The Lonesome Right

The country is becoming, if not more liberal, then at least less sure of involving itself in marital beds and family homes.

Same-sex marriage in America has undergone something of a renaissance in the last few years. Since the election of Barack Obama in November 2008, made bittersweet by the passage of Proposition 8 in California the same night that reversed the state’s decision to legalise same-sex marriage, it seemed that marriage equality was fated to remain within the boundaries of socially-liberal Massachusetts. However, it has since spread across these borders into places that might have seemed, if not absolutely opposed, at least resistant to the idea just four years ago.

A bellwether for this trend was Iowa, whose Supreme Court upheld a ruling that there was no reason to deny marriage licences to same-sex couples in April 2009, effectively legalising same-sex marriage judicially rather than legislatively. Although the issue remains contentious in the state, it must smart to Republicans that Iowa, smack-bang in the conservative heartland of the Mid-West, continues to rebuff efforts to introduce an amendment to the state constitution banning same-sex marriage. The state of New York was next, passing a bill in June last year after years of attempts that had met annihilation in the state senate. Moreover, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont and Washington DC all upgraded from allowing civil unions to full-blown marriage after the 2008 election.

February this year has been an encouraging month for the cause. The states of Washington and Maryland both passed bills to legalise same-sex marriage, with their governors promising to sign them into law. The New Jersey legislature has done the same, but Republican governor Chris Christie has refused to sign it, arguing that the issue should be turned over to the public vote as it was in California. Speaking of which, Proposition 8 has received the cold shoulder from the California judiciary, who have ruled that the measure violates the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. Furthermore, President Obama’s justice department has concluded that DOMA (the Defence Of Marriage Act) is unconstitutional and will not defend it in court.

The message that these last two developments in particular send, that the rights of a minority cannot be voted away by the majority, will prove useful in rolling back constitutional amendments that were voted on in many states over the last decade. It might seem populist of Republicans to say ‘let the people decide’ and leave it at that, but it is clear that the judiciaries on the state and the federal level have replied ‘the people don’t get to decide which rights a minority should and should not receive.’

What else do Republicans think should be put to the public vote? Women’s reproductive health, for one. Last year Mississippi rejected a measure that would have defined life as beginning at the moment of conception. The aim was, clearly, to outlaw abortion; a side-effect, that may or may not have been present in the measure’s proponents but was clearly present in the minds of voters, would be a ban on many forms of contraception.

Far from being cowed by this result, Republicans across the country and at all levels of government have tried to further the issue, introducing restrictions to abortion providers, throwing a tantrum over religious freedoms when the Obama administration suggested requiring that Catholic employers to include contraception in their health insurance to their employees, passing a bill in Virginia that would mandate a vaginal ultrasound to any woman seeking an abortion, without the woman’s consent. Small government, indeed.

It is not that Republicans don’t have some sense on these issues. Legalisation of same-sex marriage in New York, Washington and Maryland saw Republicans voting on both sides of the issue. Republican women have been outraged by their male colleagues’ attempts to legislate for their uteruses. Some Republicans recognise that the culture wars are over, that they no longer curry much favour with the electorate. Sadly, many Republicans seem determined to perpetuate them in order to appeal to an electorate that has been shrinking for many years.

Polls across the country indicate widespread support for access to birth control and family planning. For the first time in May last year, a Gallup poll showed more Americans were for same-sex marriage than against it. The country is becoming, if not more liberal, then at least less sure of involving itself in marital beds and family homes. Why, then, does the Republican party have the field of candidates that it currently does?

Each candidate has endorsed the view that personhood begins at conception, with current front runner Rick Santorum presenting himself as decidedly against contraception. Three of them derided judicial opposition to Proposition 8, and all of them have decidedly un-nuanced opinions on the definition of marriage. Famously, at one of the uncountable Republican debates last year, a question was posed by a gay soldier asking whether the candidates would reinstate the policy of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in the US military. The question was booed by the audience and shrugged off by the candidates. The Republican Party seems to have fundamentally misunderstood the drift of public opinion on these issues. This will give them no advantage, except among their socially conservative base, in the election this year.

