National Republican leaders have done their very best to avoid an intra-party confrontation over this year’s platform, particularly over the GOP’s favorite wedge issues — abortion and gay rights.
As Bob Novak noted recently:
The suspicion has grown that President Bush’s re-election strategists — Karl Rove and Karen Hughes — do not want the open debate over principles and policy that has characterized Republican platform-making for a generation. The carefully guarded Bush campaign game plan is to present delegates on the platform committee with an unpleasant surprise when they arrive in New York: a trimmed down document with virtually no time to debate it.
Despite these efforts, a controversy looms. The LA Times had an interesting item yesterday about some pretty serious GOP infighting looming ahead. Unfortunately, this won’t be much of a fight — when it comes to the party’s right-wing base against its tiny moderate faction, there’s no mystery about who’s going to win.
Log Cabin Republicans, a group of 12,000 gay conservatives, is teaming up with Republicans who support abortion rights to challenge the expected GOP platform on family issues.
The GOP’s platform from 2000 is expected to be the framework for this year’s effort. It declares that marriage is the “legal union of one man and one woman,” and that “the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.”
The Log Cabin Republicans plan to hold a news conference Monday with Republicans for Choice and the Republican Youth Majority to outline their strategy.
Pitching a “party unity plank,” they are suggesting that the platform declare that “Republicans of good faith disagree” on family issues — language sure to be an anathema to the president and his base of social conservative supporters.
For the life of me, I have no idea what party these guys think they belong to.
The modern Republican Party simply has no place — and no tolerance — for these Americans. For the Log Cabin Republicans to think that Bush, who has kowtowed to every demand the religious right has made, will bravely defy his party’s base is sheer fantasy.
“We are giving President Bush an opportunity for a Sister Souljah moment,” said Christopher Barron, political director of the Log Cabin Republicans. “This is an opportunity for the president to make clear that the GOP is a big tent. If there’s room in the party for free-traders and protectionists, they’ve got to make room for us.”
Barron doesn’t get it; they don’t want to make room for them. GOP leaders will begrudgingly accept Log Cabin donations, and they don’t mind Log Cabin votes, but they certainly don’t want gays playing a role of any significance with the party at any level. If Barron really believes Bush is going to tell Gary Bauer, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, and Tom DeLay that the Republican Party has to do more to accept pro-gay and pro-choice members, then he’s a fool.
Bush’s endorsement of the Federal Marriage Amendment should have been something of a clue. Andrew Sullivan, himself a gay conservative, described the move as Bush having “launched a war…against the civil rights of gay citizens and their families. And just as importantly, he launched a war to defile the most sacred document in the land.”
The Log Cabin Republicans perceive the same attack as a problem that “may” cause a rift.
Log Cabin Executive Director Patrick Guerriero has said that Bush jeopardized the group’s endorsement with his support for the constitutional ban. A final decision on endorsement is expected after the GOP convention in New York.
What planet are these guys on? Jeopardized the group’s endorsement? What more does Bush have to do to offend them?
“Our constituents are ready to walk,” said Ann Stone, founder and chairwoman of Republicans for Choice, a political action committee with 150,000 members which has joined forces with the Log Cabin Republicans. “Our message to the president is: ‘Stay out of the bedroom.’ “
Too late, Ann, he’s already there and he’s brought Rick Santorum and John Ashcroft with him. If you want to be taken seriously, then your “ready to walk” threat better be for real.