What did the Republican National Committee’s autopsy of the 2012 election tell them about gay marriage and the youth vote?
As Warner Wolf used to say, “Let’s go to the video tape.”
Younger voters are increasingly put off by the GOP. A post-election survey of voters ages 18-29 in the battleground states of Virginia, Ohio, Florida, and Colorado found that Republicans have an almost 1:2 favorable/unfavorable rating. Democrats have an almost 2:1 favorable rating.
For the GOP to appeal to younger voters, we do not have to agree on every issue, but we do need to make sure young people do not see the Party as totally intolerant of alternative points of view.
Already, there is a generational difference within the conservative movement about issues involving the treatment and the rights of gays — and for many younger voters, these issues are a gateway into whether the Party is a place they want to be.
If our Party is not welcoming and inclusive, young people and increasingly other voters will continue to tune us out.
So, of course, we now have some county clerk down in Kentucky who has become the Joan of Arc of the conservative movement.
Here’s Ted Cruz, a sitting U.S. Senator and candidate for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination:
U.S. Sen. Cruz, R-Texas, today released the following statement regarding the arrest of Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis:
“Today, judicial lawlessness crossed into judicial tyranny. Today, for the first time ever, the government arrested a Christian woman for living according to her faith. This is wrong. This is not America.
“I stand with Kim Davis. Unequivocally. I stand with every American that the Obama Administration is trying to force to choose between honoring his or her faith or complying with a lawless court opinion.
“In dissent, Chief Justice Roberts rightly observed that the Court’s marriage opinion has nothing to do with the Constitution. Justice Scalia observed that the Court’s opinion was so contrary to law that state and local officials would choose to defy it.
“For every politician — Democrat and Republican — who is tut-tutting that Davis must resign, they are defending a hypocritical standard. Where is the call for the mayor of San Francisco to resign for creating a sanctuary city — resulting in the murder of American citizens by criminal illegal aliens welcomed by his lawlessness?
“Where is the call for President Obama to resign for ignoring and defying our immigration laws, our welfare reform laws, and even his own Obamacare?
“When the mayor of San Francisco and President Obama resign, then we can talk about Kim Davis.
“Those who are persecuting Kim Davis believe that Christians should not serve in public office. That is the consequence of their position. Or, if Christians do serve in public office, they must disregard their religious faith–or be sent to jail.
“Kim Davis should not be in jail. We are a country founded on Judeo-Christian values, founded by those fleeing religious oppression and seeking a land where we could worship God and live according to our faith, without being imprisoned for doing so.
“I call upon every Believer, every Constitutionalist, every lover of liberty to stand with Kim Davis. Stop the persecution now.”
Let’s pretend for a moment that Sen. Cruz has a point.
How does that point jibe with the political advice the RNC gave out on how not to make the youth vote “tune out” the Republican message?
And, of course, Cruz is only the most vituperative of the candidates. Almost all of them, to some degree or another, are criticizing the decision to jail a women who has simply stopped issuing marriage licenses to anyone in her county out of her personal discomfort with gay marriages.
If people want to argue the substance here, that’s fine, but the politics are kind of a no-brainer.
Any questions?
The GOP is like the Leopard they cannot change their spots.Some of them try to hide it for awhile but the true nature of the average GOP members come out. They will never change. Never for one minute doubt that they are a very dangerous self serving entity.
Never’s a long time. Just like the rest of us, they’ll change when forced to. As Booman points out, that day is coming. We’re witnessing the death of a political coalition and we will witness a realignment. It’s playing out in slow motion before our eyes.
Do understand that wingnuts believe every word Cruz said. EVERY DAMN WORD.
And yet, Washington punditry is still clinging desperately to the idea that both sides are equally at fault.
Yeah, tell me there’s no difference between the R and D Parties when we’ve got issue after issue which are playing themselves out like this one in the POTUS campaigns.
If you don’t care one little bit about civil rights, worker rights, middle- and lower-income wage growth, equal rights, obscene DoD budget bloat and nonstop major military warfare in multiple countries in the world, among many other subjects, then you can pretend that there’s no difference.
Careful. Kim Davis was elected as a Democrat.
While your caution does inject a useful does of humility into the conversation, Davis got elected county clerk after serving 26 years as a deputy clerk under her mother in a county with a total population under 24,000. Her party affiliation says (in my opinion) next to nothing about the views of a national (or even statewide) party candidate.
