This is the 2nd of a 3-part series examining the identity
crisis of the GOP. The first part dealt with the demographic changes the GOP faces.
The 2nd part deals with the implications of the party’s
current platform and its various factions.
The 3rd part will be about what I think the GOP will do, what
it should do, and what that means for the future of conservative politics.
The War on Contraception, Legitimate Rape, Self-Deportation,
Same-sex Marriage, 47% of Americans are dependent on Government and therefore
don’t matter. Those statements, made by
Republicans, were a part of the reason the GOP lost in 2012. Those statements showed a serious lack of
empathy for people – the electorate perceived them as hurtful and cruel. It would be one thing if these were simply
bone-headed comments made by inarticulate politicians, but it’s more than that. Those comments actually represent current
policy positions held by the modern Republican Party.
The Republican National Convention’s 2012 party platform
included the following policy priorities: Constitutional Amendments that banned
abortion and same-sex marriage, the elimination of Medicare – to be replaced with
a voucher system, support for SAVE – the Systematic Alien Verification for
Entitlements program which is woefully inaccurate and actually adds to the
bureaucratic nightmare that is our nation’s immigration policy, support for
abstinence-only education and banning access to contraception of all forms to
anyone under 18, and a host of other delightful “conservative” causes.
In laymen terms: The Republican Party wants to take away a
woman’s right to choose, for Gays to be denied equal treatment under the law,
for the elderly to go bankrupt due to health care costs, for immigration to
become a bigger nightmare than it already is, and for more kids to be woefully
ignorant about sex and therefore allowing for more teen pregnancy and STDs. All of these positions fly against the
current trends in public sentiment – putting the GOP in an awkward position.
The 2nd Challenge for Republicans: The policy
positions of the party no longer align with what the electorate believes.
To be fair, I am not saying that ALL GOP policy positions
fly in the face of public opinion – quite the contrary. Almost every poll that asks if the Government
is too big, an overwhelming majority of Americans say yes. Since the Republican Party is the party of
small and limited government, a large swath of the electorate is open to its
ideas. Broad-based reforms and ideas
generally connected with the GOP receive majority support in this country. It is in the nitty-gritty – in the specific
policy reforms – where the Republicans tend to lose their hold on the majority.
Reince Priebus, Chairman of the Republican National
Committee, released a report that looked into the reasons behind the GOP’s 2012
losses. Dubbed the Growth and
Opportunity Project, the report focuses heavily on message and outreach but doesn't suggest much of a shift on policy.
I personally believe that it is policy more than messaging that hurt the
GOP in the last election cycle, though the messaging was terrible as well.
With regards to women, liberals tend to criticize the GOP
for its staunch ‘Pro Life’ stance. This,
alone, isn’t necessarily a bad position to take. Recent polling shows that abortion rights is
still a divisive issue, and public opinion still hovers close enough to that
50% mark for either side to claim a populist edge. However, Republican policies around abortion
have begun to become more and more extreme – even for some pro life
advocates. Also, some of these policies
are starting to spill into other areas of women’s health, like contraception,
and cancer screenings.
The Republican Party has been trying for decades to totally
de-fund Planned Parenthood. Various
conservatives – both lawmakers and pundits – have referred to the organization
as an “abortion mill” and as perpetrating “a holocaust on the un-born.” GOP Lawmakers at the state and federal levels
propose legislation to eliminate all government funding of the organization,
restricting how health insurance can pay them, and a host of other things.
Putting aside the fact that Planned Parenthood only gets
about 15% of its funding from Government sources and none of that goes to
abortion services, the constant attacks on the organization are seen by many as
an attack on women’s health. Planned
Parenthood is, in many cases, the only comprehensive women’s health services
available for poor or uninsured women.
They perform general medical services, cancer screenings, dental and
mental health referrals and more. The
reason the Susan G. Komen Foundation was so vilified when it announced it would
no longer fund Planned Parenthood wasn’t about a pro-choice agenda, it was
about one women’s health organization denying assistance to another women’s
health organization over a political issue.
The GOP can make some hey over Planned Parenthood, but the public at
large supports the organization’s mission.
The ‘personhood’ amendment that Republicans advocate for in
their party platform – in addition to making abortions illegal – would make
many types of popular birth control illegal as well. GOP Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney was
asked about this very thing at a Town Hall event in Iowa. A woman asked him, point blank, if he
supported the ‘personhood amendment’ and if he understood that its passage
would ban most birth control. It
appeared that Gov. Romney didn’t understand how hormonal birth control worked,
and the woman asked him about that, too.
It was an awkward moment in the campaign, but it is one that
the GOP hasn’t been able to adequately explain.
Add to that mix all of the new anti-abortion legislation – from
trans-vaginal ultra-sounds, mandatory waiting periods, and bans on even seeking
abortion services after 12 and now 6 weeks (a time period in which many women
don’t even know they’re pregnant) – that Republicans brought out after the 2010
midterms at the state and federal levels, even though they promised to focus
like a laser on jobs and the economy, and one can see how it would appear that
women’s health restrictions seem to be a priority for the party.
