Gay rights, foreign policy, immigration crucial issues in 2012 election, voters say

Mike Collins, host of WFAE’s “Charlotte Talks” radio show, said events like the conversation gets like-minded listeners to come together and bounce different view points off each other. Photo by Claire VanOstenbridgeBy Jonathan McFadden
mcfaddenj@mytjnow.com

“Charlotte Talks’” Mike Collins could have sworn the economy would have been the top tier issue discussed at a WFAE 90.7-sponsored public conversation about the primary with over 100 students, faculty, community members and registered voters last Tuesday.

And in a manner of speaking, it was. 

But what soon became very apparent is that gay rights, illegal immigration, foreign policy and health care all usurp the economy in the minds of South Carolina voters, who demand answers and solutions from whoever may be the nation’s next president.

Sponsored by the John C. West Forum, the event sparked with one of its moderators, Scott Huffmon, Winthrop political science professor, explaining the potential Republican backlash that could result from President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address on Jan. 24.  

Huffmon predicted that the four GOP contenders warring over a presidential nomination in Florida would latch onto Obama’s speech and point out his inadequacies, inefficiencies and inaccuracies. 

Lo and behold, it happened.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney accused Obama of being detached from the realities of a sluggish economy. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum applauded Obama for spotlighting Santorum’s constituency —blue collar, manufacturing workers. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich deemed Obama’s speech as rhetoric and a “sad” admonition of the troublesome state the nation is in. Texas Rep. Ron Paul decried Obama’s speech as political gamesmanship that lacked depth.  

Huffmon went on to explain that former President Jimmy Carter is to blame for an egregiously long campaign season, as he was the first candidate to make Iowa caucuses significant. South Carolina maintains as the first-in-the-South primary, and the Southeast, Huffmon said, remains monumental since the region holds 160 out of the 270 electoral college votes a candidate needs to win the presidency.

As the media maelstrom South Carolina recently received can attest to, the state is monumental as the nation’s first-in-the-South primary and as the proving ground for Republican contenders panting for a nomination. 

“If you can sweep the South, you are almost 60, a little over 59 percent of the way to becoming the president of the United States of America,” Huffmon said. 

Comparably, a candidate needs only about 29 percent more of the Electoral College votes from the rest of the country if he sweeps the South, Huffmon said.

“Any Republican who sweeps the South becomes president, and any Democrat who cracks the South significantly becomes president,” Huffmon said. “So the South matters… we’re the test for what kind of Republican can do well across the South.”

The prized Republican, thus far, is Gingrich, who won the decisive Jan. 21 primary. 

With that nugget of information in mind, audience members reviewed the Palmetto State’s primary and expressed the issues they’re most concerned with. 

History major Colin Murphy acknowledged the importance of the economy in this year’s election, but also wanted to know if gay rights would be a talking point for candidates, noting that they —with the exception of Gingrich, who supports ‘civil unions’— are skirting around the issue. 

“Is it going to affect the [Florida] primary?” he asked. 

Huffmon’s co-host, Mike Collins, took the question further and asked Huffmon if a Republican candidate could be an advocate for gay rights and actually win the nomination.

The answer: Candidates will have to talk about same-sex marriage to appeal to their Republican base, Huffmon said. But, the economy will be the primary issue at hand when the Republican victor dukes it out against Obama in general election debates.

One woman took the time to criticize the blatant racism vented toward Obama at Republican campaign rallies, and super PACS that sling mud. 

“It’s nonsense” and “horrifying,” she said.

“There’s a lot of anger out there,” Collins said. 

The issue of illegal immigration lent itself to a debate between audience members, some of who supported immigration and the amnesty of the immigrants already in the states whereas others found it demeaning to call people “illegal.” 

Still others focused more on the logistics of the GOP contenders’ campaign, such as Jim Thompson of Fort Mill, who suggested that he never thought Romney would win South Carolina in the primary.

Romney, who initially seemed to surge in polls questioning S.C. voters’ top pick for the primary, came in second to Gingrich, who days before the primary managed to use Romney’s gaffes on his income taxes and poor debate performance to paint himself as the ideal candidate.

As his accent disclosed, Thompson is familiar with Massachusetts governors, he said, and remembers watching Romney portray himself as a progressive Massachusetts Republican. In South Carolina, that’s not the case.

For Palmetto State voters, Romney might as well call himself a Democrat, Thompson said.

For David Keely, a retired doctor, health care’s link to employment is a mystery.

“I’m looking for a candidate who’s going to de-link employment and [health] insurance,” Keely said. “I don’t see any reason why if I have a company and I have 20 employees and one of them is hit on the highway by a drunk driver and spends six months in ICU, why should that make a difference in the bottom line of my company.”

Keely also has worries about Obamacare, the pejorative term opponents of President Barack Obama’s 2014 healthcare reform bill have decried as socialism, and it’s potential to severely decrease the number of health care professionals.

“We need more preventative care, we need more primary care in this country,” he said.

What matters more to Terry Plumb, former editor of Rock Hill’s The Herald, is foreign policy.

Ron Paul has been the only candidate to make sense of the issue, Plumb said.

“His attitude about getting Americans out of the rest of the world and being the policemen makes sense,” Plumb said. 

The other candidates, on the other hand, all sound like they want to wage war with Iran, a nation currently claiming that the nuclear energy it’s harvesting is to buffer electricity. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released a report in November expressing concerns that the Middle Eastern nation was constructing a nuclear weapon. 

In response, the U.S. and other European countries have issued economic sanctions against Iran, preventing the export and import of Iranian oil. There has also been talk of engaging Iran in war if the nation decides to close off 

Talk like that “scares me to death,” Plumb said.