That comment I was responding to was “Yeah, tell me there’s no difference between the R and D Parties …” dragged out for the matter of same-sex marriage. Lindsey Graham and Fiorina, Republicans, have come out and said Davis needs to follow the law.
wrt nepotism in public employment — see my diary.
The Republican candidate tried to go after her for nepotism but it wasn’t enough.
http://www.advocate.com/politics/election/2012/09/04/democrats-approve-marriage-equality-platform
“The Democratic Party made history at its (2012) national convention Tuesday when it became the first major American political party to endorse marriage equality in its platform, drawing a sharp contrast with the Republican Party’s official stance on the issue.”
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2015/09/03/3698273/republican-candidates-anti-gay-kentucky-clerk/
“…at least six Republican presidential hopefuls have now come to the defense of anti-gay Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis, who will face contempt charges on Thursday for violating a court order by refusing to issue marriage licenses. (Only two) Republican presidential candidates have said that as a public official, Davis should have to do her job or resign.”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/hillary-clinton-kim-davis
http://www.businessinsider.com/mike-huckabee-hillary-clinton-should-go-to-jail-before-kim-davis-2015
-9
By 2007, 62% of Democrats and 51% of Independents supported same sex marriage. A profile in semi-courage would have been in the 2004 Democratic Party platform in 2004 when 51% of Democrats supported it. And how many major or nationally recognized Democratic politicians publicly supported it that year?
The fact that two GOP POTUS candidates have stated that Davis should follow the law when GOP voter support is now only 37% seems a bit more courageous wrt to their political base than what we heard from Kerry, Obama, Clinton before 2012. Not saying that they’re leaders, but they are exhibiting some recognition that the genie can’t be put back in the bottle. Some of them are pandering to that 63% of GOP voters who vote in higher numbers in primaries and some are as backwards and hateful as GOP voters. They consider themselves conservatives because they resist and don’t adapt to change easily.
wrt #1 — so what? National attitudes on everything are always in some flux. Who wants politicians that are followers who wait until national public opinion on “doing the right thing” has shifted to 60% before jumping on board? It sure wasn’t even close to being there when LBJ acted on civil rights legislation. Or Truman in ordering the integration of the military. That’s the difference between leadership and someone like Bill Clinton that advocated for the DOMA that was not only not leadership but legally enshrined discrimination.
#2 — Republican POTUS candidates have to win their primaries. None of them are leaders in “doing the right thing” — in fact they’ve spent decades running on doing the worst things possible that appeals to all the “isms” that Americans cart around in their pea-brains. And looking at governors and Congress, it’s not easy not to conclude that a majority of Americans have pea-brains.
Oh come on. Virginia was a commercial operation. As was the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Catholics and Church of England Protestants engaged in battles in Great Britain for over a hundred years, but people in those two large Christian denominations didn’t flee to the Americas for religious freedom.
This country was founded on a rule of law and separation of church and state to put an end to all that religious interference with the operations of government.
ummmmm….Sorry, Marie, but you got it exactly backwards in the case of Massachusetts.
The Puritans came here because of perceived hostility from the King (probably justified). Upon arriving in Cape Cod they immediately began to build a theocracy that required church attendance, church membership, invoked their own version of the Laws of God applied to Man and just generally acted like the fundi Xtians of today.
It was not until the 1840s when MA began to revoke the religious laws put in place in the early 18th century.
Well, wait a minute. The first puritans were aiming for Virginia and missed and hit Massachusetts. And, the “hostility from the king” was mostly in reaction to their own behavior – disrupting other church services and putting up posters telling everyone not in their particular sect that they were going to hell.
But yes, the first puritans were exactly like our current religious wingnuts. Down the the hypocrisy and authoritarianism.
Yeah they weren’t exactly fleeing. Other Brits were like “gtfo assholes”.
Didn’t say it was justified, merely they felt that the King was hostile … and he was … justifiably as shown 10 years later with Cromwell.
