Maybe the anti-gay right’s plan to boycott the Conservative Political Action Conference is an isolated squabble. No big deal, says Dave Weigel. Maybe, but I don’t think so. I’ll agree with Jennifer Rubin: this is a fairly big deal, a sign of what life will be like for the right now that homosexuality is a wedge issue among Republicans.
In October of 2009, a group of social conservatives issued something they called the Manhattan Declaration: a not-very-veiled threat to split the conservative movement if it tried to soft-pedal abortion and gay marriage. Just weeks later, a gay Republican group called GOProud showed up at CPAC, causing a rupture between libertarians and social conservatives. Meanwhile, the Tea Party movement was entering conservative politics as a major disruptive force on the libertarian side. Though socially conservative in their views, Tea Partiers want to put economic issues first and see social issues as divisive distractions.
So now GOProud is back for Round Two, and a cluster of social-cons, including the Family Research Council and the National Organization for [read: Against Gay] Marriage, have drawn what they call a “line in the sand” against participating in CPAC if GOProud is there, which it will be.
Weigel and others are right to say that these tiffs are not uncommon on the right (or, for that matter, on the left). But it’s not the particular tiff that’s important here. Here’s the problem: conservatives’ hostility to homosexuality isolates them politically from the rest of the public, and the anti-gay consensus is fracturing even on the right (44 percent of Republicans say homosexuality should be accepted by society).
Translation: an issue which once divided and dispirited the Democratic coalition while uniting and energizing conservatives now cuts the other way. It’s a wedge issue against the right. Not just temporarily, either.
That’s why, despite my prediction (never have I been happier to be wrong!), Republicans couldn’t hold ranks last month over the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. It’s why the House GOP will make its stand in 2011 not on social issues but on spending cuts, which may not enjoy broad public support but which do, at least, unite rather than divide conservatives.
And it’s why the latest GOProud/CPAC tiff is not just a bad moment in a happy marriage. The anti-gay right is losing its grip, but it won’t surrender without a fight, and the fight it promised in the Manhattan Declaration is under way.
21 Comments for “The CPAC Crack-Up (2011 Edition)”
posted by Whatever on
I can’t wait for IGF’s piece on how repeal of same-sex marriage in New Hampshire is really the Democrats’ fault. Because surely if they hadn’t passed it in the first place, the Republicans wouldn’t have to repeal it!!!
posted by Carl on
I think it’s more likely that it will be blamed on gays not having enough political tactics and relying too much on Republicans.
Sadly this is not new for New Hampshire Republicans, it’s just that they haven’t had power in the last few years. Of course yet again the voters happily vote in very very socially conservative Republicans while shrugging off the damage these types of Republicans will do.
posted by Carl on
I was also surprised that Kelly Ayotte’s view on gay rights – no to gay marriage and no to gay adoption – was not ever focused on by anyone who was worried about these laws, because she was initially hyped as some type of moderate. If she is a moderate in the NHGOP, then good luck.
posted by Whatever on
I find this statement to be really naive:
Translation: an issue which once divided and dispirited the Democratic coalition while uniting and energizing conservatives now cuts the other way. It’s a wedge issue against the right. Not just temporarily, either.
New Hampshire is one of the very least religious states, it’s in New England, and its brand of “conservatism” is supposed to be of the liberatarian “live free or die” kind.
Yet one of the top, top priorities (and the one that’s getting all the air time) of the new Republican majorities in New Hampshire is repeal of the same-sex marriage law there.
None of the RNC chair candidates is even remotely pro-gay rights.
In Iowa, judges, many of them appointed by conservative Republicans, are being recalled.
In NJ, Chris Christie is reluctant to sign an anti-bullying bill that passed both chambers of the legislature with near-unanimous support.
In NY, where are the votes on the Republican side for marriage equality?
AND it’s the right that divided against itself and cannot stand??? Please.
posted by BobN on
Still waiting for an adult analysis of what is really going on in this tiff over CPAC. Simple googling reveals an organization with internal troubles including corruption and mismanagement. Guess we’ll have to wait for the hype to die down before the truth surfaces.
posted by Throbert McGee on
I’m as much in the dark as you are, but one of the commenters on a recent gaypatriot.net thread pointed out that the Family Research Council has for several years now been organizing its own “Values Voter Summit” — i.e., an event that theoretically has a rivalry with CPAC because their target audiences overlap — and opines that this current “tiff” is a publicity stunt by FRC to generate more interest in next year’s VVS.
