Concern in GOP Over State Focus on Social Issues

Apparently some within the GOP are becoming concerned that the focus by state GOP units on social issues - e.g., the Virginia GOP's obsession with inter-uterine ultrasounds and keeping gays 4th class citizens while ignoring critical fiscal and transportation issues - may bite the part in the ass come November.  Between the batshitery that has been on display during the GOP clown car debates, the GOP attacks on contraception, the and anti-modernity and anti-worker campaigns at the state level, many Democrats and moderates have been motivated to punish the GOP brand in the national elections.  The GOP leadership may have pleased the lunatic Christiansts in the party base with this agenda, but for many others it proves that the GOP is a threat to civil rights of women and minorities.  An article in the New York Times looks at the possible recognition by some that far right insanity at the state level is not good for the party at the national level.  Here are some highlights:

[T]his year, with the nation heading into the heart of a presidential race and voters consumed by the country’s economic woes, much of the debate in [Republican controlled] statehouses has centered on social issues. 

Tennessee enacted a law this month intended to protect teachers who question the theory of evolution. Arizona moved to ban nearly all abortions after 20 weeks, and Mississippi imposed regulations that could close the state’s only abortion clinic. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin signed a law allowing the state’s public schools to teach about abstinence instead of contraception. 

The recent flurry of socially conservative legislation, on issues ranging from expanding gun rights to placing new restrictions on abortion, comes as Republicans at the national level are eager to refocus attention on economic issues.

Some Republican strategists and officials, reluctant to be identified because they do not want to publicly antagonize the party’s base, fear that the attention these divisive social issues are receiving at the state level could harm the party’s chances in November, when its hopes of winning back the White House will most likely rest with independent voters in a handful of swing states. 

One seasoned strategist called the problem potentially huge. But others said that actions taken by a handful of states would probably have little impact on the national campaign.

 

John Weaver, a Republican strategist who worked on the presidential campaigns of Senator John McCain and Jon M. Huntsman Jr., said that the attention Republicans were paying to social issues at the state level could cost the party support from several important blocs of voters, including independents, women and young people voting for the first or second time. “I think it’s problematic,” he said, “not just for this national election we’re facing, but for the long-term health of the party.” 

When Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, the chairman of the Republican Governors Association, appeared on the MSNBC program “Morning Joe” last week to talk about his state’s successful efforts to lower its unemployment rate, he found himself facing a number of questions about something else: the law he signed requiring women to undergo an ultrasound before getting an abortion, which received a great deal of attention this year. 

Now, as legislative sessions continue in many states, social issues continue to be debated and, sometimes, passed. On Tuesday, a Tennessee legislative committee advanced a measure that some have dubbed the “don’t say gay” bill because it “prohibits the teaching of or furnishing of materials on human sexuality other than heterosexuality” in elementary school.

With social issue ranking at the bottom of lists of important priorities for all but the Christianist base of the GOP, I hope that the GOP faces a day of reckoning in November.  Here in Virginia the extremism f the GOP at the state level cannot be punished until 2013.  As a result, I hope disgusted Virginians will take their wrath out on Mitt Romney and GOP congressional candidates like Christianist extremist, Scott Rigell, in November.