GOP STRATEGY LIKELY TO BACKFIRE: R.K. Becker

If gay marriage spreads rapidly throughout the United States within the next few years with increasingly meek opposition, the Republican leadership and strategy will bear a significant part of the blame.

Not that the Democratic leadership wasn't disingenuous in their early claims that Republicans were just using the SSM as a partisan "wedge issue." They knew full well that the issue had been thrust on the country by SSM activists and judges, not the GOP.

But it didn't take long for the Republicans to start acting very much as if they only saw this issue as the Democrats described it. Hence the plan to introduce the FMA this week, when it clearly doesn't have the votes, only for the purposes of getting Democrats on the record against it, in the hope that this will lead to a gain of Republican seats in November's elections.

In other words, politics trumps saving marriage, and (in my opinion) saving America from ultimate cultural collapse.

If politicians really care about an issue, they will try to maximize the number of supporters on both sides of the political aisle, not hope to maximize the opposing votes across the aisle. When it comes to voting on an issue which you truly care about, play to win (on the issue, not the party), or don't play at all.

I'm afraid that this ploy is going to look like politics to most voters, and won't have the results that the GOP is hoping for. The tragedy is that it may well cause a further eroding in the public's opposition to SSM.

Why is it so hard to get moderate and conservative Democrats to support some measure that will at least contain the rush toward SSM? Especially when over two-thirds of Dems supported DOMA. I can't help getting the distinct impression that Republicans don't really want any substantial number of Democrats to support any measure which may prevent or contain SSM. Though I realize that Democratic special interest groups are putting the pressure on their party to hold firm, most Dems know full well that a wide perception that the party has come to represent the values of the Hollywood/college campus culture has been the main factor in their loss of Congressional seats, not only in the South, but in the more rural and old blue-collar parts of the North as well. Dems can't afford to enforce discipline on representatives from these areas.

Thirty years ago, it was Democrats like Sam Ervin and Emanuel Celler that led the opposition to the ERA. Those who really want to stop SSM should be working with conservative Democrats, not ignoring them.

But this is so typical of the strategic blunders of the Republicans in recent years, and it is one reason why I still consider myself a culturally conservative Democrat, as much as that species has been disappearing.
posted by Eve at 7:34 PM | Link |

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