So, however much FRC et al. may bleat about being marginalized, their real motivation may be that they’ve now got their own gig going and want to steal some of CPAC’s thunder and attendance numbers.
(Although just to be clear, it seems that the annual CPAC and FRC events are months apart, so they’re not necessarily competing for space on the speaking calendars of high-profile conservative politicians and pundits. On the other hand, many regular folks can’t afford to travel to DC for two different political summits each year, so if conservative loyalists have to pick one or the other, CPAC and FRC are in some sense rivals for constituent attendance.)
posted by John on
So, however much FRC et al. may bleat about being marginalized, their real motivation may be that they’ve now got their own gig going and want to steal some of CPAC’s thunder and attendance numbers.
Which is fine by me because they are only help along their marginalization. What, they think that this tantrum will make those with more libertarian-minded thinking suddenly lean their way? Uh-huh. Instead it pisses off those who are not social cons and even should they win on CPAC it will be a very Phyrric victory. Expect to see more groups like stand up to them and call them out, like Young Americans for Liberty did last year.
posted by Throbert McGee on
Don’t we really have to wait and see what attendance figures are like at the “Values Voter Summit” over the next few years (and just as importantly, how attendance figures for VVS and CPAC compare over the next few years) before triumphantly declaring that the social conservatives have “marginalized themselves”?
We can certainly hope that a theocon-focused VVS will end up fizzling while a libertarian-focused CPAC draws better crowds (and higher-profile speakers), but that hasn’t come to pass yet.
posted by John on
This is about more than just CPAC. Every year that goes by and gays are accepted more and more in this country erodes the power and influence of social cons on this. I expect that they will maintain a significant amount of both for a couple of decades or so to come on this, yet they are becoming more isolated and they know. It will eventually come to a point where some social cons will jettison “gay politics” in order to maintain their power and influence on other matters important to them. By that I mean some might come to accept gays while most I suspect will take a neutral stance in the public arena as long as they believe their religious rights are respected. Just compare how gays were treated 30 years to today and how much the social cons have to self-censor their public remarks. Yes, they’ve been able to inflict some setbacks and undoubtedly will be able to do some more but overall the momentum is against them.
posted by BobN on
Not only should we wait to see who wins, but we should be extremely suspicious of how this is being reported. No way the “family values” folks picked a fight like this without a lot of forethought and planning and no way they’re that upset about GOProud, an organization with, as far as I can see, a few dozen members. FRC has more janitors.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if CPAC dies and the VVS triumphs.
posted by Tom on
Any sign of marginalization of FRC, CWA, AFA, AFT and the rest of the ugly crowd — the CPAC pullout, Fox’s Red Eye’s segment the other night mocking the groups, and so on — is positive, in my view.
I don’t expect these recent developments to have short term impact, though, at least in the states. Social conservatives have too much sway, still, and are likely to have that sway for years.
Republicans have filed legislation seeking state anti-marriage referendums and/or amendments in three states since January 1, Republicans in Iowa seem hell-bent to effect mass impeachment of the state’s Supreme Court justices, Republicans in Wisconsin have filed legislation seeking to overturn the state’s 2009 Domestic Partner Act, and other anti-gay legislation is on its way.
At the national level, two things I intend to keep an eye on this year: (1) Republican efforts to derail DADT, and (2) the number of Republican presidential hopefuls who show up at the Value Voters Summit, and what they have to say for themselves. We’ll have a better feel for how ready the Republican national leadership is to start shedding “faggot, faggot” then.
Remember that the Republicans are still a party that has been courting and catering to the religious right for 30 years now. The situation will not turnaround in a year or two or three.
posted by BobN on
Republicans have filed legislation seeking state anti-marriage referendums and/or amendments in three states since January 1
But, but Miller et al. told us the new GOP and the Tea Party wave weren’t interested in the anti-gay, culture-war agenda…
posted by Tom on
Well, Stephen may be right about the Tea Party folks.
I don’t know about the other states, but in Wisconsin the Domestic Partner Act repeal legislation was introduced by Joel Kleefisch, a hard-core social conservative and husband of our new Lieutenant Governor, Rebecca Kleefisch, who had this to say about same-sex marriage during the campaign: “This is a slippery slope in addition to that — at what point are we going to OK marrying inanimate objects? Can I marry this table, or this, you know, clock? Can we marry dogs? This is ridiculous.”
