Andrew Sullivan has the text of a very interesting memo from one of the top Republican pollsters, Jan van Lohuizen, urging Republican leaders to shift their views on marriage equality and other gay rights issues. The memo notes that public opinion is changing rapidly and that the party must change both its rhetoric and its policy preferences if it wants to maintain their credibility on these issues. First, the polling data:
In view of this week’s news on the same sex marriage issue, here is a summary of recent survey findings on same sex marriage:
1. Support for same sex marriage has been growing and in the last few years support has grown at an accelerated rate with no sign of slowing down. A review of public polling shows that up to 2009 support for gay marriage increased at a rate of 1% a year. Starting in 2010 the change in the level of support accelerated to 5% a year. The most recent public polling shows supporters of gay marriage outnumber opponents by a margin of roughly 10% (for instance: NBC / WSJ poll in February / March: support 49%, oppose 40%).
2. The increase in support is taking place among all partisan groups. While more Democrats support gay marriage than Republicans, support levels among Republicans are increasing over time. The same is true of age: younger people support same sex marriage more often than older people, but the trends show that all age groups are rethinking their position.
3. Polling conducted among Republicans show that majorities of Republicans and Republican leaning voters support extending basic legal protections to gays and lesbians. These include majority Republican support for:
a. Protecting gays and lesbians against being fired for reasons of sexual orientation
b. Protections against bullying and harassment
c. Repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
d. Right to visit partners in hospitals
e. Protecting partners against loss of home in case of severe medical emergencies or death
f. Legal protection in some form for gay couples whether it be same sex marriage or domestic partnership (only 29% of Republicans oppose legal recognition in any form).
And then some recommended talking points:
Recommendation: A statement reflecting recent developments on this issue along the following lines:
“People who believe in equality under the law as a fundamental principle, as I do, will agree that this principle extends to gay and lesbian couples; gay and lesbian couples should not face discrimination and their relationship should be protected under the law. People who disagree on the fundamental nature of marriage can agree, at the same time, that gays and lesbians should receive essential rights and protections such as hospital visitation, adoption rights, and health and death benefits.”
Other thoughts / Q&A: Follow up to questions about affirmative action:
“This is not about giving anyone extra protections or privileges, this is about making sure that everyone – regardless of sexual orientation – is provided the same protections against discrimination that you and I enjoy.”
Why public attitudes might be changing:
“As more people have become aware of friends and family members who are gay, attitudes have begun to shift at an accelerated pace. This is not about a generational shift in attitudes, this is about people changing their thinking as they recognize their friends and family members who are gay or lesbian.”
Conservative fundamentals:
“As people who promote personal responsibility, family values, commitment and stability, and emphasize freedom and limited government we have to recognize that freedom means freedom for everyone. This includes the freedom to decide how you live and to enter into relationships of your choosing, the freedom to live without excessive interference of the regulatory force of government.”
But this highlights the dilemma that the Republicans find themselves in. If they do make this shift in rhetoric and policy and begin to embrace even half-measures that increase equality, they risk losing a portion of the religious right, the single largest constituency in their coalition, to a third party. If they were to lose even 20% of those votes, it will be very difficult to make up for in support from other demographic groups.
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slc1
May 16, 2012 at 11:13 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Obviously, the Rethuglicans in the Virginia House of Delegates didn’t get the message. Spurred on by fascist goat fucker William Marshall, they spit in Governor McDonall’s eye, turning down his choice for a judgeship because the nominee is gay.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/va-politics/virginia-general-assembly-rejects-openly-gay-prosecutor-for-richmond-judgeship/2012/05/15/gIQAvZKSSU_story.html?hpid=z7
rmw1982
May 16, 2012 at 11:19 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
While supporting even half-measures for equality for gay people might cost them this election, as time passes, the public support for gay rights and equality will continue to grow. I wonder if in the run-up to the 2016 or 2020 elections pandering to the religious right will actually be a liability to the Republican party. (I can only hope.)
Hercules Grytpype-Thynne
May 16, 2012 at 11:22 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
They claim it’s not because he’s gay per se, but because of his “outspokenness on gay rights” (to quote the WaPo article). One strongly suspects, though, that a similarly outspoken straight nominee would have been treated somewhat differently.
tubi
May 16, 2012 at 11:25 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
They also run the risk of not being taken seriously. It would mean they’d have to back up their words with actions, which they don’t seem inclined to do, as noted in #1 above. And if people criticized Obama for saying what he said for political reasons, imagine the hue and cry if all of a sudden Romney/Christie/et al were for SSM.
But the biggest problem is their base. They’ve spent so long cultivating this relationship with the most backward and vile people that they are now trapped with them going forward. I have no idea what the right move is for the GOP.
RW Ahrens
May 16, 2012 at 11:26 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Given the public support for such issues as contraception, reasonable access to abortion, women’s rights to basic health care and reproductive services, etc., I believe that such pandering is a liability for them NOW. Especially as people out in the States are seeing all the crazy batshit insane stuff they’ve done at the State level, including voter ID laws.
Phillip IV
May 16, 2012 at 11:28 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Their choice being losing those votes quickly to a third party, or slowly to the grim reaper.