Technically, the MA Bay Colony preceded the Puritan immigrants, but the operation attracted a significant number of Puritans. All the colonies had difficulty attracting enough immigrant labor; so, they weren’t in a position to be all that fussy as to the reasons people signed on. Not that they and later immigrants from other Protestant denominations didn’t quickly establish theocratic enclaves in newly opened lands in N. America. A process that continues to this day. If not for the promise of land, would the Mormon missionaries have been so successful in gaining converts in England that immigrated?
The majority, yes, but the pilgrims arrived in 1620 and the MABC in 1628. The majority of the MABC settlers were puritan.
You’re correct — the Mayflower was three years earlier than the original MA Bay Colony settlement attempt.
Winthrop later kicked out a few that viewed him as not sufficiently conservative — and thus was CT and RI established.
A generalisation but points for historical clarity; always follow the money. It’s also arguable that slavery was at least partially a response to increased scarcity of indentured labour for North America:
Global labour supply markets shifted accordingly when this trend ended, for various reasons, around 1800; one might also see the previous ‘transportation’ policy of Great Britain through the lens of labour supply and scarcity among the homeland and various oligarchic colonial economies.
iirc, originally the colonies didn’t differentiate between west African and European indentured servants. The period of servitude was based on the cost to get them here and at the end of their term of servitude there were specific amounts of property — mostly land and cash — that they were to be given.
John Punch may been the first person sentenced to lifetime servitude in 1640. John Casor was similarly consigned to lifetime servitude in 1655 by a court — his master and then owner was Anthony Johnson, a successful farmer and former indentured servant from Angola.
Those good Christian settlers seemed to move quickly after that to implement laws that developed into the institution of slavery. The first, or one of the first, declared the children of slaves, regardless of parentage, were also slaves.
Don’t know if white indentured servants (few of whom volunteered; more were shipped off by families) from 1655 to 1776 were more plentiful or cheaper than African slaves. We do know that only 5% of the slave trade from Africa were brought to the US colonies through 1807. This is an interesting short read on the New England slave trade.
Undoubtedly some came for purely religious reasons, but the profile for most was likely a mix of reasons.
Meant to add that according to economist Richard D Wolff’s analysis, the there was a continuous shortage of labor in the US labor until about 1970. That’s precisely the point when gains in productivity stopped trickling down to workers.
It isn’t even about gender, race or religious issues.
What is she…a functionary of the government…didn’t like fat people?
Red-headed people.
Marriages across racial lines.
What is she was a garbage collector or a cop?
Or…heaven forbid…the president!!!???
UH oh!!!
Gotta stop somewhere.
Might as well take a stand at the bottom.
She has principles that she wants to uphold?
OK
Me too.
Let her leave her post and find another job, one where whatever it is she doesn’t like never comes into the office.
I did.
I’m a freelance musician. I don’t like hustlers, parasites or people who can’t play up to my standards, so I left the so-called the so-called “commercial” music business in NYC about 25 years ago. I’ll take an occasional dumb gig and deal with the occasional hustler if it pays well enough, but a steady diet? No way. To bring this idea to its most ridiculous ending, if this woman is forced to deal with people of whom she doesn’t approve how long will it be before I am told that I have all of the qualifications to be a working commercial NYC musician, I am some sort of burden on society as a result and I cannot pick and choose which work I take?
Be careful what you wish for.
You may get it.
AG
Yeah, everyone, let’s be careful about allowing people to gain the assistance of appropriate government officials to exercise their constitutional right to marry. It’s a slippery slope to Arthur Gilroy being forced to play “Just The Way You Are” and “Play That Funky Music” for hire at a wedding.
(BTW, for you New Yorkers- please capture on audio/video the moment when this moment happens. I’m sure Gilroy’s ten seconds of solo work while the band plays the bride and groom’s favorite song will be done with artistic integrity.)
Hey, AG, cheer up- at least with weddings for Teh Gayz being legal everywhere, you’ll be more certain in your ability to stay away from being a starvation-avoiding, resident-holding, healthcare-having parasite using MY HARD-EARNED TAX DOLLARS! You’ll have more employment opportunities in case your superior artistic expressions become insufficient for you to live with no government assistance at all.
Because, surely, your opportunity to live successfully while avoiding the choking yoke of gubbermint is the one value which we Frog Ponders should value above all others. Avoiding the assistance of Medicare and the oppressions of the FUTURE MUSIC GESTAPO!- yes, each are vital, AG.
