Politics & Public Opinion

Young Voters: Socially Liberal, Less Democratic

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“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”

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Midterm Election Reflection

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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.)

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When the Democrats Lose the Libertarian-Leaners, They Lose Elections

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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.

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Strange Bedfellows

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The anti-gay National Organization for Marriage and LGBT progressives fight on the same side. For you see, they share the same nightmare: the election of a conservative, pro-marriage-equality, openly gay Republican.

DeMaio faces an uphill race, and if he’s defeated NOM and the LGBT left can hold a joint celebration, as both work to ensure that the GOP remains an anti-gay party.

More. NOM is also backing Democrat Seth Moulton against openly gay Republican Richard Tisei in his Massachusetts congressional race. Tisei, however, is much more soft-edged than DeMaio (no history of standing up to government employee unions), and hasn’t engendered the hatred of the LGBT progressive establishment the way DeMaio has.

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Through the Looking Glass

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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?

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Marriage Equality and the Liberty Movement

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While the freedom to marry for gay people is often framed as a victory for big-government progressivism (by both progressives and conservatives), Grover Norquist writes that it’s actually part of a wider trend of increasing liberty—which includes marijuana legalization, gun ownership and home schooling—and that the liberty movement draws from the political left and right (while rejecting aspects of both). As Norquist observes:

The relevant dividing line is not right versus left or Republican versus Democrat but the expansion of individual liberty versus whatever and whosoever stands in the way. …

Thirty years ago there were laws actually criminalizing gays…. Once unthinkable, now gay marriage appears inevitable. Attitudes toward gay Americans have shifted dramatically. Yes, the courts drove some of these changes, but public opinion has also shifted dramatically over the decades.

The drive for gay rights has moved quickly, and yet when some politicians have demanded that gay rights means a Christian florist or minister has to participate in a gay wedding against his religious beliefs, the pendulum appears to stop and may swing back. Why? Because freedom of religion then trumps “you do what I want.” The team that frames its side as “defending and expanding liberty” will win.

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Politics as Blood Sport

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We’ll see how this pans out. I do know that the anti-gay right and the “progressive” gay left (especially) would do anything—yes, anything—to keep openly gay Republican Carl DeMaio from being elected to Congress from San Diego. And he had been leading in the polls.

DeMaio calls himself a proud gay American, but he earned the everlasting ire of the left when he spearheaded efforts by the San Diego City Council to reform bloated public employee pension obligations. The unions and their LGBT-left allies went bonkers.

As noted here (and I’m not apologizing for citing a Fox News columnist):

One false attack drew the attention of the San Diego Ethics Commission. An anonymous left-wing group funded a SuperPac and sent mailers of DeMaio Photoshopped next to a drag queen to neighborhoods with a majority of elderly and African-American voters, knowing that such a photo would depress support for DeMaio. …

The Victory Fund, which is a group that says it supports any openly gay candidate, first told him that he couldn’t win when he was considering running for mayor in 2008 against the now disgraced former winner of that contest, Bob Filner.

The Victory Fund not only declined to endorse DeMaio, it’s common knowledge in San Diego that it then gave his confidential campaign information to the Democrats and bragged about it. The Human Rights Campaign also has declined to endorse DeMaio in either his mayoral or congressional race.

And this: Screens Smashed, Cords Cut inside DeMaio’s Campaign Office.

And this. “The post on the freshman Democrat’s campaign site referred to DeMaio, a gay Republican, as a ‘Mary.’ … a staff member uploaded the post about a week ago from the liberal website AmericaBlog…”

So unless these allegations are shown to have substance, I’ll remain skeptical.

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Saving the GOP from Itself

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Back in January, Virginia’s GOP Senate candidate Ed Gillespie told the Washington Times why he opposes same-sex marriage:

“My faith also teaches me that marriage is between one man and one woman. In fact in the Catholic church it’s not just a teaching, it’s a holy sacrament just like communion. I believe that as well.”

On the day that the Supreme Court let stand the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals decision overturning Virginia’s ban on gay marriage and clerks began issuing marriage licenses in the Old Dominion, Gillespie told an interviewer he has “always felt that this is a matter for the states to determine. I don’t believe that the federal government should set policy relative to marriage. I think the states should. And, obviously, given the court’s ruling, it is the law of the land today.”

I realize he’s not saying he supports marriage equality, but the shift in tone is significant. He’s making it clear it is now, for him, a non-issue, Whereas before he felt compelled to run on his opposition to marriage equality citing his religious faith, he is now indicating it has become a done deal.

As I’ve said before on this blog, the best thing that could happen to Republicans would be for the Supreme Court to take marriage off the table, as it’s now done in 11 more states (albeit by ruling not to review appellate decisions that upended state marriage bans).

