Will The GOP Drop Its Opposition To Same-Sex Marriage?
Some Republicans are trying to move their party in the right direction on marriage equality, but it's unclear if they will succeed in the short term.
The recent political firestorm over Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the extent to which the national backlash against it has forced Hoosier State Republicans to consider some kind of face-saving revision to the law to address the arguments that it promotes discrimination is only the latest skirmish in a battle that has been going on in the United States for more than fifteen years ago. Beginning in 1993 in Hawaii, and continuing through what now clearly seems to be the high water mark of the “traditional marriage” movement in 2004 when a number of states began enacting laws or Constitutional Amendments barring same-sex marriage, the nation has been in the midst of what can only be called one of most significant political and cultural transformations in quite some time. From a time in the late 90s when more than three-quarters of Americans opposed same-sex marriage, we are now at a point where a majority of Americans support same-sex marriage and where only a handful of demographic groups, older Americans and Republicans, contain a majority that says it opposes it.
The change has even been apparent inside the Republican Party. Notwithstanding the fact that, statistically, Republicans are less likely to support marriage equality than almost any other demographic group, the numbers have been changing there just as they’ve been changing in other parts of society. Several Republican members of the Senate have publicly endorsed same-sex marriage. When the Supreme Court rejected appeals of the rulings against their state’s same-sex marriage bans, Republican Governors in Indiana, Wisconsin, and Utah called for public acceptance of the outcome rather than joining in the condemnation that was coming from some parts of the Republican coalition. And, just recently, more than 300 Republican politicians, pundits, and leaders signed off on an amicus brief calling on the Court to strike down the remaining state law bans on same-sex marriage.
Now, National Journal’s Alex Roarty notes that one group of Republicans is gearing up for fight on the issue of marriage as we get closer to 2016:
The argument they are making to skeptical Republicans is blunt: If the GOP’s 2016 presidential nominee opposes gay marriage, he or she will lose to Hillary Clinton.
That’s certainly hyperbole: Voters are focused on big-picture concerns like the economy and foreign policy. But against the backdrop of rapidly shifting public opinion, it’s increasingly difficult to make the case that opposition to gay marriage will at some point be anything but a political loser for the GOP. An NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll this month found a record high 59 percent of respondents support same-sex marriage, and it’s just one of many recent surveys that show public support sitting comfortably over 50 percent.
To advocates, the issue is especially salient among younger voters who might otherwise lean Republican but vote Democratic because of the GOP’s intransigence on social issues. “There will be Republican voters who trust the party on economics, who trust the party on national defense, but they might have a gay brother or a lesbian daughter, and even though they agree with the Republican Party on other issues, that is a deal-breaker,” says Tyler Deaton, senior adviser to the pro-gay-marriage American Unity Fund, an influential organization backed by Republican hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer. “And that’s a deal-breaker for more American voters than ever before.”
As important as the general-election argument might be, convincing Republican leaders that there is enough support within the party to protect them from the potential backlash from the social conservatives who typically dominate the primary season is a trickier task. Here again, advocates try to rely on data: Support for gay marriage has grown by 11 percentage points among Republicans since 2011, according to Alex Lundry, a pollster for Project Right Side, a group created by one of the most influential, openly gay men in the party, former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman. “The Republican Party is fast approaching a majority on support of gay marriage,” Lundry says. “I want to be clear: We’re not at that yet. But we’re getting there.”
Among Republican advocates, there’s widespread belief that most elected officials and political leaders are ready to move on, convinced that issues like the debt and national defense are more important than whether gay men and women can marry. But they believe those leaders will keep their views private, worried about antagonizing a pocket of social conservatives who strongly oppose gay marriage.
Part of Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry’s effort aims to dismiss that concern by arguing that just a few GOP officials’ public backing can pave the way for more to follow. “Party leaders who had always, behind the scenes, given a wink and nod are now willing to go on record,” says Christian Berle, former deputy executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, pointing to two Republican senators—Rob Portman and Mark Kirk—who now openly support gay marriage.
