Will the Supreme Court End Gay Marriage as an Election Issue?

If the Supreme Court takes up
one of the gay marriage recognition cases coming from the states
(now
that there’s a split in one federal district) within the next
year, it could potentially take it off the table as an election
issue in 2016. Actually, that would only be the case if the Supreme
Court rules in favor of mandating the states recognize gay
marriages. Otherwise (if the court affirms the authority of states
to ban recognition) the issue will likely bounce back to the states
and throw into disarray all the federal rulings about gay marriage
for the past year.

Putting gay marriage into the court’s hands may make it much
less of a political issue come 2016. There will be no more ballot
initiatives to use to help get out the vote either way, though
there is still going to be plenty of grandstanding and signaling.
At the
Daily Beast, David Freedlander wonders how it will all play out
for the Republican primary. Will possible candidates like New
Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul be hurt for
their compromise “leave the matter to the states” position?

[T]he presence of evangelical primary voters, especially in Iowa
and South Carolina among the early states, means that some
candidates will press their advantage.

“You could easily see a situation where a Rick Santorum or a
Mike Huckabee are pressing this issue, and you hope that the rest
of the field just leaves it to them,” said one pro-same-sex
marriage GOP strategist.

“Traditionally, the Republican Party supports traditional
marriage,” said Alice Stewart, a GOP strategist allied with
Huckabee. “If Governor Huckabee were to enter the race, he has
supported traditional marriage. He always has and he always
will.”

Personally, it’s hard to visualize a President Huckabee or
Santorum, even with the plunge in popularity for the Democrats
right now. What votes would they actually be able to pick up that
Sen. John McCain and former Gov. Mitt Romney could not? Given the
winds of change, what exactly is the Republican
establishment position on gay marriage recognition anymore? We
might not even really know where the party truly stands now until
the 2016 national convention.

But it will also be interesting to see how, or if, gay marriage
issues play out in the Democratic primaries. The conventional
wisdom is that the Democrats are the party who loves the gays, but
that’s only relative to the Republican Party’s position. Vice
President Joe Biden
voted in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) back when
he was a senator. And as the Daily Beast points out, Hillary
Clinton’s position on gay marriage is essentially the same as
Paul’s:

Christie, [Scott] Walker, and Paul have all argued that the
marriage issue is one better left to the states. Their position is
identical to the one held by Hillary Clinton, a fact that delights
Gregory T. Angelo, the head of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay
rights GOP group.

“Hillary Clinton has a position on marriage that is to the right
of everyone else in her party,” he said. “Part of me cannot wait to
see her twist herself into contortions explaining why her position
is different from her party’s platform.”

In other words, expect the marriage matter to be a bipartisan
affair.

“That is a fact we are certainly going to be reminding Democrats
about,” Angelo said.

I’m not sure how well that tactic’s going to work. Obviously
President Barack Obama’s own lack of support for gay marriage prior
to his second term didn’t seem to harm his chances. If somebody
like Paul or Christie gets the nomination, I can see them try
against Clinton. I’ll add that former Gov.
Jeb Bush, whose name is being tossed around as a possible GOP
nominee, also supports letting the states decide. And while Biden
has a past with DOMA, he’s going to get the benefit of being the
guy perceived as having forced Obama’s hand in announcing support
for gay marriage recognition.

If the Supreme Court does take up the case and rule prior to the
2016 election, which seems eminently possible, I will be curious to
see what the GOP does with that. Will there be the expected
“activist court” grandstanding from the likes of Santorum and
Huckabee? (Obviously, yes.) Would somebody like Rand use the
opportunity to talk about reducing the state’s role in marriage
entirely? And what will the Republican Party put in its platform
about gay marriage in 2016?

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