Gay marriage was a big issue in the 2004 campaign and the Republicans were able to get some mileage out of it. They obviously didn’t come out and say they were running on an anti-gay platform. They framed it as a positive platform of supporting family values, traditional marriage, religious freedom, and states rights - stuff that’s good in principle but was being used for evil purposes in this context.
As was noted, the issue cooled off since then. But the conservatives can always pop in in the microwave and reheat it for 2016.
Very well said. I’ve been comparing many of Santorum’s stances on issues to the (virulently conservative) Catholic contingent on Christian Forums, and he’s very consistent in espousing the things they claim the Catholic bishops are expecting the faithful to aspire to.
You will take my porn over my rotting corpse. <shakes fist>
Seriously this guy is a piece of work. Today he was quoted as saying that this isn’t about managing Washington, it’s about fundamental things. Wow.
Yeah what this country needs is the morality police telling me that sex should be between married people (preferably not those gay types), birth control is bad, oh and go to church often or you will surely burn in hell.
This is exactly why people are afraid of voting Republican despite agreeing with the party on other issues.
The scary thing is that the exit polls that I’ve seen indicate that Santorum is actually getting relatively more votes from Republican women than Republican men. The only explanation that I can come up with is that there is a class of women who say “If I’m not getting any no one else should either”.
A lot of women have indeed internalized those values.
Birth control: if every woman can sleep around and not worry about unwanted children, then what’s to stop my husband from cheating and eventually finding someone better? Santorum, reign in those floozies!
Porn: similar to the above. If my husband/guy I have on the hook can look at all the porn he wants, he’ll be expecting a lot out of me–or going somewhere else to get it. Santorum, shut that shit down!
Gay rights: what if my husband/guy I have on the hook is a little gay and figures it’s easier to live with another guy? If the social (and legal) stigma of homosexuality goes away, he’s got that option. Santorum, shut that homo shit down!
Someone else on the SDMB once said that sexual morality was basically market protectionism for insecure wives. There’s something to that.
Factually, he isn’t wrong. But Romney hasn’t closed this sale yet, particularly with conservative voters, and the comment plays so perfectly into the charges everybody has always made against Romney that you almost wonder if it came off a list of stuff Fehrnstrom wasn’t supposed to say on TV. You can expect to hear this comment repeated over and over in Santorum ads and speeches for quite a while.
Yeah, telling it like it is doesn’t usually get you elected. Richard Nixon was able to say this stuff after he was out of politics: “In the primaries, run as far to the right as you can; in the general election, run as close to the center as you can.” It’s reality, but the people rarely want to hear it.
Neither does admitting your candidate is only pretending to be a conservative when the main knock against him is that he’s only pretending to be a conservative.
Interesting projection there, Marley. Fehrnstrom is saying, pretty clearly, that the general election campaign is an entirely different animal than the primary campaign. If you want to read that as “he’s pretending,” more power to you.
Nixon wasn’t living in a 24/7 media world, or in a world where your primary statement are going to go viral when spliced in to your general election statements.
I’m not projecting. I realize what Fehrnstrom was trying to say, which is why I acknowledged he is not wrong. But in the context of the campaign and Romney’s own issues, the comments are synonymous. He was asked if Romney’s rightward tack in the campaign in the primaries will hurt him with moderates in the general, and he said no, because you hit a reset button and start campaigning again to a different audience. Since Romney’s biggest problem has been questions about his sincerity and his conservative credentials, that’s maybe not the kind of thing you want to say.