That’s a bullish assessment, for sure. Dig deeper into the polling and what’s clear to Republican operatives on the fence about supporting gay marriage is that sentiment among conservative voters in conservative states hasn’t shifted. A New York Times survey last year found that 70 percent of conservative Republicans said it should not be legal for same-sex couples to marry.
And while the importance of social issues has dimmed within the GOP, evangelicals still constitute a huge bloc of its voters with enormous influence over the party’s agenda. Tony Perkins and other religious leaders are already warning that if the Republican National Committee drops its opposition, it will alienate core supporters. “Do they want to take the risk of offending what was 25 percent of their vote in the last general election by engaging in this? I don’t think they do,” says Perkins. “I think it’s too risky for the RNC and nominee to engage in this.”
Noah Rothman at Hot Air seems to see the logic behind this argument:
An NBC News/Marist University survey of Republican primary voters in New Hampshire and South Carolina recently found that a majority now see opposition to gay marriage as mostly or totally unacceptable for the party’s presidential nominee. Only in Iowa did a narrow plurality of likely Republican caucus-goers say opposition to gay marriage remains an acceptable position for a prospective nominee to hold.
The party is changing. If scrapping the party platform altogether is not on the table, the GOP’s position on relatively inconsequential social issues should at least be reflective of the changing dynamics around the country. If the most controversial aspect of the GOP platform is its opposition to elective abortions, a position that is increasingly shared by the public, it will become that much harder for Democrats to frame the GOP as the party of extreme social values.
The interesting thing to watch, of course, will be how Republican politicians, and particularly the candidates for President, react if, as pretty much everyone seems to expect at this point, the Supreme Court issues a ruling in June striking down bans against same -sex marriage in the remaining 15 or so states where it has not been legalized. At that point, the party will be left with two choices. It can accept the Supreme Court’s ruling on this issue and recognize that a cultural debate that has been going on for the better part of two decades has, for the most part, come to an end. Or, it can double down on the social conservative position on this issue, denounce the Supreme Court’s opinion as “judicial activism,” and advocate the adoption of a Constitutional Amendment that would define marriage as only being between a man and a woman. One path offers Republicans a path out of the cultural and political dead end that this issue has placed them in, although it’s likely to disappoint social conservatives who are unwilling to give in to reality. The other path sends the GOP down a path that is likely to alienate precisely those voters that it needs to attract if it is going to have any hope at all of winning the Presidential election in 2016 and holding on to Senate seats in states like Pennsylvania, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida.
As Roarty notes, though, those inside the GOP who are trying to push the GOP in a more libertarian direction on marriage are running up against the reality of internal GOP politics. Last year, I speculated that it might actually be possible for the Republican Party to nominate a candidate who supported marriage equality in 2016, but as things stand now that possibility seems to be even more remote than it was a year ago. Rather than causing the GOP to tone down the rhetoric on marriage, I now suspect that a Supreme Court ruling striking down bans on same-sex marriage nationwide will only serve to energize the social conservative wing of the party and that even something as innocuous as changing the party platform on this issue will end up becoming impossible. I’m willing to be proven wrong, but the evidence against moderation inside the GOP on this issue not withstanding the admirable and well-meaning efforts of the reformers is really rather obvious. How that will impact the GOP’s fortunes in the 2016 elections if I turn out to be right about this remains to be seen.
No. Next question.
I predict a party platform that includes the phrase “all deliberate speed”.
Max Planck said “Science advances one funeral at a time”. So does political policy, at least this one.
I’d love to see the Republican Party split over this, but undoubtedly they won’t.
The question is really, where will the former southern Democrats, now southern Republicans, go when another party recognizes there’s just now way to win with those dinosaurs in tow?
@grumpy realist:
They already have, in a sense. In the northeast, same-sex marriage, like abortion, isn’t an issue for Republicans. It’s a done deal. The new lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, a Republican, will be officiating at a same-sex marriage ceremony later this week. Richard Tisei is an openly gay Republican legislator. No one cares.
Social issues aren’t issues. It’s a whole different world.
Not soon. And, when they do, we will never hear the end of “But Clinton signed DOMA, so Democrats are the real bigots!”
