Over the past week or so, we’ve seen two strong hints as to how
the Republican party will handle social issues going forward—the
combined effect of which is to offer reminder of how thoroughly
political coalitions and party power dynamics can change over
time.
The first came from Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who said at
least weekend’s Values Voters Summit, the annual confab of the
GOP’s socially conservative wing, that gay marriage, long a social
conservative priority, is “not an issue. In fact,” she said, “it’s
boring.”
Since then, Bachman has downplayed the remarks,
noting her continuing “belief that marriage should be between
one man and one woman.” The two statements aren’t actually
inconsistent, however. Even if Bachmann, who has in the past
aggressively supported legal prohibitions on same-sex marriage,
maintains her personal opposition to same sex marriage, that
doesn’t mean she’s making an issue of it anymore. Judging by the
scant mentions of gay marriage at the Summit, neither are many
other Republicans.
The second came from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who, in response to
a question about whether Plan B should be legal,
said on Tuesday: “I am not opposed to birth control… Plan B is
taking two birth-control pills in the morning and two in the
evening, and I am not opposed to that.” Paul extended his
remarks to suggest that the vast majority of Republicans would be
with him. “Plan B is taking birth control… I am not against birth
control, and I don’t know many Republicans who would be indicating
that they are against birth control.”
Not surprisingly, that remark angered Tony Perkins, the head of
the Family Research Council, one of the sponsors of the Values
Voters Summit, who tweeted that Plan B’s function “is to create
conditions hostile to human life.” But Paul hasn’t softened his
stance. Instead, his office expressed dismay with Perkins’
criticism. An adviser to the senator
told Olivia Nuzzi of The Daily Beast that Paul’s camp
is “fuming,” especially after Paul spoke about his opposition to
abortion at least week’s Summit. “[Perkins] reaches out when he
needs a speaker for his conferences, but apparently not when he
wants to attack Sen. Paul for no good reason,” the adviser
said to Nuzzi.
What these incidents suggest is that while GOP opposition to
abortion remains strong, and is likely to stay strong for the
foreseeable future, the Republican party wars over same-sex
marriage and contraception are essentially over—and social
conservatives lost.
This is not to say that skirmishes will not continue, that the
debates won’t persist at some level, perhaps even loudly at times.
But it’s clear enough where the arguments are going, and what the
outcomes are likely to be. The GOP probably won’t come out as the
party of gay rights and the pill in time for the 2016 election, but
those issues won’t be front and center. If anything, judging by the
Summit, most Republican politicians are likely to try to avoid
talking about gay marriage whenever possible. And when it comes to
contraception, many will emphasize support for greater access by
making it
available over-the-counter.
The causes behind the Republican party’s shift are
complex—changing social norms, the shifting demographics of the
electorate, and the decline of religiosity in American life are all
factors. But rather than trace the reasons for the transformation,
I think it’s worth dwelling briefly on how rapid and drastic the
shift on these issues, especially gay marriage, has been, and what
that shift suggests about the stability of internal power dynamics
in political parties.
Go back just a decade, and contraception was barely on the radar
as a national political debate. And far from declaring same-sex
marriage a boring non-issue, Republicans were hoping that
opposition would bolster their political prospects.
In 2004, the Bush White House believed that opposition to
same-sex marriage would help to get out the vote. “To the degree it
energizes people who might otherwise not vote, it tends to help
us,” Bush’s campaign guru Karl Rove said
of a ballot initiative intended to amend the state constitution to
prohibit same-sex marriage. There were 11 such measures that year,
and Bush eventually went so far as to
propose a national constitutional amendment restricting
same-sex marriage. (Whether or not the strategy worked as
well as intended is a matter of some debate, but that was very much
the animating idea.)
This, of course, was around the same time that Rove was famously
imagining a “permanent Republican majority,” an unbeatable GOP for
years to come. And that majority was to be built in no small part
on social conservatives and their strength of their vote, which was
critical in 2004.
Certainly, this was the understanding within segments of the
media at the time. Rove drove Bush to election with “an army of
Christian foot soldiers,”
declared a 2005 PBS Frontline documentary. That same report
quoted Dana Milbank of The Washington Post saying that
“evangelicals didn’t just come out and vote for him, they were his
campaign.” The thesis of the documentary, explained by the
announcer in its introduction, was that “it took 40 years, but
[Rove] changed the political landscape” in his quest for endless
Republican victories.
This was the widely-if-not-universally assumed future of the
Republican party: electoral dominance as far as the eye could see,
driven by the votes of committed social conservatives.
A decade later, essentially the opposite is not only true, but
obviously so. The Republican party is weak nationally, and
the conventional wisdom is that it will remain weak for years to
come. Meanwhile, the influence of social conservatives has dwindled
to the point where a likely presidential candidate such as Rand
Paul does not back down when criticized by a prominent social
conservative leader, and even hardcore social conservatives will
barely discuss an issue—same-sex marriage—that just a decade ago
was assumed to be a surefire political winner for the GOP.
All of which is to say that the factors that look likely to push
a party into permanent majority status can just as easily dissolve
and become weaknesses in a relatively short time, and that the
factions that look certain to maintain a heavy influence within a
party may not have as tight a grip as widely believed.
This is a lesson for Republicans, obviously, as they attempt
rethink and reshape the party image in a post-Bush, post-Obama era.
But it’s also a cautionary tale for Democrats, many of whom now
project a similar sense of certainty and confidence about the
party’s chances at political dominance going forward—and a reminder
that victories which may initially seem inevitable can quickly and
unexpectedly turn into certain losses.
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