Will Republicans ‘evolve’ on gay marriage too? A respected Republican pollster wrote in a memo leaked over the weekend that public opinion is quickly shifting in favor of same-sex marriage — by 5 percent a year since 2010 — and that the GOP needs to change with the times. Is there any chance the GOP will follow his advice?

Could Obama’s stance on gay marriage help Romney come election day? 

Shortly after President Obama made history by declaring his support for gay marriage on Wednesday, Republican rival Mitt Romney reaffirmed his opposition to it. “My view is that marriage itself is between a man and a woman,” the presumptive GOP nominee said. Americans remain roughly split on the issue, although (not entirely reliable) poll data suggests that support for same-sex marriage has been rising in recent years.

Will the contrast between the two candidates’ positions hurt Romney by driving away independents and young voters, or help him by rallying reluctant conservatives to his side? 

Analysis and opinion

(Source: theweek.com)

After years of hedging, President Obama has come out in support of same-sex marriage. How will his ‘evolution’ affect gay rights — and the 2012 race?

1. It makes the presidential campaign more polarizing
After Vice President Joe Biden expressed his comfort with same-sex marriage on Sunday, followed by North Carolina’s resounding approval Tuesday of a constitutional amendment banning it, the president no longer had the luxury of continuing his long period of evolution, says Ed Kilgore at Washington Monthly. Across the nation, support for gay marriage is “slowly growing” — a recent Gallup poll showed 50 percent of Americans want to legalize it — but remember, there’s an “underlying dynamic of ever-increasing partisan and generational polarization” on the issue. As a result, Obama’s clear stance will likely make the campaign even more divisive.

2. It hurts Obama in swing states
Obama’s “cynical dithering” was getting old, says Allahpundit at Hot Air, and he was running the risk of losing big campaign donations from liberals if he didn’t get off the fence. But that doesn’t mean his campaign problems related to gay marriage are over. “The bolder he is in endorsing gay marriage, the bigger his headache with a whole bunch of swing states that have voted to ban” it — states like Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, and Ohio. It seems like Obama knows that. “His strategy now is simply to get it over with ASAP and then let people forget about it over the next six months.”

3. It puts Mitt Romney in a tough spot
Obama’s gay-marriage endorsement will also make things uncomfortable for GOP rival Mitt Romney, says Maggie Haberman at Politico. Romney, who now opposes gay marriage after saying in his 1994 Senate race against Ted Kennedy that he supports full equality for gays and lesbians, does not want to “focus extensively” on this issue, which opens him up to the old flip-flopper charge. But he has to solidify his base, perhaps by repeating his call for creating a federal constitutional ban on gay marriage. And that could rattle the many independents who support gay marriage.

Keep reading

Leaked internal memos from one of the nation’s leading anti-gay-marriage organizations, the National Organization for Marriage, reveal that the group has been trying to divide liberals by stirring up minority opposition to same-sex marriage. Here, key revelations from the documents: 

1. NOM wants to drive a wedge between blacks and gays
Liberals contend that denying gay couples the right to marry violates their civil rights. NOM’s “Not a Civil Right Project” is designed to erode support for that argument, specifically by “[driving] a wedge between gays and blacks — two key Democratic constituencies,” as one of the memos says. Noting that California’s gay marriage ban — Proposition 8 — passed with strong support from African-American voters, the memo calls for “fanning the hostility,” recruiting blacks to oppose same-sex marriage, and provoking “the gay marriage base into… denouncing these spokesmen… as bigots.”

2. NOM hopes to recruit Latinos, too
One document discusses efforts to get Latino celebrities, including a former Miss Mexico, to serve as spokespeople. NOM also hired a PR firm to spearhead a Latino outreach effort involving everything from TV ads to songs to YouTube videos. “Our ultimate goal,” the memo says, “is to make opposition to gay marriage an identity marker, a badge of youth rebellion to conformist assimilation to the bad side of ‘Anglo’ culture.” That “seems particularly rich given the Right’s usual attitude toward Latino immigrants who refuse to assimilate,” says Michelle Goldberg at The Daily Beast.

3. It strives to cast President Obama as a “social radical”
Achieving NOM’s goals “will require electing a pro-marriage president in 2012,” one of the memos says, so the group has a plan for defeating, or “sideswiping,” President Obama. The central strategy is to “expose Obama as a social radical,” and taint him — and other Democratic political leaders — by associating same-sex marriage with such things as “pornography, protection of children, and the need to oppose all efforts to weaken religious liberty at the federal level.”

4. But things haven’t played out as NOM hoped
The anti-gay-marriage group went all out on its “Not a Civil Right Project,” detailing a $1.5 million budget for the effort in a memo written three years ago. “Did this work?” asks David Weigel at Slate. “The answer: Not really. If there’s some leading edge of black bloggers changing the conversation on gay marriage, it hasn’t mattered at all; it hasn’t trickled into mainstream conversation.” And support for gay marriage continues to grow.