@Mu:
You’re speaking of the kind of people who either want to form a third party, or want to secede. Good luck with secession, since most of those states are financially dependent on the blue states.
On this issue, the Republicans are in a quandary.The business/libertarian wing of the party would just as soon put the issue behind them. However, the votes are with the so-con wing of the Party, and they are committed t othe anti gay fight for the long haul, since their interpretation of the eternal Word of God makes it quite clear that homosexuality is a deadly sin and therefore there can be no compromise on this issue. I doubt that their latest kerfuffle has changed that view in the slightest. So Republicans will be pushing this issue for a while.
As to what happened in Arkansas and Indiana, Looks like the so-cons have been foiled again. I think they wanted to build a general religious exemption based on Hobby Lobby that would allow them to opt out of federal antidiscrimination law and numerous other federal and state laws of general applicability. This time though, people saw them coming and immediately mobilized against it, including the business community, who want no part of a market that’s a crazy quilt of rules on how to treat women and minorities.Nevertheless, I expect other attempts by Republican legislatures to build on RFRA, as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Hobby Lobby. Stay tuned.
In the end , we already have a major party that seems to have gotten to the right place on gay rights and SSM ( with a few exceptions). It’s called the Democratic Party. If you are truly interested in advancing the rights of gay people and advocating for SSM, you should be voting Democratic, not waiting around for your preferred party to finally see the light.
@CSK: One of the many, many things I love about New England. Unfortunately, New England for me = debilitating Seasonal Affective Disorder from roughly November – March.
Relevant:
GOP pollster: Candidates seen as antigay will never win voters under 30
Republicans should also take great care to understand today’s under-30 voters will be the under-50 voters a few Presidential elections from now, and every new voter between now and then will have grown up in an America where a majority supports marriage equality.
Will The GOP Drop Its Opposition To Abortion or “reproductive rights”?
@Mikey:
except in the case of polygamy.
Look at this reasoned discussion on why marriage equality does not include polygamy.
played the damned polygamy card
@Gromitt Gunn:
I see your point. The three blizzards in February this year were a bit much. The snow hasn’t melted yet.
On the other hand, I’m willing to tolerate a lot of SAD in exchange for living in a place where no one considers it his or her business whom you sleep with or what your religion (or lack thereof) is.
@stonetools:
This is a key point. On the one hand, it’s obvious to anyone paying attention that the GOP will be better off putting the issue behind them. On the other hand, most of the libertarian/business Republicans continue to ignore the fact that many of their own views–tax breaks for the rich, cuts to Medicare, resistance to increasing the minimum wage, among other things–are no more popular than opposition to SSM. In some cases, they’re even less popular, and have been so for a lot longer time.
So it’s important to realize that abandoning the SSM fight won’t be casting aside some distraction that has been standing in the way of a broadly popular agenda; it will simply mean dropping one of the several unpopular policy proposals which make up today’s GOP platform, while keeping the rest in place.
Moreover, as your comment alludes to, anti-SSM served a purpose. Along with several other so-called “wedge” issues (school prayer, flag burning, creationism, sex ed, etc.), it was something Republicans used to attract a certain type of voter who might otherwise be turned off by the GOP’s economic agenda. The decline of these issues doesn’t just signify that the GOP’s policies have become less popular, but that the party has lost its cover and is being exposed for what it has long been, a party for rich people. If they were honest about this, they couldn’t survive as a party. That’s why, I believe, their strategy has increasingly turned to presenting their views as the literal opposite of what they actually are (e.g. getting rid of Medicare in all but name, while simultaneously accusing Dems of coming after your grandma; trying to sell highly regressive tax schemes as benefiting the middle class or even the poor; and so on). After the social issues are cast aside, they’ve got nothing else to hide behind except for sheer, brazen lies.
@Kylopod: You are exactly right. The Republican Party is the party of the .01%. But they need 50% plus one. The social issues, including race, are just tools to pull in the rubes. There has been a “Tea Party period” where it looked like the inmates might take over the asylum, but I think we’re watching the elite establishment reassert control.