Opposition to marriage equality only pays off with the GOP’s base of older social conservatives; in general elections, support for the freedom to marry now favors the Democrats. Most GOP candidates and would-be candidates know this and must be relieved that the Supreme Court (as the appeals reach their end) is giving them a pass.

More. Our friend Dale Carpenter (who once blogged here but abandoned us for The Volokh Conspiracy just because they have exponentially more readers) explains why marriage equality will not provoke the unending resistance that abortion has engendered:

I remain convinced that even Americans who fervently oppose same-sex marriage now will see a profound difference between allowing someone to marry another person and allowing someone to abort an unborn child. We aren’t likely to see protests blocking access to marriage-license bureaus or sidewalk counselors trying to talk gay couples out of marrying. Even if you oppose same-sex marriage as a matter of religious belief, you can get along in a nation that allows it in a way that you can’t really ever make peace with what you believe is killing innocent children.

Which is also why Republican politicians (no, not all, but including legitimate conservatives like Ed Gillespie) are going to be willing to let it go.

Furthermore. I just caught up with Jennifer Rubin’s Washington Post column from Oct. 7. She quotes an AP report about the reaction by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a conservative, public union fighting Republican who is seeking re-election in November and could run for president in 2016 if he prevails:

“For us, it’s over in Wisconsin,” said [Walker], whose state’s appeal was among those the court declined with a two-word order, “certiorari denied” — meaning the lower court’s ruling stands. … “To me, I’d rather be talking in the future now more about our jobs plan and our plan for the future of the state,” Walker said. “I think that’s what matters to the kids. It’s not this issue.”

The column notes that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), “the favorite of religious conservatives,” responded with a vow to introduce a constitutional amendment designed to prevent “the federal government or the courts from attacking or striking down state marriage laws.” But Cruz and his sort are becoming outliers who pander to a narrowing base. If you’ve lost Scott Walker, it’s over.

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Let’s Go to the Stats

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Pew Research takes a look at public opinion in the U.S. regarding homosexuality as sin, same-sex marriage, and requiring businesses to provide services to gay weddings.

The big news is that support for same-sex marriage has fallen from 54% last year to 50%. Says Pew:

It is too early to know whether this is an anomaly or the beginning of a reversal or leveling off of the growth in support for same-sex marriage widely observed in polls over the past decade.

This was noted, accurately, by the Wall Street Journal’s law blog, and for ideological purposes by by the National Organization for Marriage.

But for me, a more troubling finding is that 50 percent of all Americans consider homosexuality to be a sin, up from 45 percent last year. This mini-backlash (if that’s what it is) may be related to judicial victories for marriage equality in appellate courts, the Supreme Court’s overturning of the Defense of Marriage Act, and perhaps to local rulings that small business owners must bake cakes and photograph gay weddings even if they have religious objections to these assignments and would prefer to let their competitors take these gigs.

In other words, some of the backlash may be an inevitable result of progress toward equality under the law, and some may be self-inflicted by activists who would violate others liberty in order to compel ideological conformity.

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Marriage Politics

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“[S]everal forces, political as well as demographic, may converge to render a presidential candidacy by [Rob] Portman, the Ohio Republican U.S. senator, as at least nominally viable,” writes Stephen Koff, Washington bureau chief for Cleveland’s Plain Dealer. About a potential run by Portman, one of a handful of GOP congressmembers who support marriage equality, Koff observes:

Key to this is the fact that a Portman candidacy could align with a U.S. Supreme Court decision that would end the legal and constitutional fight over same-sex marriage. Such a ruling could come by next summer, well before the Republican voters go to the first 2016 caucuses and primaries. …

Patrick Egan, a New York University political scientist who has studied public opinion and gay and lesbian issues in politics, said, “My sense is that in their heart of hearts, Republican Party leaders would very much like to see the issue of gay marriage taken off the political agenda for 2016 and beyond.”

A credible run by Portman would signal a profound shift in the GOP. However, as Koff noted, that would be predicated on a Supreme Court ruling that takes marriage off the political table. But last week, liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that if the appellate circuits keep finding a constitutional right to same-sex marriage (albeit in decisions that are invariably stayed), then there is “no need for us to rush.”

That could mean several years delay as each of the circuits address the issue. So, ironically, supporters of marriage equality (as opposed to those who would like to keep the issue brewing as a culture war hot point, for political mobilization purposes), should be hoping that the Sixth Circuit (covering Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee) breaks ranks and upholds state bans on same-sex marriage, as law professor and IGF contributing author Dale Carpenter writes it seems poised to do. That would create a split among the circuits that would dramatically hasten the Supreme Court’s ruling on the matter.

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