Democrats Are Gaining the Advantage on "God, Guns and Gays"

For years Republicans used "god, guns and gays" to successfully mobilize their Christofascist and gun fanatic base and turn them out at the polls.   Too often Democrats failed to challenge this line of propoganda and yielded the field to Republican candidates on the issues.  Now, there is a sea change happing where the majority of Americans are equally mobilized on these issues and oppose the never ending demands of the GOP base that their relious beliefs be imposed on all and that gun rights be allowed to override the right of the rest of society to be safe from gun violence.   As the 2022 mid-terms aproach, Republicans are on the defensive, especially after the Dobbs ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and inflicted Christofascist extremist views on abortion on millions of American women.  Seventy percent or more of Americans support same sex marriage and the marriage bill now before the U.S. Senate will force Republicans to either vote to appease their shrinking base or put on open display how out of step they are on marriage equality. Likewise, Dobbs continues to enrage millions of women who have registered to vote and likely take revenge on Republicans.  A piece in Politico looks at the sea change:

It’s already the consensus that abortion is going to be a good issue for Democrats in November.

What’s only now becoming clear — as Republicans scrub their campaign websites of prior positions on abortion and labor to turn the focus of the midterms back to President Joe Biden and the economy — is just how much the issue is altering the GOP’s standard playbook.

For the first time in years, Republican and Democratic political professionals are preparing for a general election campaign in which Democrats — not Republicans — may be winning the culture wars, a wholesale reversal of the traditional political landscape that is poised to reshape the midterms and the run-up to 2024.

“The environment is upside down,” said Michael Brodkorb, a former deputy chair of the Minnesota Republican Party. “The intensity has been reversed.”

It isn’t just abortion. Less than 20 years after conservatives used ballot measures against same-sex marriage to boost voter turnout in 11 states, public sentiment has shifted on the issue so dramatically that Democrats are poised to force a vote on legislation to protect same-sex marriage to try to damage Republican candidates. Following the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Democrats from Georgia and Wisconsin to Illinois and California are running ads supporting gun restrictions, once viewed as a liability for the left, while openly engaging Republicans on crime.

In an advertising campaign shared with POLITICO, the center-left group Third Way said the PAC it launched last year to defend moderate Democrats, Shield PAC, will start spending at least $7 million next week on digital and mail ads in seven competitive House districts to counter Republican attacks on crime, immigration and other culture war issues.

The advertising push follows polling in Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s Virginia district that suggested counter-messaging by Democrats on public safety could blunt the effect of “defund the police” attacks by Republicans. As a result, while Spanberger is airing ads tearing into her Republican opponent on abortion, Shield PAC will be running a digital campaign bolstering Spanberger’s credentials on police funding.

“The story is that things that used to be very dangerous for Democrats – guns and abortion – are now very good for Democrats,” said Third Way’s Matt Bennett. “Those kind of culture issues – [same-sex] marriage, abortion and guns – have flipped. The political impact of them [has] flipped.”

For Republicans, the toxicity of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade was not singularly in the unpopularity of the decision, but in its undercutting of Republican efforts to brand Democrats as extreme. At the base of every non-economic attack Republicans leveled at Democrats — from crime to immigration and education — was the idea that the left was out of touch. But Roe, supported by a majority of Americans — including independents critical in a midterm election — was a reminder that on one of the most salient issues of the midterms, Democrats were in the mainstream.

Democrats need to contially hammer home how out of touch with the mainstream Republicans have become and how they are a threat to the rights and safety of the majority of Americans.  In keeping with this theme. a column in the Washington Post looks at the increasing Democrat momentum going into the mid-terms.  Here are excerpts:

It’s not one chamber of Congress. It’s not one state or region. We are seeing a widespread shift in Democrats’ favor virtually across the board. Whether it will be enough to save Democrats’ majorities in the midterms is far from clear, but the expected red wave looks as if it’s circling the drain.

Generic polling has steadily shifted toward Democrats since July. Meanwhile, President Biden’s approval numbers are also on the rise. Maybe his student loan relief announcement and recent speeches slamming MAGA Republicans are more popular than media pundits thought. While Republicans are still favored to pick up the five seats needed to flip the House, several points deserve mention.

First, polls are providing only a snapshot of the electorate. It may well continue in Democrats’ direction. And while Republicans don’t seem equipped to reverse the momentum, events have a way of catching the electorate’s attention (as we saw with the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision to overturn abortion rights).

Second, so long as defeated former president Donald Trump’s mishandling of classified documents remains the biggest story on the GOP side, Republicans will find it difficult to shift to issues that benefit them. (Remember inflation?) The latest Marist poll shows more than 60 percent of Americans think Trump did something illegal or unethical . . . . Republicans who insist on defending this behavior might find a chilly reception outside the cultish base.

Third, given the utter disarray, extremism and irrationality of so many MAGA House members, there is no telling whether they can actually control the House with a razor-thin majority. The speakership fight alone might take weeks to resolve if the margin is only a few seats.

And it’s not just the House. The latest batch of Florida Senate polls shows Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) within the margin of error against his Democratic opponent, Val Demings. FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages show that Democratic Senate candidates lead in Ohio, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania while North Carolina is a dead heat.

One additional fact weighing in Democrats’ favor: Their ability to control the agenda. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has vowed to bring codification of gay marriage rights to the floor for a vote. That is going to put right-wing incumbents running in swing states in a tough position.