrein]

These unrelated tangents trying to change the South from Evangelical to Catholic are pointless.
Catholic is not an ethnicity.
I'm very well educated, thank you.
I'm not making the South into a monolith, you're breaking it up into tiny pieces that bear no meaning.  Biloxi being more Catholic has no impact on the state being overwhelmingly Protestant.  States are monoliths because counties don't vote and towns don't vote, states vote.  There's no purpose to bringing up the demographics of a town or a county as evidence the state isn't a certain way, because the state is one unit.
The only thing the North has no tolerance for is, tada, intolerance.  The South has a long, sad history of intolerance and hate.  That we can't stand.  Everything else is fine.  Today's culprits of intolerance to the greatest degree are Southern Protestant whites.  That's who we don't tolerate and that's all.
The Evangelicals didn't start making a huge electoral impact until 1994.  Before that they just didn't care and had mediocre turnout.  Had there been a Robertson type on the ballot before that, they would have had a major impact on the results of the South, like Huckabee and Bush.
Clinton ran fast from his religion and tried harder than anything to paint himself as a moderate, every man's man in 1992.  Not to mention the only thing Bill Clinton cares about is Bill Clinton, so every move he made had no real relationship with who he really was.

You fail to consider that all the unsaved trash rednecks who also didn't vote until this year might have also registered in 1988 simply to vote against Robertson because he was like the preachers they had ridiculed and ran from their whole life. This was a much different state in 1988 then it is today. In 1988, we didn't have many of these megachurches around. They're all over the state today. Evangelicalism and conservative Evangelicalism in it's purest form became a big movement in the 1990s. People actually converted to it who, in 1988 had not been a part of it, and many of these voters that went for Huckabee were 20 years ago, the rednecks who were listening to Hank Williams Jr., drinking in honky tonks every night and carrying rebel flags at Ole Miss games

This state actually has moved to the right in the last twenty years on many of these cultural questions, in 1988 a majority of Mississippians would have been on record supporting legal abortion because many of these were young sexually liberated women who wanted the choice, or young men who wanted the ability to prevent being tied down because of a one night mistake. This population is now 20 years older, has families, etc. And the abortion rate in the state bears this out, as I recall it peaked sometime in the late 70s, early 80s, because like everywhere else in this country, we are a baby boomer state. We were a baby boomer state back then, and the boomers back then would not have been of the Evangelical mindset because that's usually something that sets in during middle age, and because in 1988, we still had a plethora of loyal white straight Democratic older voters who have since been dead and buried in the ground