An edited version of this article was published in The Student newspaper, 06/03/2012

A Republican riddle

“It is just so emblematic of the Republican identity crisis that Newt Gingrich should once again be seriously considered for the nomination.”

As this year’s Super Tuesday is now done with, the merry cavalcade that is the Republican presidential primary carries on apace, with innumerable debates, glad-handing and flesh-pressing predicted until the first primaries in January. Just as predictably, the Republican race is in the middle of another transitional point, where two challengers rise and fall around Mitt Romney, who hovers steadfastly at around 23 per cent in the polls.

The one crashing and burning with a fiery trail of vagaries, contradictions and implausibilities is Herman Cain, one time CEO of the Godfathers Pizza chain, now token minority candidate. He is also, we learn, accused of sexual harassment, explaining his rapid displacement from the good books of voters (and women voters in particular). The one rising to his zenith is former Leader of the House Newt Gingrich, at whom commentators looked askance earlier this summer when his campaign staff left him in droves, after he took a break from the campaign trail to holiday in the Aegean Sea.

Other than that inconvenience, Mr Gingrich hasn’t had much to worry about in the debates. He has so far been content to play the pundit at his podium and hoping to sell a few more books in place of actually getting the presidency. No doubt he will be just as flash-in-the-pan as every other challenger, leaving Romney to limp to victory as the Republican nominee next year.

This latest development underscores just how much anybody-but-Romney sentiment exists with the Republican Party. Over the past year they’ve tried just about anyone, with Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, Texas Governor Rick Perry, Herman Cain and now friend Gingrich each at one time or another tipped to claim the accolade. At least, so they themselves have claimed; the reality is that no one really expects that it won’t be Romney who ends up squaring off against President Obama this time next November. It is just so emblematic of the Republican identity crisis that the man whose campaign was thought to have imploded on a yacht off the coast of Rhodes should once again be seriously considered for the nomination.

And an identity crisis really is the best word for it. Most Republicans know they don’t want Romney – his seemingly endless self-contradictions over policy are reason enough, but cited too are the Massachusetts ‘socialist’ healthcare system that he oversaw when the governor there, as well as the negligible job growth in the state under his tenure. It might be because he is perceived as generally unlikable and unsympathetic to the woeful economic state of millions of his countrymen. It might even be (and here the conspiring voices quieten somewhat) because he’s Mormon.

The hunt has been on for the anti-Romney for a good long time now, but the perfect candidate has either been well hidden or bullishly resistant to entering the race. Each of those who have come and gone represent facets of Republican-ness. Virulent social conservatives such as Bachmann and ex-Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum are hopeless on fiscal and foreign policy. The folksy and bombastic Cain and Perry have both crumpled under scrutiny over their past conduct and their present grasp of the issues that remain most important to the American people. Jon Huntsman is tainted by his past association to the Obama administration in his capacity as US Ambassador to China – and there again, the Mormon thing raises its supposedly contentious head. Ron Paul appeals either to the very old or (strangely) to the very young, but fails to win the confidences of the Republicans’ key demographic – the boardrooms of corporations trading on Wall Street – for campaign donations.

What Republican primary voters don’t seem to realise is that, as demonstrated by the results of elections across the country last week, their values no longer accord with those of the GOP. Across the country, so-called Republicans have been fighting back against their local and state governments’ attempts to restrict their voting rights, diminish their unions and legislate for their uteruses. Once upon a time, the Republican Party supported job growth and giving the American people an opportunity to realise the American Dream for themselves. Today’s Republicans supposedly hark back to the ‘simpler times’ of the fifties and sixties. They have nothing in common with those of Ike Eisenhower’s ilk, and even Ronald Reagan would baulk at some of their most gerrymandering and filibustering.

Conservatives of America should understand that the Republican presidential candidates, almost to a man, regard the voters as suckers for a well done campaign ad and a vinyl-wrapped RV. It is to be admitted that it is hard in today’s America (today’s anywhere, for that matter) to find a politician who represents their voters without any thought to lobbyists and campaign donations. You can bet thought, that the Republican presidential nominee, whoever they are, will follow the money and not the convictions of their voters.

Originally published by The Student newspaper, 22/11/2011