It will be an interesting experiment to see whether and how easily Jeb and establishment money get past the Clown Car in the primaries. Not a pure experiment in that there seems to be a rival elite faction putting money behind Scott Walker.
The question is not whether the national polling of SSM has shifted leftward. Obviously, it has. The question is how many Repubs have shifted, and I just find it hard to believe the HotAir commentator. The social conservatives are such a strong bloc within their Party that they will be the deciding factor. Comparing gun control/gun ownership numbers to the SSM debate shows that a minority of Americans support either easier access to firearms or no change. Within the Repub coalition, however, the NRA side is dominant. If either stronger gun control or complete normalization of SSM becomes a dominating issue in national politics there are plenty of Repubs who would rather be ‘right’ on the issue than successful in an election. And they are the voters in primary elections.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx
Who cares? Will a change on gay marriage help the Republicans overcome the massive demographics disadvantage that they now face? Will a change on gay marriage cause homosexuals to be any less liberal than they are now? Will it change the way the gay community targets conservatives?
The Republicans can take whatever position they want on homosexual marriage, gay rights, or where every group fits into the diversity totem pole but in the long run, it will have no effect on policy, governance, or elections in the U.S.
@grumpy realist:
Considered the Republicans are the minority party and not relevant to policy or governance in the U.S. who cares whether they split or not. Aren’t you really asking is what will happen in future Democratic Party primaries when most of the current Republican voters move over and vote in the Democratic Primary?
Well, Rod Dreher hasn’t managed to calm down yet.
you’d think that Christians were systematically being thrown to the lions again. He continually fails to see that there’s a distinction between religious freedom that doesn’t put a negative impact on other people, and “religious freedom” that does.
It’s a Dreher-triple-bingo post. Dante, religion, and help-the-sky-is-falling.
@grumpy realist: Wouldn’t it be lovely if he would simply take the Benedictine Option and be done with it?
I truly have no problem with separatist communities (so long as child services can assess the conditions of minors). Lesbians separatists, Amish, Mennonites, Hasidim, monasteries, libertarian havens, whatever. If you want your voluntary cultural enclave, go for it. But I can’t handle people who claim to want that, but won’t just shut up, take the plunge, and leave the rest of us alone.
Wouldn’t it be great if these so-called Republucan Reformers were truly interested in equal rights, and not just beating Hillary? This is how we ended up with the national embarrassment that is Sarah Palin; the McCain Campaign was not interested in the idea of women being equal, only in beating the Democrats.
Republicans have spent decades co-opting the word, Freedom. But they cannot begin to fathom it’s true meaning. For them it’s just another word to describe their white, male, straight, old, wealthy, fundamentalist, suburban, identity politics. And as we all know, no group has ever been more oppressed than white, male, straight, old, wealthy, fundamentalist, suburbanites.
@Gromitt Gunn: I support those types of voluntary communities to the extent that is one of my fellow LGBT type persons were to go into Amish Country and try to insist that they host a gay wedding over the objections of the community, I’d volunteer to punch the agitator in the nose myself. I see a huge difference between wanting the autonomy to live separate from the world *and actually doing that* versus opening a cake shop on Main Street and then trying to claim that you have the right to decide who you’re going to publicly accommodate.
Not only will the Republicans drop their opposition to gay marriage, in 20 years they will claim that they supported it all along and fought the Democrats tooth and nail to demand equal rights for our gay brothers and sisters. They’ll include the term “Dixiecrat” in that argument.
@grumpy realist: Man, Dreher’s setting up strawmen as fast as he can knock them down.
Gee, Rod, I don’t know, maybe it’s because all those other things don’t involve limiting people’s right to equal treatment under law based solely on a particular religious view of an inherent characteristic.
@grumpy realist:
He’s taking it all the way to Time magazine no less…
@Mu: “The question is really, where will the former southern Democrats, now southern Republicans, go when another party recognizes there’s just now way to win with those dinosaurs in tow?”
Methinks that you are confusing the dog with the tail, or perhaps one half of the animal with the other half?
