Sunday Open Thread [6.7.15]

So Caitlyn Jenner made our debut earlier this week as a woman. But, save for Mike Huckabee, no Republican presidential candidate has made a statement. The reason?

Jenner’s watershed moment — which coincides with the Supreme Court preparing to rule on whether to allow same-sex marriage nationwide — leaves the GOP and its stable of presidential candidates grappling with how to represent conservatives who don’t wish to accept Jenner and more moderate voters who have already done so.

As with the marriage equality cases, the approach has been to say nothing or to say that the issue should be left to the states. But that doesn’t satisfy the conservative base.

To digress for a moment, yesterday I took part, along many other groups, in a counter protest against the Westboro Baptist Church, who had three members with 12 signs present on one corner of DuPont Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in Wilmington to celebrate the death of Beau Biden, for they view the deaths of our soldiers and of public officials and figures as God’s punishment on both the specific individual and on the United States as a whole for our society’s acceptance of constitutional rights for gays and lesbians. Now, this counter protest featured many different political stripes, from a progressive like me to moderates to libertarians and Republicans. However, on the Facebook page of one of counter protest’s libertarian organizers, a person who I have to assume has conservative tendencies took pains to repeatedly make the point that Fred Phelps was a Democrat and that the Westboro Baptist Church was run by Democrats.

It is a familiar tactic by the right. Whenever Republicans were charged with racism, they would respond by saying Senator Robert Byrd was once a member of the KKK. The premise being that because a Democratic Senator was once a member of the KKK, that meant that all Democrats are racists. And here, since Fred Phelps was a Democrat, that means all Democrats endorse the opinions and tactics of the WBC. Which is curious, since many Republicans and conservatives share the WBC’s opinion: they are against marriage equality and rights and acceptance for gays and lesbians.

Anyway, the point here is the conservative base’s antipathy towards marriage equality and gays and lesbians. And they want their presidential candidates to play to that.

If Republicans don’t speak out against Jenner, “you might as well just forfeit the 2016 election now,” Steve Deace, a syndicated talk radio host based in Iowa, said in an interview. “If we’re not going to defend as a party basic principles of male and female, that life is sacred because it comes from God, then you’re going to lose the vast majority of people who’ve joined that party,” Deace said.

Now I know many Republicans who do not share their base’s opinion, that are for marriage equality and rights and acceptance for gays and lesbians. And these Republicans should embrace Mr. Deace’s warning. Let these freaks leave the party and create a new theocratic party. Yes, you will lose some voters and some elections temporarily, but the Republican Party will be restored as small government, libertarian alternative, rather a hateful organization that turns away voters.

Huffington Post: “During the 2004 elections, George W. Bush’s campaign, managed by a closeted gay man, pushed a series of anti-gay ballot initiatives across the country. The House of Representatives, led by a male speaker who allegedly sexually assaulted a male minor, moved a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage after beating back attempts to strengthen hate crimes legislation. And the White House, led in part by a vice president with a lesbian daughter, eagerly encouraged a conservative evangelical base hostile to gay rights.”

And a special place in Hell is reserved for each of them.

“Humanity has been around for at least some 5,000 years or so, and I doubt that the basic challenges as confronted are any worse now, or alas even much different, from what they ever were.”

— Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, quoted by the Washington Post, suggesting he might not be intelligent. ThinkProgress notes the earliest Homo sapiens actually lived in Africa about 100,000 years ago.

The Fix: “Senate Democrats are having a very good 2015. The party has recruited top-tier candidates in each of the four most competitive seats up next November and have another four solid candidates in Republican-held seats that could help them expand the national playing field as they try to retake the Senate after two years in the minority. In most of these states — though not all — the preferred Democratic nominee has no serious primary challenge or even the prospect of one looming.”

“It’s not nation-building. We are assisting them in building their nation.”

— Sen. Marco Rubio, quoted by Business Insider, on his vision for Iraq.

Amy Walter: “With each passing day, Jeb Bush looks weaker and weaker. While he has a top notch political team and (reportedly) tons of cash, he is dropping, not, rising in the polls. For a party desperate to win back the White House, Bush is looking more and more like a risky bet.”

“The latest Washington Post/ABC and CNN/ORC polls paint a grim picture of Bush’s general election hopes. In the CNN poll, Bush is the only candidate tested – besides Ted Cruz – that Hillary beats handily. She leads Bush 51 percent to 43 percent.”

“With the all-important caveat that we are light years away from the primaries, Scott Walker is the frontrunner at this point. Where Bush gets no benefit of the doubt, Walker gets that benefit in spades. Republican primary voters love Walker’s story as the blue state Governor who defeated labor and lived to tell about it. At a time when voters are as disgusted with Washington as ever, he can sell himself as an outsider and an executive who gets results.”

Paul Waldman at The Week:

Let’s cut through the baloney and be honest for a moment: Republicans don’t like early voting or universal voter registration for the same reason they want voter ID laws. They know that the easier voting is, the more Democrats will turn out. Republican voters, on the other hand, are more likely to be older, wealthier, and whiter — the people for whom the kind of restrictions Republicans have sought to impose are less of a hassle. You could argue that Democrats are just as motivated by their partisan interest in taking the position they do, but that doesn’t change the simple fact that Democrats want to make voting easier and Republicans want to make it harder.

[…] Fifteen years after the hanging-chad debacle in Florida, we still haven’t found a way to make voting easy, simple, secure, and accurate. Yet somehow every other advanced democracy manages to carry their elections off without the kinds of problems we face. It isn’t because it’s such a daunting technical problem. It’s because our voting system sucks, and there are people who have an interest in keeping it that way.