Friday Open Thread [4.3.15]

Doug Sosnik: “Next year’s election is the midpoint between 1992 when the current phase of presidential politics began and 2040, which is around the time that most projections have us approaching a majority-minority country, one in which no race will constitute the majority of Americans.”

“While the 2016 presidential election is likely to reflect the last remnants of this bygone era, the candidate running for president in 2016 who best understands how the country is changing and runs a campaign based on the America of the future rather than the America of the past is most likely to be our 45th president.”

NEW HAMPSHIRE–PRESIDENT–REPUBLICAN PRIMARY–Franklin Pierce University-Boston Herald: Bush 15, Walker 15, Paul 13, Christie 10, Cruz 9.

Washington Post: “Congressional Democrats get higher approval ratings than congressional Republicans, and the gap has widened since last fall. In October, 30 percent said they approved of congressional Democrats compared with 25 percent who approved of congressional Republicans. In the new survey, approval of congressional Democrats has risen to 38 percent while congressional Republicans are up a slight 2 points, to 27 percent.”

“Public approval of Congress remains low, though not as low as it was in the year after the partial shutdown of the government in October 2013. Today, 22 percent of Americans say they approve of the way Congress is doing its job — a 7 point increase since last September. with the shift driven by a rise in support among independents and Republicans.”

First Read: “Here’s the bad news for Republicans: The political fight over religious freedom and gay rights that erupted in Indiana has forced Gov. Mike Pence to retreat; put the Republican 2016 contenders to the RIGHT of Pence; and further exposed that the GOP is in a different place on gay rights than the rest of the country. That includes big business. But here’s the good news for the party: They’re learning this lesson early — as opposed to having it play out next spring or even in the fall of 2016.”

Jonathan Bernstein: “The positions that play well in a small bubble of party politics and on Fox News may go wrong when the larger November 2016 electorate is exposed to them.”

Rick Klein: “The culture wars are raging again, bringing the predictable splits. Democrats say one thing; Republicans – including all of the potential 2016ers — say another, reflecting real divisions among voters. But there’s something missing on the GOP side: some of the biggest voices in the business community. Leading the way in criticizing the new Indiana law and its cousins in other states are titans of the corporate world: Apple, Walmart, Marriott, Eli Lilly, even Indiana’s Chamber of Commerce.”

“There are few signs that corporate leaders’ splits with the political right will last permanently, or matter for things like campaign contributions. But it’s instructive to see how things are lining up in this fight. It’s as if big slices of corporate America are glimpsing a demographic and ideological future ahead of their political counterparts.”

Ed Kilgore:

[C]onservatives have little choice but to accept legal and political setbacks over marriage equality, but they’re making it as clear as ever that given the opportunity they’d reverse those trends, ban gay marriage all over again and probably bring back the sodomy laws to boot. Look at the huge field of Republican proto-candidates for president. Do any of them actually support marriage equality? Sure, they’ll not talk about it or mumble about it being a state matter or engage in various other evasions, but they’re a long way from “surrendering.” And that’s even more obvious on the abortion issue where (a) the only meaningful difference among 99% of Republican politicians is about whether 99% or 100% of abortions should be banned; (b) Republican controlled state governments are beavering away at new restrictions that strike mainly at the availability of any abortion services; and (c) the right to choose hangs by a thread in a Supreme Court that any Republican President would be lynched for failing to tilt with his or her next appointment into a reversal of Roe v. Wade.

All this weepy talk of being attacked while trying to surrender also misses the even more obvious point that conservatives are hardly impotent politically; they do sorta control Congress and a majority of states.

So no, there’s no real “surrender” going on here, and Lord knows conservatives aren’t withdrawing from political combat[.] What they are doing is better understood as a strategic retreat: unable to outlaw or (increasingly) even to stigmatize gay behavior as a matter of law, they’re working to protect private discrimination. It’s what a big part of their constituency expects of them, and it’s the obvious next front—not some sort of Appomattox—in the culture wars.

That is why we progressives must be relentless in destroying anyone and everyone we find to be a bigot. There must be no mercy.