Andrew Sullivan: Top GOP Pollster to GOP: Reverse On Gay Issues

[babylonsister]

12 May 2012 01:03 PM
Top GOP Pollster to GOP: Reverse On Gay Issues
Andrew Sullivan
[Re-posted from last night.]

Below is a remarkable document. It's a memo circulated by Jan van Lohuizen, a highly respected Republican pollster, (he polled for George W. Bush in 2004), to various leading Republican operatives, candidates and insiders. It's on the fast-shifting poll data on marriage equality and gay rights in general, and how that should affect Republican policy and language. And the pollster's conclusion is clear: if the GOP keeps up its current rhetoric and positions on gays and lesbians, it is in danger of marginalizing itself to irrelevance or worse.

Read the bluntness of this. This is the GOP establishment talking to itself. And the Republican pollster who arguably knows more about the politics of the gay issue than anyone else (how else to explain the Ohio campaign of 2004?) is advising them in no uncertain terms that they need to evolve and fast, if they're not going to damage their brand for an entire generation:


Yep, it's a classic "talking points memo":
Memo @ link~ can't copy it to here...

The last paragraph is, to my mind, the most remarkable. It's advising Republican candidates to emphasize the conservative nature of gay marriage, to say how it encourages personal responsibility, commitment, stability and family values. It uses Dick Cheney's formula (which was for a couple of years, the motto of this blog) that "freedom means freedom for everyone." And it uses David Cameron's argument that you can be for gay marriage because you are a conservative.

And the walls came tumbling down.

(More legible transcript of the memo below) :

more...

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/05/top-gop-pollster-to-gop-reverse-on-gay-issues.html

[ingac70]

1. They are painted in the corner....

If they reverse, they lose half the nuts that support them

[SDjack]

2. Too early for this. A setup for Jeb to replace Mitt? Got to go for popcorn. n/t

[babylonsister]

3. Or, they realize how wrong they have been? nt

[Lex]

4. Glad Obama made his move first.

Yep.

[babylonsister]

5. Yep. Not much is heard about this yet. The gop knows they're in trouble. Warms my heart. nt

[Quantess]

6. How are they going to back down now?

[Motown_Johnny]

7. If they reversed they would lose all their religious nut job support

and without that they are dead. No more Republican party.


At that point you may as well be a Libertarian.

[titaniumsalute]

8. I see actually two issues that the GOP have grossly miscalculated

That is both the Gay and the Female issues. Obviously the right has never embraced the Gay issue and has engaged in fights against the Gay movement for equality. So they, according to this polling, have fallen much behind the general openess to rights for Gays in the US.

But combine that with this year's fight against women regarding rights, birth control, etc. I don't really understand it but it is almost like the right is trying to self destruct. That really doesn't make any sense. And the politicians who are the old school Republicans, such as Richard Lugar, are very much stuck. They are surrounded by the extreme right who are making them disappear in primaries. Now the general public is stuck voting for moderate lefts or extreme rights. In 2010 the extreme rights won big time because the left didn't vote.

However, in 2012, we have a great position to blast these extremists back to the dark ages with our votes. Not only do we have the power to keep new extremists from getting into the House and Senate, but we also have the power to remove many of these extremists (such as Allen West) from the House.

[Aerows]

9. Gay marriage isn't about conservatism

It never has been. Gay Republicans know it is validating marriage between strictly a white man and white woman in a way that they can't break it. Just like abortion is really about birth control, not being "pro-life".

Gay people aren't dumb enough to not realize that it is about loving, marrying and adoring a person in your life for these types. It's about breaking marriages they think aren't "useful" "productive" or "right", and forcing people to remain in marriages to white males that cannot be severed. It wouldn't stop at gay marriage for a second, and it behooves straight people to understand that if they can invalidate one marriage, get the strength and support to do so, yours is next.

I've only realized that lately when I saw the drift from abortion to birth control. They REALLY want to preserve an aristocracy, and will do anything to do so.

Gay marriage is a terrible thing because it prevents white males from having their place in the aristocracy, and that is why they fight so hard against it. They firmly believe in the patriarchy. The rest of us decent folk, don't.