The new chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party has one word for social conservatives: goodbye. She is telling Bay Windows, a gay newspaper, that gay marriage and other social issues are going on the back burner, presumably because they're losers. MassResistance, a virulent anti-gay group, is appalled.
That was in April. Today, the New York Times reports that overturning same-sex marriage is getting no traction as a campaign issue in Iowa, where a state court ordered SSM a year ago.
And National Journal has a poll of Republican political consultants and insiders in which half say the party should "downplay" the issue of gays in the military. With 13 percent calling for repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, that leaves only 31 percent who want to take a stand against open gays in the military. "This is going to happen, and Republicans don't want to look intolerant going into fall elections," says one typical insider. Another: "This issue will not help drive voters to the polls."
And there's this perceptive comment: "The Democrats and independents fleeing Obama are social liberals shocked by the administration's war on business. We would do well not to remind them why they once rejected the GOP."
Back in November, a group of social conservatives, led by Robert George, issued something called the Manhattan Declaration-a veiled threat to split the Republican party if it did not continue to put abortion and SSM front and center. But what Grover Norquist has been saying appears to be true. The energy behind the Tea Party represents a shift away from Jerry Falwell as well as a backlash against Barack Obama.
It's a mistake for gays to assume that the Tea Party movement is our enemy. More likely, it will help pull the Republicans off our backs.
Addendum: Thanks to the reader who points out that the Mass. GOP chair's comment is from April 2009, not two months ago. I should have caught that.
7 Comments for “‘Tea’ Is for Tolerance”
posted by Lori Heine on
It’s going to depend on the region of the country. Some Tea Party chapters are already very gay-inclusive, and others would likely lynch us. I don’t think any centralized directive to all Tea Parties everywhere could do anything to change that.
The mainstream media will go right on making it sound as if what’s happening in Clarksdale, Mississippi is also going on in Sausalito, California. That will not change — it’s part of their agenda to smear the “teabaggers,” as they insist on calling them.
The only good thing to come out of the constant Leftist insistence that all Tea Partiers are bigots might be that it helps keep them from letting the bigots take over. The knuckle-draggers are going to be there, but if they’re seen as a liability it will give everyone else somebody to resent besides gays, Latinos or some other scapegoat group.
posted by Jorge on
I don’t understand what the Tea Party Movement has to do with Republican consultants and insiders or the Republican party leadership any more than I see them as having common cause with social conservatives. The Republican Party and its supporters are not a dichotomy. There are several different factions. The ones in the weakest position right now are the moderates and neoconservatives (now that they’ve unified the right on national security, they lost influence everywhere else), who I dare say are overrepresented in the Republican political establishment.
To give another example, where several years ago this site’s contributers were crowing about President Bush ignoring social conservatives, today we see the biggest losers were the libertarians and small government conservatives who are now on the rise.
posted by John on
Um, Jonathan, Nassour took over as chariman in April 2009, over a year ago! Look at the dates on the articles you linked. I like what she had to say back then but what I’d like to know is has anything changed over the past year especially with the election of Scott Brown?
posted by BobN on
It’s a mistake for gays to assume that the Tea Party movement is our enemy. More likely, it will help pull the Republicans off our backs.
Yeah, right.
More wishful thinking from the usual suspects.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politicsnorthwest/2012005031_new_poll_looks_at_tea_party_vi.html?syndication=rss
posted by Carl on
Is it better or worse if a Republican candidate who is opposed to gay rights does not campaign on their opposition to gay rights? Scott Brown has said he won’t repeal DADT, which a supermajority of his state and of the country supports repealing. Is that made any better because the head of the MAGOP says they aren’t going to talk about gay marriage?
In Iowa, if the Republicans take control of the state legislature, or come close, why wouldn’t they try to ban gay marriage? That is their base. Their establishment candidate for governor, Terry Branstad, in spite of being a popular former governor and having Sarah Palin’s endorsement, only won by 10% against an underfunded Republican who made a huge issue out of replacing state supreme court justices who ruled in favor of gay marriage. With that type of fervent support for gay marriage repeal among Iowa’s Republican voters, then I don’t think the party is going to ever really give up on this issue.
posted by Craig2 on
Of course, this assumes that the Tea Party movement is homogenous and unequivocally libertarian. What about Sarah Palin?
posted by Rodney Hoffman on
I’m happy about anything that tears the GOP apart. I hope lots of splinter candidates draw the radical religious right voters away.