@Tony W:
They’ll also be bemoaning Obama’s refusal to accept their outstretched hand on AGW.
@Mikey: “Republicans should also take great care to understand today’s under-30 voters will be the under-50 voters a few Presidential elections from now, and every new voter between now and then will have grown up in an America where a majority supports marriage equality.”
For politicians in their fifties, that means ‘after they retire’; for politicians in their forties, that means ‘a major problem, if I get elected and repeatedly re-elected in the meantime’.
@Mikey:
Hmmm…He forgot to mention the men in pointy hats and velvet robes raping little boys.
@Tony W: “Not only will the Republicans drop their opposition to gay marriage, in 20 years they will claim that they supported it all along and fought the Democrats tooth and nail to demand equal rights for our gay brothers and sisters. They’ll include the term “Dixiecrat” in that argument.”
It’ll probably take a bit longer, because most of the 50-somethings will have to be dead (unfortunately, that includes my age cohort).
Just as the right loves to talk now about how MLK was a ‘Person of Faith’, and how ‘evangelicals’ were abolitionsts (meaning some, who were/are considered heretics by the current religious right).
@Tony W:
Under what scenario can a Republican Party exist in 20 years. If it does not win another Presidential Election, how long will it take for current Republican voters to give up on the party and just start voting in the Democratic Party Primary.
Can a Party survive when its only supports are people who cannot add or understand demographics?
@superdestroyer:
Last time I checked their hostile takeover of Congress was complete, and all Republican members were sworn-in.
@gVOR08: “They’ll also be bemoaning Obama’s refusal to accept their outstretched hand on AGW.”
Good catch – or they’ll say that it was DemokkkRAT Luddism which put the rest of the world two decades ahead of us in renewables.
@al-Ameda:
The Republicans in Congress are incapable of passing legislation that will ever be signed, are incapable of using the budget process to influence policy or governance, are incapable of influencing the cabinet departments, incapable of influencing how regulations are written, and incapable of influencing in action of the executive branch, I fail to see why they should be considered relevant.
In Jan 2017, the Democrats will regain control of the U.S. Senate and then it is just a matter of time until the Republican lose control the House. Many red states of drifting into being locks for the Democrats while no blue state looks like a possible victory of the Republicans. So, no matter what the position the Republicans take of homosexual marriage, the exercise of religion in the U.S., or what people have to tolerate, it is still irrelevant to policy or governance.
Does anyone think that a political party that cannot produce a single candidate who is articulate enough to actually explain their positions on major issues will still be around in a few years?
@superdestroyer:
And whose fault is that? I’m sure you’re old enough to remember previous Congresses that were held by the opposition. Gingrich worked with Clinton and the federal budget got balanced. Reagan worked with O’Neill and we got the Reagan tax reforms so many conservatives credit with jump-starting the economy in the 80s. Budgets were routinely passed, judges confirmed, compromises reached. It’s been done before, opposing parties working together to advance major legislation and ensure relatively smooth operation of government.
So WTF is wrong today? I’ll tell you: today’s GOP is batshit crazy. It’s not interested in governing, it’s not interested in substantive legislation, it’s not interested in doing anything besides jumping up and down and squealing like a four-year-old who’s just had his toys taken away. It hates the poor, it hates the immigrants, it hates the gays, it hates damn near everyone.
Are you right about its perpetual irrelevance? I don’t know yet, but if you are, the responsibility lays solely at its…own…feet. It’s a damn slow-motion suicide.
@Mikey:
Clinton could deal with the Republicans in Congress because Clinton threw the Congressional Democrats under the bus with triangulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangulation_%28politics%29#Origins_within_Clinton_Presidency
Tip O’Neill said that the re-election of Reagan did not change a thing. The real issue with the GOP is that there is nothing they can do that does not result in a complete win for the Democrats and a complete loss for the Republicans. That is why politics is stuck in a holding pattern until demographics just overwhelm the Republicans and it is why the positions of the Republicans in Congress or running for President are irrelevant.
