Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal reasserted his opposition to gay marriage in a 'New York Times' editorial. (photo: Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post/Getty)
Are Republicans at War With Their Own Future?
23 April 15
ouisiana Governor Bobby Jindal was a guest contributor to the New York Times editorial page this morning.
He figured this was a good place to reassert his opposition to gay
marriage. Apparently non-Louisianans urgently needed the reminder.
As has become the fashion (and this is almost
certainly a strategy cooked up by some high-priced, focus-group-humping
consultancy inside the Beltway), Jindal carefully avoided the word "gay"
when explaining his opposition to gay marriage.
Excepting the Beavis and Butthead-worthy headline, "I'm Holding Firm Against Gay Marriage" (which by custom would likely be written by someone at the Times), Jindal
only used the word "gay" once in a column entirely about. . .gay
marriage. For example, there was this passage about the fate of recent
antigay measures in Indiana and Arkansas:
In Indiana and Arkansas, large corporations recently joined left-wing activists to bully elected officials into backing away from strong protections for religious liberty. It was disappointing to see conservative leaders so hastily retreat
on legislation that would simply allow for an individual or business to
claim a right to free exercise of religion in a court of law.
The emphasis here is mine. Jindal describes the
popular objection to efforts to curb same-sex marriage as coming from
"left-wing activists." Apparently, this is the new term for "young
Republicans," who support same-sex marriage nearly as much as Democrats
as a whole.
Depending upon whose polls you believe, support for same-sex marriage among Republicans in the millennial age category hovers somewhere around 60 percent,
lagging just 15-20 percent behind their counterparts in the Democratic
Party. That makes for a significant schism within the Republican Party
on the same-sex marriage issue, the key predictor clearly being age.
Here's how it breaks down, according to Pew:
Ages 70 and older: Only 20 percent favor same-sex marriage.
Ages 56 to 69: 30 percent in favor
Ages 35-50: 42 percent in favor
Under 35: 58 percent in favor
The data on this issue is hilarious and tracks with
the varying support levels among Republicans on a lot of other social
issues, like marijuana legalization (support levels there are around 60
percent among young Republicans).
Reading between the lines, the children of older
Republicans no longer agree with their nutbar parents on these key
social issues. These young Republicans will probably change the party
platform to reflect that split sometime in the near future.
In other words, what Jindal describes as "left-wing
radicalism" is actually the future consensus belief system of his own
Republican party. As Ambrose Bierce once put it, radicalism is just "the
conservatism of tomorrow injected into the affairs of today."
The Republican Party is a paradox. It has enjoyed
tremendous success at the local level in recent years, but that success
has come at a time of historically low voter turnout. With the demographic picture changing so fast in this country and the party's own youth rapidly changing their minds on key social issues, the Republicans seemingly have a choice to make.
The first choice would be to embrace a different
future right now, and start a long-term rebuild based around the
changing consensus on these social issues.
The other plan would be to forestall the passage of
time for a few more election cycles, and try to squeeze a few more White
House runs out of the party's aging, Fox-devouring, ideologically
anachronistic base.
Neither strategy offers too much long-term excitement
politically. And the latter path, sticking with the increasingly
off-putting views of its aging base, threatens to undercut the
Republican party's financial standing, as corporate America shows
reluctance to be tied to politically unpopular causes.
Jindal's column today cleverly proposes a third path,
an elaborate "grand bargain" that could save the party from this
confounding political dilemma.
First, he wipes away the whole problem of the party's
unpopular bigotry against gays through that simple semantic trick of
calling it a religious liberty issue.
Then he ties "religious liberty" to economic freedom,
and essentially argues that the American business world should campaign
against gay rights out of – get this – self-interest:
The left-wing ideologues who oppose religious
freedom are the same ones who seek to tax and regulate businesses out of
existence. The same people who think that profit making is vulgar
believe that religiosity is folly. The fight against this misguided,
government-dictating ideology is one fight, not two.
This is a classic use of Woody Allen's "All men are Socrates"
syllogism. All left-wing ideologues want to tax and regulate business
out of existence; all left wing ideologues also want to make gay
marriage legal; therefore, legalizing gay marriage will result in the
end of free enterprise.
Are you confused yet? Jindal is basically saying that
corporate America should oppose gay marriage because the people who
support it are the same people who favor regulation and other allegedly
antibusiness policies.
Forget that gay marriage is mostly uncontroversial for
anyone born after disco, and that young Republicans also support it in
massive numbers: the seemingly separate issues of gay rights and
financial deregulation, Jindal says, are actually "one fight" that will
require the business world to enter into a "grand bargain":
Those who believe in freedom must stick
together: If it's not freedom for all, it's not freedom at all. This
strategy requires populist social conservatives to ally with the
business community on economic matters and corporate titans to side with
social conservatives on cultural matters. This is the grand bargain
that makes freedom's defense possible.
In other words, business leaders, if you don't want to
be regulated out of existence by our opponents, you must stick with us
batty conservatives on social issues, and indulge our total
unwillingness to grow the hell up and move into the 21st century.
Instead of change, that's Bobby Jindal's solution to the problem of his
party's unpopular social stances.
Every now and then, political parties fall into traps
of their own devising. It happened in 2004 to the Democrats, who in fear
of looking weak to undecideds purged their antiwar candidates in the
primaries, and then watched as a deflated party base served up the
uninspiring John Kerry to be slaughtered in the general election.
In this cycle, the Republicans are caught between
their future and their past on issues like gay marriage. They've been
relying on religious conservatives to get numbers for so long that they
won't know how to cut the cord when the time comes, and the numbers say
that time will have to come fairly soon, if the party wants to stay
viable nationally with young people. Who knows, maybe they'll figure it
out by 2016. But it doesn't look like it.
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