Although you might not know it from within the left-liberal echo chamber, a major fissure is becoming evident in the GOP. It’s between those who see the future and how younger voters, even those who identify as Republican, support the legal equality of gay people, and the old guard social reactionaries of the religious right. Over time, it’s safe to bet on the young and those who see which way the wind is blowing, but it could, as I’ve said, be another decade, and the struggle will intensify before it’s resolved.
To demonstrate, two stories. From the McClatchy newspaper syndicate’s Washington bureau, “Quietly, the Republican Party Is Embracing Gays“:
A quiet transformation is taking place in the Republican Party, which has begun to embrace openly gay candidates … While differences still exist, the party is on the cusp of a generational shift in which the longtime foes of gay rights are replaced by younger party leaders who are more accepting.
“It’s an exponential change from a few years ago,” said former Republican Rep. Jim Kolbe. “It’s happening, and it’s going to continue to happen.”
But then there’s this, via the New York Times, “Gay Prosecutor Is Denied Virginia Judgeship Despite Bipartisan Support:
Virginia’s Republican-controlled House rejected the judicial nomination of a gay Richmond prosecutor early Tuesday morning, plunging the critical swing state into the middle of the national debate about the civil rights of gay Americans.
The prosecutor, Tracy Thorne-Begland, a former fighter pilot and Navy officer, failed to garner the majority of the 100-member House of Delegates that was required to secure the judgeship…. Thorne-Begland’s candidacy had broad bipartisan support from the Courts of Justice Committee, which is charged with vetting judicial appointments, and many lawmakers assumed his appointment would be approved.
That’s bad, and the instigator was a rabidly anti-gay Virginia legislator, Bob Marshall, who is running for the GOP U.S. Senate nomination (the primary is later this year). Still, a positive sign is that Virginia’s GOP governor, Bob McDonnell, who hasn’t exactly been supportive of gay rights, felt it necessary to distance himself from the actions of Virginia’s House. According to the same story, he issued:
…a statement that implicitly condemned the vote, saying judicial candidates “must be considered based solely on their merit, record, aptitude and skill.” The statement also said Mr. McDonnell had “long made clear that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is not acceptable in state government.”
Some would dispute that, but it shows the governor, who would like to be Romney’s veep, feels he has to distance himself from the worst elements of his own party.
More. New York Times columnist Frank Bruni makes a similar point:
Within [the GOP’s] uppermost ranks are many champions of small government who squirm at the small-mindedness of the scowling theocrats in an increasingly uneasy coalition. These fiscal conservatives take advantage of the religious right’s political muscle but have reservations about its hectoring piety, and their own views on social issues are often moderate or somewhat liberal. Recall that Republican money played a pivotal role in the successful campaign for same-sex marriage in New York.
It came from donors who don’t want to see Romney take up an anti-gay mantle and who understand that a reputation for intolerance and bigotry imperils the future of the party, which they would like to orient away from stone throwers in glass houses. They’re Rush-fatigued. Palin-weary.
28 Comments for “Two Republican Parties”
posted by Two Republican Parties | QClick Radar on
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posted by Tom Scharbach on
Recall that Republican money played a pivotal role in the successful campaign for same-sex marriage in New York. It came from donors who don’t want to see Romney take up an anti-gay mantle and who understand that a reputation for intolerance and bigotry imperils the future of the party, which they would like to orient away from stone throwers in glass houses.
And the $64,000 question is “Will these donors support Romney?”
Romey opposes marriage equality, opposes marriage-equivalent civil unions, has pledged to appoint “original intent” federal judges and justices, supports DOMA and has pledged support for the FMA?”
You know as well as I do, Stephen, that Romney cannot and will not back off from any of these positions. As far as I am concerned, anyway, Romney has “taken up an anti-gay mantle”.
So what are these donors going to do? Open the coffers for Romney or keep them closed?
They’re Rush-fatigued. Palin-weary.]
Maybe so, but nothing is going to change if pro-equality Republicans don’t force change by refusing to support anti-equality politicians.
posted by Jorge on
And the $64,000 question is “Will these donors support Romney?”
Not me. I have more important debts to pay off first.
posted by Carl on
Quite a strange article, as they didn’t mention that the Missouri legislator who came out is also leaving office this year. I am not sure if he would have come out if he were running for reelection. I also don’t get the point of saying, “Not every single Democrat in Congress voted pro-gay.” Of course they didn’t. That’s not the expectation.
In terms of the “clap louder” mode, we seem to be going nowhere. In 2003, President Bush played the tolerant noble role as the party crusaded against gays, including Bob McDonnell’s efforts to remove a gay judge from the bench. In 2012, Bob McDonnell is playing the tolerant noble role as his party successfully works to stop gays from being on the bench.