In the long run, homosexuals will just be another block inside the dominant Democratic Party and why politics in the future will be over entitlements and over when each block inside the Democratic Party will be located on the diversity totem pole.
This post, from Guns, Lawyers and Money really sums up how I feel about the topic. Philosophically, and even substantiallly, I really am open to some exemptions on some wedding-related vendors. However, when dealing with people who are not even trying to hide their intent to use those laws to undermine liberal priorities anyway they can (Hobby Lobby!), I am not prone to compromise.
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2015/04/weaponization-religious-exemptions
@superdestroyer:
Yep, because there is one thing that an overhwelmingly male, overwhelmingly affluent community will be sure to support in America that’s higher taxes and more welfare spending!
@humanoid.panda:
If the choice is either support the conventional wisdom of the Democratic Party or risk losing your job, your business, educational opportunities, or even admission to the Ivy League, then yes.
Does income, education, affluence affect one black vote? One Latino vote? One Jewish vote? Then why would you think it would influence homosexual voters. When 99% of the Ivy Leaguers and 100% of the HBU students are Democrats, then anyone who wants to have a career where they do not have to compete with third world immigrants will have to adopt the political conventional wisdom.
Of course, then the issue will be how to avoid the problems caused by government while not criticizing Democrats.
@humanoid.panda: Pretty good response to the Dreher column @grumpy realist: linked. Also, does Dreher recognize that Pence and the GOP legislature took the first swing?
@superdestroyer:
Again, why is this? Today’s GOP is out of step with a majority of Americans. It’s hidebound and unwilling to govern, all but directionless as it fights inexorable forces of social progress.
The best thing for it would be to simply admit it’s lost this issue and try to shift focus, but the Tea Toddlers won’t allow it, so we’re just sitting here watching Wile E. Coyote pop the little parasol in the hope it will ward off the falling boulder.
@Mikey:
Anything that actually benefits Republicans will never make it through the entire process. Only wins for the Democrats can make it through the system. Since the Republicans cannot use the budget process to get something it wants, the Republicans have nothing to offer in a bargain.
At best the Republicans can only get an empty promise from the Democrats that something will occur in the future that will be beneficial to the Republicans whiel giving the Democrats a total win today. Look at how many times the Republicans have been offered the tax hikes today for budget cuts in the future deal? Look at how the comprehensive immigration bill pushes off so much into the future for an immediate Democratic Party win.
Does income, education, affluence affect one black vote? One Latino vote? One Jewish vote?
And here is a question that Superdestroyer can never answer. Let’s say that affluent Latinos or Blacks vote Democrats because they benefit from affirmative action programs and so on. Why do Jews, who are coded as White for racial purposes vote Democratic? Why do Asians, who get the short stick of affirmative action?
@superdestroyer: The GOP is a political party that sucks at politics. I don’t know what else to say. It was not always this way.
@gVOR08: Of course not.
It’s weird. Dreher keeps giving all this lip service to how of course HE wouldn’t discriminate against those poor unGodly gays, but he certainly seems to want to keep the path smooth for others who would.
(If Christians spent half as much time bitching about poverty and worker’s rights as they do about gays I’d be in more charity with them.)
Only if it is suicidal.
If the GOP capitulates on this issue, its base will desert it and it will go the way of the Whigs. People who support homosexual marriage will never vote for the GOP regardless so the GOP has absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose by capitulating on this issue.
We won over 800 state legislative seats nationwide running on an anti-homosexual marriage platform. We won nine seats in the Senate and a historic House majority running on an anti-homosexual marriage platform.
The 2016 GOP nominee will absolutely be a proponent of traditional normal marriage. He or she will never survive the primaries if he or she is not.
Conservatives simply will not vote for anyone who supports perversion.
@grumpy realist:
No you wouldn’t. You will never be on our side so there is nothing to be gained from trying to appeal to you or appease you. Appeasement does not work.
@James P: ” Appeasement does not work.”
And apparently neither does Jenos/JamesP/Munchbox, who is now on this site roughly 23 1/2 hours every day.
@wr: he really is angling for a future of McJobs and “would you like fries with that?” when he grows up, ain’t he?