Left unsaid is that she attempted to force her antiquated views on the residents of her county.
Specifically, she forced her views on 5 of other people who worked for her. They told the judge the reason they did not issue any marriage certs was due fear. Fear what she would do to them.
Apparently didn’t force her views on the sixth clerk that works (worked?) for her — her son Nathan.
And Sanders is going back to South Carolina – Columbia, Florence, Rock Hill – sort of surrounding the edges of Jim Clyburn’s district so as to pull Clyburn district voters and folks from the areas outside.
To win the general election in South Carolina means delivering at least 1,250,000 voters. That can happen only with strong black-white fusion voting that gets beyond the distraction of “heritage” and “religion” and “values”. The question is whether quiet, honest talk under the radar of the media can out-motivate the button-pushing passion that the media hype use to advantage Republicans. Especially among younger white South Carolinians in urban areas. And you have to count Florence and Rock Hill as urban areas these days.
In a two person race, 270,000 votes required to win the SC primary.
Appreciate and concur with comment on Nixon
Generally agree too, except to note Nixon in 68 didn’t debate Hubert because of lack of charisma, but because he’d learned from the 1960 race not to offer debates when ahead in the polls, as he was in 60 and 68.
He was a skilled and aggressive debater, had shown that early on against Jerry Voorhis in 46. Hubert was smart and well versed in the issues, but Nixon likely didn’t fear appearing on stage with him. He just feared giving his opponent an opportunity to climb back into the race.
Anyway, if Nixon had any political charisma, it was only in the negative sense — attack, smear, distort, lie about his opponent while showing a rather insecure, paranoid personality that many among the Great Unwashed could identify with.
There was an imaginary debate in 1968.
Absent a public expectation of a presidential debate, any or all of them could have politely declined a behind the scenes request for any number of personal reasons and they wouldn’t honestly ever publicly say what those reasons were.
Such a public expectation wasn’t all that entrenched by 1980 — there was only one (and no VP debate) just over a week before the general election — Carter balked at including Anderson, Reagan balked at not including Anderson. If Nixon’s reason was don’t debate if one is leading, Reagan didn’t heed the advice b/c he was leading Carter and wanted several debates.
Nixon was fully aware that he lacked TV-charisma and it was worse if he appeared with someone not as charisma challenged as himself. Probably could have held his own on that dimension with HHH. Throw Wallace onto the stage and it could have been the most depressing debate ever.
In 1980 the Reagan team saw more advantages in debating with a lead in the polls than disadvantages from avoiding a debate. Their strategy was a) they needed to show the public they had an appealing candidate who was no crazy extremist foaming at the mouth, and that he could reasonably discuss all the major issues on the same stage w/the president, thereby looking presidential himself, b) avoid losing a lead and maybe the election because of the perception Ronnie was afraid to debate, and c) aggressively negotiate the terms of a debate from a strong position in the polls, conceding only trivial matters, to achieve an outcome almost completely favorable to their guy.
Mission accomplished, especially as to c. Only one debate mano a mano w/Carter, and very close to the election. Importantly too, to aid their fact-challenged candidate, they also arranged to steal Jimmy’s debate briefing book, an immense help in prepping Ronnie.
And for those of you keeping score at home, that means a double theft that election year for the Raven-Poppy team. The debate book steal, and the October Surprise covert arrangement to keep Carter from negotiating the release of the hostages before the election.
On Nixon, it would have been fascinating, and quite helpful to the public, had either debate occurred, two man or three. Instead, as THD pointed out, we got a carefully stage managed campaign from Nixon via Ailes with a lot of vague language about VN.
Humphrey, saddled by LBJ with a horrible hand on the war, would have been interesting to watch try to semi-distance himself from Lyndon’s War, while Nixon, who’d privately told Johnson he would not publicly embarrass him over that conflict, would have been hamstrung in commenting on it. Wallace would have looked like the local yokel racist demagogue that he was, possibly losing support.
Reagan knew how to hit his marks and deliver lines that carried well on TV. No need to construct a bunch of reasons or rationales as to why he wanted TV debates (unless there are real time, team Reagan documents that state otherwise).
Mustn’t overlook that Anderson was a GOP plant to draw more moderate support away from Carter. Carter apparently knew that, but the optics of not debating unless Anderson was excluded added to the perception that he was weak.