Van Lohuizen’s analysis appears very much correct concerning the GOP’s outlook on the national level – but what keeps holding them back is the fact that there are still wide swathes of the country were pandering to bigots makes for a secure political existence, and that too few GOP politicians there are willing to endanger their personal fiefs for the greater good of the party.
Quodlibet
May 16, 2012 at 11:30 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I wish that they were suggesting a policy shift not to ensure their election, but because it’s the right thing to do.
John Hinkle
May 16, 2012 at 11:30 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Hmm, reminds me of “two legs good, four legs bad.”
flakko
May 16, 2012 at 11:33 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Did anyone else see Delgaudio’s latest email? He implicates, and links to, the wrong website as a facilitator in “child sex trafficking”. His email links to the highly respected music magazine backpages.com, when what he should have linked was backpage.com. What a differece a solitary s can make.
d cwilson
May 16, 2012 at 11:42 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It will cost them a few percentage points every where except in the depth South, but I don’t think it will become a serious liability for them until much later. Maybe the 2032 election. Most of the opposition to same-sex marriage is coming from older voters, who traditionally turn out to vote in huge numbers. That generation will have to die off before pandering to religious wackos becomes a major detriment to the GOP’s electoral prospects.
By the time the 2040 election rolls around, the GOP will be claiming that they were always on the forefront of gay rights and that the democrats are the real anti-gay bigots.
ashleybell
May 16, 2012 at 11:44 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
As long as the bigoted right wing constituency exists, there will be charlatans more than willing to perpetually “run for office” as a carreer, knowing full well they would never get elected. Like Palin and Gingrich and Cain. The other “sane” republicans that are rumoured to exist have courted that beast far too long for them to feign shock and disappointment at the fringe’s attrocious behaviour. Any attempt at appearing more moderate will be seen as nothing more than cynical political weasling
Modusoperandi
May 16, 2012 at 11:46 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Some will peel off, sure, but the Democrats abandoned Labor, and who does Labor still stand behind?
tubi “But the biggest problem is their base. They’ve spent so long cultivating this relationship with the most backward and vile people that they are now trapped with them going forward. I have no idea what the right move is for the GOP.”
The right move? In a just world, they’d shrivel up and blow away.
In this one, abortion went from “that Catholic issue” to “the Christian issue” in, what, ten to fifteen years(*1)? They can do that with this, assuming that enough of the Christian Right’s leaders are cynical enough to trade “unchanging values” for proximity to the leaders of the country. And if they won’t, there are plenty of others waiting in the wings for their chance to reach out and firmly grasp the lever of power.(*2)
*1. …and from a shrug for environmentalism to foaming at the mouth climate change denialism in less than that.
*2. Oddly, not a euphemism.
eric
May 16, 2012 at 11:47 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Hercules @3:
I don’t. I bet they would’ve turned down any McDonnell nomination if they’d thought that prospective judge would rule for gay rights.
Its a wierd mixed-up bigotry. There’s judges who will rule from the bench in support of gay rights (call them A’s). There’s judges who are gay (call them B’s). The VA delegates are being honest when they say their opposition is to A’s, not B’s. They are bigoted in that they generalize/assume all B’s are A’s, but I believe that if some A-but-not-B came along, they’d probably nix that nomination too.
D. C. Sessions
May 16, 2012 at 12:13 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Three ways to look at this:
1) Now that we have huge majorities, we don’t need the wedge issue (homophobia) that was the main driver that got them for us.
2) Dead in the water, because your Republican-in-the-street in red States isn’t driven by strategic goals — they actually care about those issues, and won’t compromise on them even when they’re losers.
3) Polls? Irrelevant. What does Rush say?
timpayne
May 16, 2012 at 12:19 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
What’s not to like about the legalization of same sex marriage? One’s chance of finding a lifelong partner is doubled with the stroke of a pen.
Michael Heath
May 16, 2012 at 12:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ed on the GOP pollsters suggestion the party lay off gays:
And let’s remember the financial constituents of the Republican party predominately depend on this voting block to maintain the solidarity they enjoy from Republican members of Congress when it comes to their two primary objectives:
1) Denying the fact of global warming and whose causing it in order to stall effective mitigation efforts and,
2) Deny the fact our budget and debt woes are largely caused by lower than optimal effective tax rates, “optimal” being levels which maximize economic growth, a stronger labor market, and often ignored – reducing the burden of the deficit and debt by growth-derived increases in federal revenues.
