IGF CultureWatch

Just because it’s fun, and true, here’s a link to our friend James Kirchick’s latest take-down of the rich, powerful and corrupt: The Rise and Fall of Chris Hughes and Sean Eldridge, America’s Worst Gay Couple.

Just one of the article’s pertinent observations:

One suspects that had this couple been heterosexual and conservative, the initial media attention would not have been quite so toadying. We would have no doubt been treated to endless stories about how a “rapacious” “right-wing” millionaire, who had done nothing to earn his fortune, set out to destroy one of liberalism’s great institutions all the while enabling his power-mad spouse to “buy” a seat in congress. But everything about the Hughes-Eldridge pairing militated against such a portrayal. The prospect of a fresh-faced, conventionally liberal, gay couple hit every media sweet spot.

More. The Washington Blade takes on Hughes. The story is really one about factions of the left duking it out, the parvenue progressives vs. the Old Guard.

“The GOP gained young voters, but only because it lost the culture war,” is the call-out quote (print edition) summing up this New York Times op-ed by Mark Bauerlein, senior editor of the conservative religious journal First Things. He writes:

Exit poll data show that young voters backed House Democrats 54 percent to 43 percent, half the advantage of 2006 and two percentage points lower than in 2010. …

It’s not that [young voters] have become less socially liberal; it’s that social conservatism is a paper tiger. Liberalism has won so handily in the culture and courts that it no longer serves as a rallying cry. …

When it comes to young voters, liberal politicians are victims of their culture-war success. They have pressed a laissez-faire posture in moral and private matters, and have won. But millennials have adopted not the posture of their liberal elders that fostered group identity (be it “union member,” “disenfranchised minority” or “F.D.R. Democrat”), but a soft libertarianism that makes individual preference king. …Once social conservatism was defeated, the set allegiance to Democratic campaigns was bound to erode.

I’ve said before that the victory (or, at least, clearly approaching victory) for the freedom to marry would save Republicans from themselves. And that appears to be playing out.

More. From The Atlantic: Republicans Are Driving the Momentum for Gay Marriage.

Furthermore. It’s not inconsequential that the favorability of the Democratic Party is at a 20-year low, having sunk below Republican Party numbers. “The GOP currently has an image advantage over the Democratic Party,” according to Gallup, although “neither party is held in particularly high regard.”

More again. Another reason for the shifting political tides: Democrat Voters Confused: “I Didn’t Realize I Would Be The One Who Was Going to Pay For It Personally”

As I suggested in my last post, below, the Republicans win big when Democrats are seen as incompetent at managing baseline federal responsibilities and favoring intrusive (and, yes, bullying) big government that, among other things, puts a regulatory stranglehold on business and stymies robust economic growth. Democrats win big when Republicans are seen as incompetent at managing baseline federal responsibilities and favoring intrusive (and, yes, bullying) big government that, among other things, violates individual rights to personal autonomy and equality before the law.

That is, of course, too simple. But voters, too, simplify very complex matters in such a way. In this round of midterms, the Democrats were blamed (rightly in my view) for government overreach and its consequences.

A big disappointment of the night was the defeat of openly gay GOP congressional candidate Richard Tisei in Massachusetts, but that was going to be an uphill battle after the scandal-mired Democratic incumbent was defeated in the primary by an Iraq War veteran. However, as of early Wednesday morning, in San Diego openly gay congressional candidate Carl DeMaio is leading by a thread, with 50.3% vs his opponent’s 49.7%. This one will probably go to a recount. Neither Tisei nor DeMaio were endorsed by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the largest and most influential LGBT political lobby.

DeMaio’s race was one of the ugliest, owing to the hatred unleashed against him by government union activists and the local LGBT establishment left. Whether the late-in-the-election charges of sexual harassment by volunteer staffers prove to have any substance or not (in a campaign where DeMaio’s opponents have resorted often to the ugliest of political tricks), we’ll have to see.

But the longer the LGBT establishment holds to its one-party strategy, the longer it will be until we have a country where gay equality before the law is firmly enshrined and safeguarded.

More. The openly gay Republican the left loves to hate.

Update. Dirty tricks, you say? NBC San Diego reports, “The man who accused Carl DeMaio of sexual harassment is the same person who provided confidential campaign documents to DeMaio’s opponent Scott Peters, according to newly unsealed court documents.”

Sadly, it’s being reported that Peters has won by a slim edge, having pulled ahead with absentee ballots. LGBT “progressives” and their new allies on the anti-gay right can have a joint celebration and share dirty trick secrets. Shame on them, and their enablers (but then, these folks have no shame. None whatsoever.)

New numbers from Gallup show libertarian-leaning voters remain more than 20 percent of the electorate, David Boaz blogs:

The Gallup Poll has a new estimate of the number of libertarians in the American electorate. In their 2014 Gallup Governance Survey they find that 24 percent of respondents can be characterized as libertarians (as compared to 27 percent conservative, 21 percent liberal, and 18 percent populist).

Independent voters, a large swatch of whom are socially tolerant, fiscally conservative (that is, “libertarian,” whether they know the term or not) sway elections. If the GOP wins big next Tuesday, it will be in large measure because libertarian-leaners find the Democrats’ economically stifling regulatory overreach, reckless expansion of entitlements and general mismanagement of baseline federal responsibilities (at home and abroad) more threatening than the GOP’s social intolerance and perceived indifference to those who legitimately need assistance.

And I think the advancement of freedom to marry via the courts, despite GOP political opposition, has neutered this issue among independents/libertarians who support both marriage equality and economic growth that’s driven by the private sector (a view anathema to the Obama, Hillary and Warren Democrats).

Note: I am leaving aside here the relatively small group of self-identified libertarian faithful who vote for Libertarian Party candidates. They, too, can sway very close elections but pale in number compared to independent voters whose political loyalty isn’t tied to either major party and who, in a general sense, favor social and fiscal freedom from an overly intrusive government.

Populists, by the way, favor a bigger government footprint on the economy and are socially conservative—think Mike Huckabee. They’re the worst of all political possibilities.

A view from Britain:

Berkeley is also seriously considering a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages—aka a ‘soda tax’. A public vote will settle the matter next month, and, in the view of Robert Reich, ‘if a soda tax can’t pass in the most progressive city in America, it can’t pass anywhere’.

Consider that statement for a moment. If you didn’t know what the word ‘progressive’ meant—and you knew nothing about Berkeley—what could you infer from the context? If the sentence was changed to ‘if a soda tax can’t pass in the most oppressive city in America, it can’t pass anywhere’, it would make sense. If words like ‘tax-hungry’, ‘anti-business’, ‘puritanical’ or ‘illiberal’ were substituted for ‘progressive’, it would still read correctly. …

This is what confuses us, America. If a ‘liberal bastion’ —your ‘most progressive city’—is one in which the government effectively fines people for drinking the wrong type of soft drink, what on earth are your illiberal bastions like?