(Insert Title Here)
Source: Washington Post
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32788-2004Aug25.html
Title: "GOP Adds Anti-Gay Marriage Plank to Platform"
Date: August 25, 2004
Republican activists sharpened their party's opposition to gay marriage Wednesday only hours after Vice President Cheney defended such unions. The action was among several steps that conservatives took to firmly place their stamp on the GOP platform ahead of next week's convention, where the long list of moderate speakers has irked some on the party's right.
At the outset of the two-day platform hearings, Republican delegates reaffirmed long-standing planks that have stalled in Congress, such as allowing prayer in public schools and amending the Constitution to ban abortion. But they added a second proposed constitutional amendment -- to bar same-sex marriage -- which President Bush embraced this year. At the urging of conservative groups such as the Family Research Council, the platform subcommittee on family issues went further in tone and detail than did the original draft, assembled by GOP staffers.
Source: Washington Post
Again the spectre of diversity haunts the GOP only days in advance of its New York City convention.
It starts with Vice-President Cheney at an Iowa campaign stop. Asked about same-sex unions, Cheney invoked his own daughter in his response:
"Lynne and I have a gay daughter, so it's an issue our family is very familiar with," Cheney told an audience that included his daughter. "With the respect to the question of relationships, my general view is freedom means freedom for everyone .... People ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to.
"The question that comes up with the issue of marriage is what kind of official sanction or approval is going to be granted by government? Historically, that's been a relationship that has been handled by the states. The states have made that fundamental decision of what constitutes a marriage."
Source: Associated Press
Cheney went so far as to distance himself from President Bush's position in support of a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage:
"I think his perception was that the courts, in effect, were beginning to change, without allowing the people to be involved . . . .The courts were making the judgment for the entire country.
"At this point, say, my own preference is as I've stated, but the president makes policy for the administration. He's made it clear that he does, in fact, support a constitutional amendment on this issue."
Source: Associated Press
The GOP's social conservatives, already feeling slighted by the convention's slate largely composed of moderate Republican speakers, lashed back. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said:
"I find it hard to believe the vice president would stray from the administration's position on defense policy or tax policy. For many pro-family voters, protecting traditional marriage ranks ahead of the economy and job creation as a campaign issue.
Source: Associated Press
Meanwhile, in preparation for the convention, GOP social conservatives have mustered the support to add to the party platform a plank against same-sex marriage:
Unless rewritten by the full 110-member platform committee tonight or Thursday, the marriage section will condemn "a few judges and local authorities" who presume to change "the most fundamental institution of civilization." It will say same-sex couples should not receive legal benefits set aside for married couples, and it calls on the Senate to join the House in voting to strip federal courts of the authority to overturn state laws banning gay marriage.
Source: Washington Post
Comment:
To put it abstractly, diversity is a thematic problem with the GOP because diversity is bad for conservatism. The conservative politic aims for simplicity, as major portions of its voter-base (e.g. social conservatives) operate from a well of myth and superstition. The press seems to be treating the Vice President more kindly than they did Newt Gingrich in the 1990s, but the sense of intolerance ascribed to the GOP by many of its critics shows through.
The sound bite is to point to the President's position, wonder whether he was somehow unaware of the status of his VP's daughter, and say, "Well, that's what family is worth to the GOP."
The situation seems to highlight one of the most politically-damaging faces of the GOP:
Conservative groups, already working closely with platform delegates here, pounced on Cheney's comments. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, told reporters that the vice president's remark "makes it seem the administration is split on the issue" of banning same-sex marriages. Gary L. Bauer, president of the group American Values, said in an interview that Cheney's statement "runs the risk of demoralizing the very people the president and vice president desperately need [in order] to be reelected." Perkins and Bauer hailed the platform language on gay marriage, which they said their groups had helped write.
Some moderate Republicans were fuming, however, saying the party was turning its back on potential swing voters from the political center. Christopher Barron, spokesman for the gay and lesbian group Log Cabin Republicans, called the subcommittee's action "mean-spirited" and "a slap in the face to fair-minded Republicans."
Source: Washington Post
Let's face it: as a numbers game, who will the GOP side with? The several-thousand members of the Log Cabin Republicans, who are considered "crossovers", or the several millions among the party's social-conservative movement, much of which qualifies as the core voter-base for the GOP's presidential runs?
Both Perkins of Family Research Council, and Bauer, a former GOP presidential candidate currently with the group American Values, are willing to at least make ridiculous waves. Perkins relies on voters who would put same-sex marriage ahead of economic and security concerns as an electoral priority. Bauer warns that Cheney may "demoralize the very people the president and vice president desperately need to be reelected".
Now, let's just take a minute here:
Are these guys joking?
One suggests that same-sex unions is a more important issue than whether Al Qaeda blows up part of another city? Really? And the other ... well, Mr. Bauer, let's be realistic--
Where are the GOP's social conservatives going to go that they might expect to have so strong a political voice?
Perkins and Bauer face the same dilemma faced by their contemporaries on the left edge of the mainstream. They have no place to go. Kerry? Most certainly not. Is there a candidate right of Bush on social issues that stands a snowball's chance in Hell, even
with the support of what would be the GOP's
former evangelical base?
Of course not. If there's anything they ought to realize, it's that Bush is a very single-minded man in certain things. God told him to invade Iraq, for instance. No matter how poorly Bush prepared for war, no matter how much of the grand American tradition all presidents call on in times of trial Bush has spat upon, no matter how the Iraqi Bush Adventure actually turns out, Bush will never decide that he made the wrong decision.
Similarly, Bush has been largely unwavering on social issues. His economic heresy has certainly cost him some points among supporters, but the only votes he's losing weren't necessarily his in the first place. Again, where will the GOP's
economic faithful go? Bauer and Perkins are merely blustering needlessly: Bush has pandered to them throughout his first term, and the needs of the convention--broad appeal to capture vital swing votes--suggest that social conservatives may wish to consider being satisfied with what they have so far, and with what the future seems secure in bringing. If the focus of the convention is elsewhere, it is only to preserve a presidency that includes the hard line Bush has established on social and cultural considerations.
The GOP has a curious habit of standing off against the Constitution in the strangest ways; free speech for corporations but not individuals, individual determination for all but women, and now another round with the Fourteenth Amendment as well as the securely-established power of the courts to hold government accountable to the Constitution.
While quibbling with the Vice President over the degree of determination invested in states' rights is best left in this instance for other topics, it is worth noting that in trying to maintain an alliance on the issue with his boss, Cheney has suggested that the states have the power to render the U.S. Constitution worthless.
None of this bodes well for the GOP, whose success in general depends on attracting independent voters and crossover Democrats. This year's convention must necessarily appeal to a broader audience than the traditional mainstays of the Republican party. Surely the folks at FRC and AV understand what's at stake, and we can be certain they understand what history suggests of the future. They might serve their own cause better by serving the party, and accepting the compromise brought by the necessity of preserving a controversial and flagging presidency.
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• Babington, Charles. "GOP Adds Anti-Gay Marriage Plank to Platform." Washington Post, August 25, 2004. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32788-2004Aug25.html
See Also -
• Dvorak, Todd. "Cheney's gay marriage comments criticized." Associated Press/Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 25, 2004. See http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apelection_story.asp?category=1131&slug=Cheney Gays