Kleefisch was elected with Tea Party help, to be sure, but he has been around a while and he is clearly in the social conservative camp. The Tea Party legislators don’t seem to be signing on as co-sponsors in any significant numbers, but then the legislation was introduced just a day or two ago among hundreds of other “repeal this, repeal that” legislation introduced by Republican members of our new State Senate and Assembly bodies, so it is probably too early to tell who will co-sponsor.
The real question is how the Tea Party legislators will vote, if the bill makes it to that point later this year. An indication: The Republican Governor, the Republican Lieutenant Governor, the Republican Attorney General, all Republican State Senators and all Republican members of the Assembly answered in the affirmative to a WFA questionnaire asking if the candidate was in favor of repealing the Domestic Party Act. That suggests to me that Republicans will vote to repeal up and down the line.
BTW, no Democrats answered the WFA question in the affirmative.
posted by Jorge on
And it’s why the latest GOProud/CPAC tiff is not just a bad moment in a happy marriage. The anti-gay right is losing its grip, but it won’t surrender without a fight, and the fight it promised in the Manhattan Declaration is under way.
I’m very happy to let the fanatics and wolves have at it with each other. But let there be no mistake, this affects all of us. Even if the end is a foregone conclusion, the fact that people are debating whether people who merely identify as gay should be welcome in the Republican party and the conservative movement demands a certain kind of attention. I don’t think we can afford too much optimism.
In NY, where are the votes on the Republican side for marriage equality?
Where are the Democratic votes? It’s not as if they had to overcome a filibuster. The leader of the opposition is a black hispanic Democrat from New York City. Well?
Simple googling reveals an organization with internal troubles including corruption and mismanagement. Guess we’ll have to wait for the hype to die down before the truth surfaces.
Which organization? I assume you mean CPAC.
posted by Throbert McGee on
Jorge, as I wrote earlier on the “We Shall Purify…” thread, the most prominent Gay Republican group (LCR) officially supports ENDA, while the second-most-prominent Gay Republican group (GOProud) officially has no official position on ENDA — they don’t support it, but they won’t say directly that they’re against it, and make no promises that they would attempt to thwart its passage.
So if GOProud is unwilling to distinguish itself even from “that other Gay Republican group” on a high-profile issue like ENDA, it would appear to me that there is more going on here than “merely identifying as gay.”
posted by Jorge on
Considering that BobN just grilled me recently for overplaying the gay-affirmative record of someone who is officially was for years very close to noncommital on the marriage issue, I can’t agree with you that there’s no distinction between LCR and GOProud on ENDA.
posted by BobN on
I assume you mean CPAC.
I did.
posted by Randy on
I wish it were as simple as Rauch’s analysis, but it isn’t. There are still plenty of Democrats who are anti-gay, and even among those who are pro-gay, they are way to afraid to actually vote pro-gay. NY is a great example of this.
I agree that the public is way ahead of the politicians on this point, but that’s small consolation. And when it comes to gay marriage, even the public continues to disappoint us every time there is a ballot measure.
Support for gays may be broad in the Democratic party, but it is not deep at all. The Dems will throw us under the bus at the slightest opportunity. Heck, the ONLY reason we got repeal of DADT is because almost 80% of Americans support repeal and the constant pressure that we put on them. If we have to get to those numbers before the Dems feel comfortable in voting with us, we have a long road ahead of us.
posted by BobN on
Except that, give a choice between nothing and civil unions, a strong majority favor civil unions. We end up going the route the UK has gone.
There could be worse things.
posted by Lymis on
Randy is right. The problem is at least in part because while the public may be ahead and improving on gay rights, at least at present, a far larger percentage of the (smaller) anti-gay people are willing to base their votes on it, while a smaller percentage of pro-gay or neutral folks would prefer that their elected officials agreed, but don’t consider it a deal-breaker.
In other words, still, for a lot of politicians, voting pro-gay will cost them more than voting anti-gay, regardless of what the polls say. Until that changes and anti-gay votes and statements cost people elections, it won’t change much.
posted by dm10003 on
As hard as it is to witness the anti-gay vitriol, it’s vital for haters and indifferents to hear what the thoughts sound like when spoken aloud and put into print. We shine the spotlight onto the instances, they see the hidden parts of themselves and wash them. I just wish it was happening faster.