LGBT rights and the Republican Party have not had the best
history together. From Ronald Reagan’s
completely ignoring the AIDS crisis, to the 2004 election strategy of state
constitutional amendments across the country to ban same-sex marriage, to 2012
GOP Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum’s comments… well… his comments
throughout his political career, the GOP has been very cool to the idea.
The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) has
banned 2 Republican-affiliated gay rights groups from sponsoring the
conference. The Republican Party has
pushed for a federal amendment to ban same-sex marriage through the last 5
Presidential Election cycles. A majority
of Republican lawmakers voted against the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. After the Obama Administration said it would
no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DoMA) due to the President’s
belief that the law is unconstitutional, House Republicans decided to use
taxpayer money to defend the law.
Public opinion on the rights of LGBT citizens has changed
more rapidly than any other social issue in the past 50 years. Just on the issue of same-sex marriage,
polling has shown a switch from a 2-1 majority against to a 56%-44% majority
for over a 10 year period. A vast
majority of Americans believe that same-sex couples should be treated the same
under the law in a variety of ways. A
recent PPP poll showed that 78% of Americans support laws that prohibit job
discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, yet the
Republican Party vehemently opposes the Employee Nondiscrimination Act
(ENDA). A Wall Street Journal/ABC News
poll in 2012 showed that 63% of Americans support same-sex couples’ right to
adopt children, yet every state with Republican-majority legislatures has
pushed through laws restricting or banning adoption by same-sex couples. Young Republicans support LGBT rights, with
51% of Republicans under 30 supporting same-sex marriage. Another 20% don’t think the government should
be involved in marriage at all.
The Supreme Court took up 2 cases on same-sex marriage this
year which could very well make this a non-issue for the Republican Party. However, the Party’s current policy positions
on issues surrounding the LGBT community are becoming less of an asset and more
of a liability with the wider electorate.
The politics of this issue have changed so fast that even President
Obama changed his position in a short amount of time. He opposed same-sex marriage when he ran in
2008, but supported same-sex marriage by the time his re-election campaign got
underway. The Republican Party will have
to change too, and fast, if the issue continues to weigh on the electorate.
With the burgeoning Hispanic population, Immigration has
become a front-and-center issue for lawmakers, regardless of their political
stripe. The Republicans have had a
decidedly mixed record on immigration issues.
President George W. Bush was quite popular among Hispanics during the
2000 and 2004 elections. His Immigration
reform plan was widely praised by most Hispanic groups and even enjoyed broad
support among Democrats. Unfortunately,
it was members of his own party who destroyed it.
President Obama and the Democrats have been pushing for an
Immigration Reform package that is very similar to the Bush-era plan, yet many
GOP lawmakers are reluctant to sign on – even with the very real demographic
shifts that endanger their electoral prospects.
This problem isn’t just with Hispanics.
Republicans have had a hard time of it with African American and Asian
American voters as well. Add into the
mix recent comments from Republican lawmakers, most recently by Alaska
Congressman Don Young’s referral to Hispanic farm laborers as ‘wetbacks’, and
one can see that the Republican Party needs to work harder on not appearing to
be a bunch of racists.
Specific Government programs like early childhood education
(Head Start), welfare, bankruptcy law, and a host of others, affect communities
of color moreso than white people. The
GOP’s constant vilification of these programs is seen by many civil rights
organizations as a swipe at minorities.
In the states, the push by Republican lawmakers to require mandatory
drug testing for anyone receiving Government welfare assistance can be seen as
stereotyping all recipients of being drug addicts. In Florida, where this law was first enacted,
the testing actually increased the cost of welfare, and less than 1% of welfare
applicants tested positive for drug use.
In Oklahoma, a Democratic lawmaker offered an amendment to a similar law
that would put the drug testing requirement on state lawmakers as well. The amendment failed.
Christian Conservatives, a group that makes up a large bloc
of the GOP base, has pushed for years to reform sex education of young
people. They prefer the ‘abstinence only’
approach that advocates no sexual activity until marriage, and effectively bans
any discussion of safer sex practices, STD education, or anything else. In states and school districts where ‘abstinence
only’ has been policy, there has been no measurable decrease in the number of
unplanned teen pregnancies or STD infections.
In many places, the rates of both increased under ‘abstinence only.’ The CDC released a report in 2009 that
studied the effectiveness of ‘abstinence only’ sex education over the previous
5 years and found that the lack of information about contraception, STD
infection and prevention, and emotional risk factors of sex, was harmful to
teen development.
A CNN poll from 2011 showed that 71% of Americans support
comprehensive sex education for teens aged 15 and up – that includes 52% of
self-identified ‘conservatives.’ The
Republican Party platform form 2012 still pushes for ‘abstinence only’ and
states where the GOP controls the Legislature still push that program. The Republicans are way out of step on this
one.
It is clear that many of the policy positions the Republican
Party supports are no longer supported by a majority of Americans. Just like the demographic shifts, the
Republican Party is going to need to adjust and adapt its positions if it still
wants to be a party of national significance.
If they don’t, they may end up being a party relegated to regional
stature, with a handful of strongholds in the south and mountain states where
they enjoy majority support.
If the Republicans want to win, things need to change.
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