A Genuine Single-Issue Voter

An interesting essay by Roberto Rivera y Carlo:

There aren’t a lot of people like me — not as many as you might think, anyway. Oh, you hear political commentators talk about “single-issue voters,” by which they (almost always) mean voters for whom a candidate’s position on abortion is the decisive or most important factor in how they will vote. There are plenty of these folk: By most estimates, they’re between 5 and 10 percent of the electorate (and strongly favor — by at least a 3-2 margin — pro-life candidates).

But while these people can be fairly described as “strongly pro-life” or something similar, that’s not the same thing as being a “single-issue” voter. For starters, “decisive” and “most important” aren’t the same things as “sole” or “only.” I’ve spent enough time around pro-life activists to realize that if, by some (please God!) miracle, abortion disappeared tomorrow, many of them would probably vote in much the same way they do now.

That’s because abortion isn’t the only thing on which they agree with their preferred candidates. They also concur on taxes, regulations, national defense including the war in Iraq, and environmental policy, to name but a few areas. The agreement is often so complete that conservative positions in these areas are sometimes presented as being distinctly Christian — as in deriving from Christian first principles — positions.

Some of us beg to differ, which brings me back to the question of “single issue” voters. True “single issue” voters often vote for people we strongly disagree with on issues of great importance to us, so long as we agree on the issue of greatest importance.