For all the talk of how much has changed and how Republicans are our friends now, nothing changes. If anything, it’s getting worse, the woman McDonnell crusaded against had some type of problem in office. Now, McDonnell’s legislators are going against someone just for being gay.
posted by Clayton on
Bush may have played the tolerant, noble role in 2003, but by 2004 he was running for reelection on a platform that called for a consitutional amendment to define marriage as one man and one woman. The fact that he never made any effort to push this amendment once elected is beside the point. The point is that he saw a political advantage in exploiting homophobia, and didn’t hesitate to use it. As far as I’m concerned, that made him worse than Santorum who is at least sincere in his homophobia, rather than a craven opportunist.
posted by Houndentenor on
Also important, he appointed two strongly anti-gay justices to the Supreme Court.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Don’t lose sight of the fact that Bush/Rove worked with Republicans nationwide to set us back 5-10 years in the struggle for equality.
As Peter Sprigg of the FRC put it the other day: “Don’t underestimate the strength of the bulwark that social conservatives have put up through the passage of now-31 state constitutional amendments defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The only way we’re likely to see same-sex marriage nationwide in the near future is if the US Supreme Court were to impose it, by declaring it to be a constitutional right.“
posted by Tom Scharbach on
For all the talk of how much has changed and how Republicans are our friends now, nothing changes. If anything, it’s getting worse …
I think that you are right, objectively.
The grip of extreme evangelical/fundamentalist social conservatism on the Republican Party is stronger in this election cycle than I’ve seen over the last thirty-odd years.
Sooner or later, though, the grip will snap. It has to, because the Republican Party cannot sustain itself if it continues to charge hell-bent into extremism.
The question is when the snap will come.
I don’t know, but I do know that if pro-equality conservatives continue to support anti-equality candidates, the snap will be postponed beyond the point where it would otherwise occur.
posted by Houndentenor on
Really? I see no real evidence of this support for gay rights inside the GOP. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist. I happen to know quite a few people who watch nothing but Fox News and wouldn’t vote for a Democrat if he were running against Satan himself, but they are still supporting the anti-gay GOP candidates and saying or doing absolutely nothing to change anything in the party. Yes, they tell ME they disagree with the party on gay issues, but they never get around to saying anything to the party about that. Nothing has changed. In fact Romney is doing is best to be more anti-gay than Bush in 2004. That’s not my idea of progress.
You have to face it, the GOP is as beholden to the rabidly anti-gay social conservatives as the Democrats are to labor unions (or pick any other voting block). I don’t see that changing because without the religious right, no Republican can get elected. I don’t see any change on the horizon. Just a lot of excuses from people who are happy to sell you and me out for 30 pieces of silver.
posted by Carl on
The idea is often that a Republican being pro-gay simply has to be, “They really like us! They swear they do! Those darn libs/activist gays just can’t help themselves, but Republicans want to be nice to us, it just takes time!”
This is the perfect trap, because it can go on, and on, as it has. We can always tell ourselves that secretly, Republicans are our friends, and if we just try hard enough, someday they will care.
Romney is much less successful at the whole compassion (or pretending compassion) than Bush was, but as long as he lowers taxes, most gay conservatives will still likely vote for him.
posted by Jorge on
Really? I see no real evidence of this support for gay rights inside the GOP.
Be reasonable. They haven’t been in the White House for years.
Between the former vice president, the former attorney general, the former president, and Ann Coulter (well, okay, she’s no insier), I’m not sure how much far up the GOP’s ass you need to get before it finally hits you that the “real evidence” is right in front of your face. Your problem is that you are defining “gay rights” as everything and everything you want.
Romney is much less successful at the whole compassion (or pretending compassion) than Bush was, but as long as he lowers taxes, most gay conservatives will still likely vote for him.
Arguing against this is a losing proposition.
But this election is not about taxes. It’s about the economy. Mitt Romney will try to run on taxes, as every Republican does, but what he needs to do to get elected is run on the debt. I think the George W. Bush of 2004 was a better candidate than the Mitt Romney of 2012.
But I’m one of only two people on Earth who likes Bush these days, and the other guy isn’t on the ballot, so you can take that with a grain of salt.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Your problem is that you are defining “gay rights” as everything and everything you want.
I don’t know about Houndentenor, but I have consistently argued on IGF and elsewhere for the realization of two principles under our laws:
(1) All citizens, including gays and lesbians, should be treated equally under the law, without differentiation as a class, unless differentiation as a class and discrimination in treatment under the law is essential to the common welfare.
(2) All citizens, including gays and lesbians, should be able to live free from government interference, unless government interference is essential to the common welfare.
In short, “equal means equal”.
Both principles are inherently conservative principles, foundational American principles. I’m not asking anyone to change anything, but simply to be treated as an American citizen, on an equal footing with other American citizens.
