GOP debate on social issues likely to emerge

This article originally appeared on RealClearPolitics.

As the leader of the Tea Party Express, Amy Kremer has spent the better part of the last three years preaching a simple message to establishment Republicans: Emphasizing divisive social issues will lead the GOP to electoral doom.

Kremer and her ilk by and large have been satisfied, as Republican candidates for the most part focused on limited government and free-market principles throughout the 2010 midterms, the 2012 nominating contest and the general election.

But as conservatives continue to dress their wounds from last Tuesday's losses and face an extended period of self-analysis and soul-searching, Kremer points to her own 22-year-old daughter as a warning to anyone who might ignore those previous admonishments.

"My daughter's a conservative and has a lot of friends who are conservatives, and they're not social conservatives," Kremer said. "Obviously, there are groups of kids who are social conservatives, but I've been in meetings where they're like, 'This is not the stuff that we're concerned about.' We need to figure out how to bring everybody together."

While the Tea Party movement's future strength remains an open question, the increasing impact of young voters on national elections is indisputable. According to exit polls, 18-to-29-year-olds composed 17 percent of the electorate in 2004, 18 percent in 2008, and 19 percent in 2012.

Within the GOP, a preponderance of empirical and anecdotal evidence suggests that the next generation of Republicans is both more splintered and less-focused on social issues than are their older ideological brethren.

Meanwhile, issues like same-sex marriage, the war on drugs, and abortion have played a significant role in the Democratic Party's success at motivating younger independents and Democratic-leaning voters to turn out at the polls.

And the broader challenge for the Republican Party isn't simply generational, as dramatic shifts on social issues at the statewide level have shown.

As recently as 2004, constitutional amendments prohibiting same-sex marriage passed in all 11 states in which they appeared on the ballot. Ohio's ballot measure, which defined marriage as "only a union between one man and one woman," passed with 62 percent of the vote that year. What's more, it was credited widely for driving up turnout among social conservatives and helping deliver the decisive state for George W. Bush.

Four years later, voters in deep-blue California approved Proposition 8, making the Democratic stronghold the latest and largest state to approve an amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Indeed, before last Tuesday, every statewide ballot initiative seeking to ban same-sex marriage had passed, while each Election Day measure aimed at legalizing it had failed.

But this year voters orchestrated a 180-degree turn on the issue, passing the first ballot-driven measures to approve same-sex marriage in Maryland, Washington state, and Maine, and rejecting a constitutional amendment that would have banned it in Minnesota.

The results in each state were propelled by 18-to-29-year-old voters, who overwhelmingly cast their ballots in support of same-sex marriage by roughly a 2-to-1 margin in each state, exit polls showed.

Also on Tuesday, Colorado and Washington became the first two states where voters passed measures to legalize marijuana for recreational use, and they did so by double-digit margins in each case. A more radical measure that would have initiated a form of state sponsorship of recreational marijuana was rejected in Oregon -- though it was supported by a majority of younger voters there.

Writing in the Washington Post on Tuesday, conservative blogger Jennifer Rubin laid down her own marker in the looming debate among right-leaning opinion-makers, asserting that topics like same-sex marriage are not "equally essential to conservatism" as are other issues.

"If marital infidelity and divorce aren't part of any conservative national political agenda, gay marriage need not be," Rubin wrote. "No tenant of modern conservatism obligates politicians to insist on undoing a social consensus on the expansion of marriage freely arrived at by voters."

On the other hand, social conservatives who remain skeptical that a true sea change is at hand on "values" issues surely will note that President Obama carried each of the four states where voters came down in favor of same-sex marriage and that all of them have traditionally held electorates well to the left of the nation as a whole.

Why, they argue, should the bloc once so instrumental in ushering in the age of Reagan retreat from principles that were central tenets of the GOP's golden age of electoral success?

"Republican elites will soon join liberal commentators in declaring that the party must moderate on social issues or risk consigning itself to permanent minority status," Gary Bauer, one of the evangelical right's most prominent voices, wrote Monday in Human Events. "But while the GOP would benefit from a period of reflection and self-examination, and while the party does need to adjust how it communicates with voters on social issues, its core values cannot change."

Though same-sex marriage and legalized marijuana may continue to be peripheral issues in national races, abortion is sure to remain a central one.

The Obama campaign and allied groups hammered Mitt Romney in key swing states over the Republican nominee's anti-abortion-rights stance, and wildly off-key remarks made by GOP Senate candidates in Missouri and Indiana helped propel their opponents to victory in those Republican-leaning states.

Additionally, majorities of voters in what were widely considered the two most critical swing states of the presidential race -- Ohio (56 percent) and Virginia (63 percent) -- told exit pollsters that abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Given that opposition to abortion will likely remain a core component of the GOP's identity, more Republican leaders are arguing that the party must alter the tone, rather than the content, of its messaging on the subject.

"And if another Republican man says anything about rape other than it is a horrific, violent crime, I want to personally cut out his tongue," former George W. Bush adviser Karen Hughes wrote in Politico. "The college-age daughters of many of my friends voted for Obama because they were completely turned off by Neanderthal comments like the suggestion of 'legitimate rape.' "

Each of the five potential GOP contenders most frequently mentioned in hyper-early bouts of 2016 presidential speculation (Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, Chris Christie, and Paul Ryan) is a male who opposes abortion rights in most cases. The eventual nominee will have to balance standing by a central principle of the party without turning off swing voters who favor abortion rights.

For the time being, at least, the social issues that have long bound Republicans together seem likely to be among the most hotly debated within the GOP's ranks.