The religious right is an incredibly valuable asset to the Republican party because they will deny even reality itself if their leaders tell them to do so; even if denying that reality directly causes them and their progeny harm. There’s no reason conservative Christians have to deny global warming and oppose fiscal conservatism (balanced budgets), except the fact their own way of thinking causes them to slavishly submit to the arguments of leaders they perceive to be one of them. Where one of them is some combination of a shared religious or political ideology. Social dominators eat up the ability to control a population who can’t think, will blindly follow, and even fight for your cause.
laurentweppe
May 16, 2012 at 12:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Naaaaaaaah, that’s not so hard: in Europe, the homophobic far-right adapted by pinkwashing themselves: clamoring in front of cameras that they have always been tolerant and that aaaaaaaall homophobes are found among the dark skinned foreigners, while still beating up and discriminating gays when the cameras have left.
tacitus
May 16, 2012 at 12:36 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The Republicans will decide that the Religious Right has nowhere else to go, and continue to shift slowly with the tide. The leaders of the Religious Right will keep many of their voters in line because they don’t want to give up their only real conduit to political power. Without the Republicans they are nothing, and Romney et al know it.
bubba707
May 16, 2012 at 1:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I do kinda wonder about the polls on acceptance of gay marriage. I’m 62, straight, married to the same lady for 40 years. I’ve never been opposed to the idea of gays and lesbians marrying and having all the rights attached to it. None of my friends particularly object to it either. None of us see any threat in it to our own marriages. All I can think of is the religious right, given the track record of their preachers, is afraid their preachers will dump their wives and children to run off with rent boys.
D. C. Sessions
May 16, 2012 at 1:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That’s not clear. The RR in several red States have taken the bit in their teeth and started primarying the anointed of the Establishment. The Establishment has the money and the national connections but the RR has the bodies and the local organization, both on the street and in the congregations.
The RR today is the organizational equivalent for the Right what unions once were for the Left: the people who could fill the phone banks with volunteers, have volunteers go door-to-door getting voters registered, and get out the vote.
Even in a top-down authoritarian system, that’s powerful. The RR has an order of magnitude more people than the Paulistas do, and their leadership has seen this year what Paul is up to with taking over the caucus States’ conventions. You can be very, very sure that by 2016 the RR will put the same lessons into practice and have their own people packing the conventions after the Press has moved on to other horse races.
And that takes bodies. I suppose Jamie Dimon and the Kochs can hire enough people to warm a similar number of seats, but there are problems with that approach. This is one domain where democracy has some leverage against plutocracy, and it’s a shame that it won’t get nearly the coverage it should.
Area Man
May 16, 2012 at 4:42 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Actually, it mostly is a generational shift. When you look at attitudes towards gay rights by age group, the difference is astounding. While I’m sure there are some people changing their minds, what’s mostly been changing over the last 10-15 years is that old people have died, and young people have replaced them.
tacitus
May 16, 2012 at 7:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I believe this also dovetails quite nicely with the generational shift toward non-belief. The shift toward the acceptance of gay marriage is faster and will go deeper, but is a serious problem for the fundamentalists nonetheless. They will survive, no doubt, but as a smaller vocal minority, as they lose their children to a combination of moderate religion and unbelief.
This has been happening over most of the Christian world (at least, outside Africa), and its a trend that even the fall of Communism has failed to reverse significantly, so I don’t see much chance of it happening in America either. We may be late to the party, but at least we’re beginning to trickle in.
tacitus
May 16, 2012 at 7:38 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Right, but the key point is that they will be sticking with the Republicans, not going it alone, since they know they must maintain that inside connection with the corridors of power–the one they used so successfully during the Bush years to staff the Department of Justice with so many graduates from Pat Robertson’s Regent University, for example.
I’m sure the Republican Party understands the games the Religious Right will play if they feel that their status within the party is being diminished, but I suspect they are confident that (like Ron Paul’s bid) they will fail to overturn the establishment.
dave
May 16, 2012 at 7:38 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Area Man@21:
From the pollster’s memo:
Have old people been dying at five times the rate they did two years ago?* I suspect not, which would require some other factor to generate the acceleration. Given the current death rate in the US ~0.8%, even a shift of 0% support to 100% support amoung elderly and younger cohorts respectively, and all deaths from the elderly, would not explain the the full pre-2010 rate of increase, and can only be a small fraction fraction of the newer, accellerated rate.
*Even Obamacare Death Panels are not that efficient.
D. C. Sessions
May 16, 2012 at 8:49 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Looking at the problems that the House leadership is having in their own caucus and at the Republican incumbents running scared from their own right wing, let me suggest to you that the RR is the establishment.
Freeman
May 16, 2012 at 10:43 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I don’t think the religious right is going anywhere. They’ll adapt just like they have with women wearing pants, divorce, interracial marriage, etc. They should be able to rationalize away the abomination of homosexuality just as easily as that of blended fabrics or shaven beards. All that is really needed is another minority scapegoat to take it’s place and they will walk away from gay-bashing in droves.
Area Man
May 17, 2012 at 12:23 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I don’t know where this guy gets the idea that support for gay marriage has gone up by 10% in the last two years (most polls show maybe a few points, and it’s highly volatile). But never mind that.
Let me clarify things a bit. I didn’t mean to imply that every person who is now pro-marriage is that way because he was born that way. Rather, there is a huge difference in support for gay marriage between younger and older people, and this is not explainable by young people knowing more gay people than older people. Unless older people just refuse to recognize pay people who outs themselves, which of course is the very problem we’re trying to explain.
What we are seeing is very much a generational phenomenon. Not only are younger people far more likely at first asking to support gay marriage, but they’re the ones who have been mostly likely to change their minds in favor. To put it another way, it’s unthinkable that support would have changed like it did over the last couple of decades without demographic turnover.
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