What part of equality is too much to ask for?
posted by Jorge on
I don’t agree with either one of those principles. I happen to like the idea of legislating morality.
Our merit-based system is a good thing, but that, too, is only an ideal. It is hardly essential to the common welfare. Neither is democracy. Monarchies, dictatorships, and communism still exist across the world. So what we are dealing with is the fact that some forms and uses of government power are better than others, not the black-and-white construction you are trying to pass off.
So that being the case, I don’t see why only things that a subjective leader judges are not “essential to the common welfare” should be off limits for us to write laws about.
What part of equality is too much to ask for?
The part that demands equality without judgment and without righteousness.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
I happen to like the idea of legislating morality.
Whose version of morality? Yours, mine, Houdentenor’s? Pope Benedict’s? Pat Robertson’s? Some other religious leader’s? Ann Rand’s? And from what source of morality? The Tanakh? The Christian Scriptures? The Koran?
My guess is that the fact that you “like the idea of legislating morality” rests on the assumption that it is your version of morality that will be legislated. Don’t count on it.
Our merit-based system is a good thing, but that, too, is only an ideal. It is hardly essential to the common welfare.
Our government is not a “merit-based system”. Quite the opposite. The shining vision of American liberty (“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.“) does not differentiate between the washed and the unwashed, the smart and the dumb, the learned and the ignorant, the good and the bad, the moral and the immoral, and so on.
Neither is democracy. Monarchies, dictatorships, and communism still exist across the world. So what we are dealing with is the fact that some forms and uses of government power are better than others, not the black-and-white construction you are trying to pass off.
Exactly. Look at the next sentence of the Declaration (“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. ”
That’s the governing principle we live by in this country — the role of government is to “secure these rights” and legitimately exists only with the “consent of the governed”.
While I suppose that it is theoretically possible for other visions of government (monarchies, dictatorships, and communism) to respect the freedom and liberty of the governed, that has yet to happen in our world, human beings being human.
So that being the case, I don’t see why only things that a subjective leader judges are not “essential to the common welfare” should be off limits for us to write laws about.
The genius of our system of government — its greatest contribution to liberty, greater, perhaps, than the principle of separation of church and state, the idea of the common good rather than morality should form the basis of our laws — is that there is no “a subjective leader”. Decision-making is distributed between branches, between legislative bodies, between state and federal, and so on, to ensure that power never becomes concentrated in a single source.
Look, Jorge. I’ll grant you that I, like all religious people, look forward to a day when the World to Come (the “Kingdom of God” in your Christian terms) is instituted, and all men live in perfect harmony with God and with each other. But until that day comes, we are stuck governing ourselves, imperfect beings in an imperfect world, struggling to do the best we can by one another.
Our system of government — limited, distributed government power, stated constitutional principles, consent of the governed, the common good as the standard for our laws and all of that — for all its flaws and imperfections, has done a good job.
While we go charging off toward the ditch again and again, following the vagaracies of human enthusiasms, we always seems to right itself and get back on the road ahead of disaster. I think that our ability to right ourselves stems directly from our form of government.
To my mind, legislating on the basis of the common good rather than morality — the essence of the separation of church and state — is an essential part of the American vision. As Barry Goldwater put it:
“By maintaining the separation of church and state, the United States has avoided the intolerance which has so divided the rest of the world with religious wars. Can any of us refute the wisdom of Madison and the other framers? Can anyone look at the carnage in Iran, the bloodshed in Northem Ireland, or the bombs bursting in Lebanon and yet question the dangers of injecting religious issues into the affairs of state?
The religious factions will go on imposing their will on others, unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy. They must learn to make their views known without trying to make their views the only alternatives. We have succeeded for 205 years in keeping the affairs of state separate from the uncompromising idealism of religious groups and we mustn’t stop now. To retreat from that separation would violate the principles of conservatism and the values upon which the framers built this democratic republic.”
In any event, I can’t think of any other form of government I’d trade ours for. Can you?
posted by Tom Scharbach on
What part of equality is too much to ask for?
posted by clayton on
Jorge, you wrote “Be reasonable. They haven’t been in the White House for years.”