More from RealClearPolitics:

21 Reasons for Obama's Victory and Romney's Defeat

[CaptainAmerika]

Take away divisive social issues, and what have they got?
"Small government" has resonance with people, but it is a theory looking for a country.
"Debt Reduction". Great! To bad for the R's that the D's are so much better at it. The Republicans have taught us a stunning lesson. There is one thing worse than tax and spend. It is the Bush economic ideology; spend and refuse to tax. Revenue gives Republicans a bad rash in a tender place. You cannot have a government if you cannot raise revenue. DUH!
"Low taxes" We know what that means. Billionaire welfare. Once again, spend and do not tax.

[thequeenbee9]

It will be up to the Democrats and others then, to remind the public of the positions of each of the candidates--if they are staunchly against abortion, I want to know this as well as their issues on race, immigration, and other social issues they plan to legislate or influence once they gain access to the white house.

[hillzhaveays]

spinner-or-winner replies:
linkicon reporticon emailicon
The difference is, the Democrats want the rich to contribute to the economic recovery, and the GOP want to enslave the American population to Communist China to avoid paying taxes.
____________________________________
And paying $7 out of every $10 of Federal Revenue received from individual filers with a positivie AGI isn't contributing?

The rich pay more in one year, spinner, than your pathetic little contribution amounts to in a lifetime - and they pay it every year.

Maybe you should check your greed at the door and start helping out as well?

The 2% increase proposed by Obama would add $70 billion from the rich - enough to run the country for around 8 hours or so. Great idea.

[Jaylah54200]

If there had been a *fiscal* conservative candidate running, I'd have voted for them in a heartbeat.

However the GOP is just as (if not more) fiscally liberal than the Democratic party.

[Jaylah54200]

"But while the GOP would benefit from a period of reflection and self-examination, and while the party does need to adjust how it communicates with voters on social issues, its core values cannot change."

Oh yeah, that's a great idea. Just don't tell voters what you think about things.

Didn't Romney already try that?

[HemiHead66]

So the GOP are going to keep their big mouths shut about abortion on the campaign trail, then "stick-it" to voters once they're in office. I'm sure that'll give the party a new set of wings. You Conservatives need to compromise, or you're finished. If you Conservatives ever passed the kind of laws that Ryan and the boys spoke of, you'd have people coming out of the woodwork looking to vote against you. I'm talking millions of people who never followed politics and never voted before. A good compromise would be to ban late term abortion, unless the Mothers life is in danger. Then it's her choice. I think abortions should be done within days of a pregnancy test being able to tell you're pregnant.

[westerly1]

I consider myself a moderate conservative; maybe the only one left in America. Republicans in this election came across as mean spirited. On economics they want to impose deep cuts in social spending yet will increase defense spending and go to war at the slightest provocation. They seem to want to kick all illegals out of the country (and some legals too). They don't want the federal government to fund abortions yet they would impose their values on woman and minorities through their own laws. They would impose Christian values on all citizens while espousing Constitutional law. The Christian mission is to spread the Gospel; not force their will on all. I think President Obama has done what any President would have done to handle the deep recession and protect this country. The Republicans have demonized a good man in my opinion in their mean spirited quest. I don't think Gov Romney was ever comfortable with the right wing ideology and was too late in showing his moderate side. These reasons in my view are why the Republicans lost the Presidential election.

[baseballdemocrat]

Westerly, you and others like you, are important. If the Republican party's leaders and spokesman (see: you and your rationale vs. Laura Ingraham & Limbaugh) can shift to the left of where they are today, where they used to reside, we will once again be able to have intellectual discourse.

I look forward to the day that we are simply debating the pros/cons of raising taxes on the wealthy (because my fellow Democrats, it is not as simple as simply saying "raising taxes on wealthy asks them for their fair share - there are economic cons to such a request), the specifics of universal health care, what our role is in playing "Democracy-maker" overseas, and a host of other real conversations, rather than "Obama's a socialist!" or "Romney's out of touch"

[taxed01]

Concentrate on the fiscal and constitutional issues and stay out of people's bed rooms. Limit the welfare "benefits" to those who need them for reasons BEYOND their control. Keep everybody else's fingers out of the taxpayer's pocket. Helping somebody is one thing. Rewarding them (especially long term) for their stupid decisions is not "help", that is screwing the taxpayers.

[woozybarnes]

From the article:
"....while the party does need to adjust how it communicates with voters on social issues, its core values cannot change."
and this...
"Given that opposition to abortion will likely remain a core component of the GOP's identity, more Republican leaders are arguing that the party must alter the tone, rather than the content, of its messaging on the subject."

In other words, it's business as usual but they'll make it sound like they have come out of the dark ages. Lip service. You heard it right from their mouths.

[granite101]

The GOP is now a club or a group, not a viable political party. They get something from espousing their conservative social values amongst each other and it isn't going to change. This means the more diverse and inclusive Democrats will continue to win national elections.

[MidRoadAlone]

granite101 - The GOP is not a viable party? They won 48% of the presidential vote versus 50.5% (barely a majority) for the democrats. The GOP still controls the house and the Democrats do not have a super majority in the Senate. The GOP controls about half of the state governments. No Democratic landslide or mandate. Actually - status quo.

You think that is not viable? Obama made the same mistake when he took office - hopefully he has wised up some and can compromise now - but his arrogance seems to already have kicked in as he is already telling the GOP what they have to do.

[zenia5]

@granite101....totally agree...the GOP will NEVER win another presidential election until they become more centrist. The last two elections should be a strong testament to the fact that the majority of voters do not buy their BS any longer.