(Dude–whatever pleasure you get from trolling, it isn’t worth it. Rots the brain)
@humanoid.panda:
The reason that Jews vote overwhelmingly for Democrats has been explored many times. There is a combination of reasons.
For Asians, I believe it is a combination of the overt Christian nature of conservative politics in the U.S. combined with the Republicans becoming irrelevant in California due to Latino immigraiton. Unlike more Republicans, most Asians can actually count and realize that there is no future for conservative politics in the U.S. And last, I believe most Asians think they are clever enough to take advantage of a high-tax, big spending government while actually avoiding the regulatory costs and the taxes that are demanded.
@Mikey:
It has been that way for decades. That is why the Republicans have failed for so long. It is a party that cannot count, do math, understand the impacts of its own policy proposals, or understand demographics.
Also, the Democrats are in a positions that is easier to maintain: we will tax the other guy and give you the money (currently called income inequality and wealth redistribution). What is amazing is that the Democrats have been the dominant political party for decades, have adopted many policies that have increased income inequality, and yet get to blame the Republicans for it. That alone should be enough to convinced everyone that the U.S. will soon be a one party state.
@superdestroyer:
Not the way it is now. It wasn’t this way even 10 years ago. They’ve gone completely off the rails at this point.
We’ll see what the future holds. There are a lot of variables besides demographics.
@Mikey:
25 years ago Bush I made a deal with the Democrats of tax raises now for spending cuts later. Of course, the spending cuts never came and Bush I was a one term president who was run out of office with 38% of the vote. 30 years ago the Republicans signed on a deal of amnesty for illegal aliens now in return for border security in the future. Of course, the border security never cam about and now Republicans cannot get elected dog catcher in California.
The Repubicans have been guilty of short term thinking, bad staff work, and the inability to understand the impacts of the policy proposals for since Nixon. That is why the Republicans are irrelevant to policy and governance in the U.S.
@superdestroyer:
Well, it’s hard to argue with that. They’ve just added an element of crazy the last few years.
We’ll see if they can turn things around. I think there’s a chance, you don’t. Only one thing’s certain: one of us is wrong. 🙂
Only after that opposition has done as much damage to the party and conservatism as possible.
@superdestroyer: The Democrats have been the dominant party for decades? Really? Republicans have had the White House for 16 of the last 30 years, and have held majorities in the House and Senate for slightly more than half that time.
@Monala:
But the Republicans have nothing to show for it. The federal government is still around 22% GDP, the government at all levels employs (directly and indirectly) a higher percentage of the workforce. The Republicans have not really instituted any policy that could be seen as conservative.
At best, the Republican Party just serves as a speed bump that manages to occasionally slow the Democrats down from some short period of time. Even when the Republicans managed to control a House in Congress or the White House, they still have almost no effect on policy or governance.
@superdestroyer:
Setting aside the other glaring stereotypes in your comment, do you have any idea how many Asian protestant Christians there are in the US?
[crickets]
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Yeah, I’ll bet the overt Christian nature of Republican politics must be what’s scaring off those 8 million Asian-American Christians…
It is hardly surprising that a known racist would fail to understand how racism itself has hurt the GOP with just about every single minority group in this country…
@An Interested Party: Racism? Sexual preference is not a race.
Playing the race card in a totally baseless manner perpetuates racism. That in and of itself is racism.
It is you who is the racist when you capriciously accuse of others of racism. You’re perpetuating this. Democrats need racism. Some of them for profit – others to get votes.
@DrDaveT:
So acknowleding that there is almost no way an overtly Christian Party can appeal to the 60% of Asians who are not Christian combined with such a large portion of the Asian population living in a state like California that does not have a function Republican party leads to Asian being overwhelingly Democratic Party voters.
I would love to hear some Republican consultant give a pitch to Republicans on how to increase their percentage of the Asian votes. That consultant will either sound like a racist (discuss how Asians are not big supporters of diversity programs or not happy to pay taxes) or will sound like a naive fool (Asians are family oriented, hard working, and good long term planners.