Seriously? Between Regan, Bush the father and Bush the son, the Republicans have been in the White House 20 out of the last 32 years. W. dominated the first 2/3 of this century, during which time, hes poke in favor of a constitutional amendment to define marriage as one man and one woman, and he presided over a party that passed such amendments in nearly 30 states. His chief strategist utilized homophobia as a convenient method for energizing the base. Granted, there have been no Republicans in the white house since early 2009, but plenty have been active in states such as, say, Virginia and North Carolina, and EVERY Republican seeking the White House, without exception, has come out against marriage equality. With the possible exception of Mitt Romney (whose statements on the issues have been heavily qualified), all came out in favor of reinstating DADT. Granted, there have been some signs of change in New York, where several Republicans voted for marriage equality. And the general silence from Republicans since Obama came out in favor of marriage equality has also been notable (even though no key Republicans have voiced anything close to support). But your general assertion that the Republicans haven’t had the chance to do anything positive because they haven’t been in the White House in several years is disingenuous at best. W. had plenty of opportunity to voice support for gays. He ignored them at nearly ever turn.
posted by Mark on
It’s entirely possible there are “two Republican parties,” as we saw in the NY and NH legislative votes on marriage. But it’s also true that one of these Republican parties is much larger than the other. There are 47 Republican U.S. senators: all oppose marriage equality, and all appear to support the federal law that requires treating married gay and lesbian couples as strangers under federal law. There are 242 Republican members of the U.S. House: all oppose marriage equality, and all but three or four support DOMA section 3. Given the disparity between these “two Republican parties,” isn’t it disingenuous to suggest that the two are in any way equivalent?
And however gay-friendly some big GOP donors are, they’ve been perfectly willing to donate millions of dollars to a candidate who signed NOM’s pledge to back a constitutional amendment to forcibly divorce thousands of married couples. They just want Gov. Romney to push this agenda with a human face.
posted by Mark F. on
Polling shows clearly that the average Republican voter is more pro-gay than the average Republican Congressman. A large number of Repuiblican voters supported repealing DADT, for example, but only a handful of Congressman voted for repeal.
posted by Houndentenor on
But the supposedly pro-gay Republicans will continue to vote and fund anti-gay Republicans so for all intents and purposes they might as well be anti-gay themselves.
I’m also skeptical of this kind of polling. Most people are as reluctant to admit to homophobia as they are to admit to racism. That gives a distorted view of what people really think if they try to make themselves better to the stranger asking the question.
posted by Mark F. on
Most people aren’t single issue voters, including Democrats. Note that many gays and lesbians were almost falling over themselves to vote for Bill Clinton in 1996 — after he signed DADT and DOMA.
I think polling on gay issues is pretty accurate overall. For example, the recent NC vote was in line with the opinion polling.
posted by Mark on
So what we’re left with, then, is that the Republican base (outside of the South and Utah/Idaho, at least) is somewhat less anti-gay than are federal Republican officeholders; but that these somewhat less anti-gay Republican voters have no problem voting for the anti-gay Republicans who currently populate the House and Senate.
I’m not sure why or how we should be optimistic about this development, especially since a President Romney would be able to consolidate a long-term anti-gay majority on the Court if and when Justice Kennedy retires.
posted by Carl on
The problem with “single issue” is that it affects so much of the life of someone who is gay. At the moment, the GOP is banning any contractual rights for unmarried couples, opposes gays in the military, opposes anti-discrimination legislation, opposes gay adoption, and opposes someone getting an important job if they are gay.
Most straight voters aren’t going to care about this, because it doesn’t affect them, but it means that gays and lesbians continue to be subject to legislation which basically sees every part of their life as wrong and illegal.
posted by Michael White on
When did this site become an apologetic for the GOP?
posted by William on
Do tell how you hope to forge a gay mainstream by beginning articles with clauses as “Although you might not know it from within the left-liberal echo chamber”.
posted by JohnInCA on
Maybe there’s “two Republican parties” in some places, but every place I’ve lived there’s only one, and it’s pretty damn anti-gay. Why should I support these people that would see my security clearance revoked?
posted by Mark F. on
Nobody is arguing you should support anti-gay Republicans. However, with the prospect of a totally GOP controlled federal government in 2013, you might give some credit and try to work with the good people in the party.
posted by JohnInCA on
Well seeing as the only republicans I have the choice to support are anti-gay, I’m not sure just what it is you want from me. Especially since if I’m going to start donating to campaigns across state lines I’ll first support politicians I actually *like* rather then ones I find merely *tolerable*.
posted by TomJeffersonIII on
The problem is that since the 1970s, the sort of Republican who would tend to be supportive, in some way or another, of gay rights are also the type that (a) tend have less and less power and (b) are content to let the religious right drive social policy as long as whatever the GOP candidate’s economic policy is, can be seen as entirely pro-business/anti-tax.
For the GOP to become less homophobic (or less sexist) its more socially liberal-libertarian members are going to actually have to stand up and speak up and take back their party.
How many Log Cabin Republicans or gay libertarians are running for office in this election cycle?
I know some fellow college students (pro-gay rights) who had to change parties because the State/Local GOP leadership had zero interest in ‘RINO’ Republicans.
So, yeah I see a change among the youth (as we bitch about teachers and argue about politics over…’root beer’), but the folks making the policy decisions, writing the platform and party candidates are still either anti-gay or perfectly willing to pretend to be to get elected.