Younger GOP Operatives at Odds with Candidates
It's become a political truism to say that there is a generational divide with respect to gay rights, as polling data bears out the fact that younger voters, even conservatives, are far more in favour of same-sex marriage than their elders.
But as the 2012 election, particularly the Republican presidential primary, takes shape, that divide — even between some presumptive candidates and their younger staffers — has been drawn more sharply into focus, Huffington Post reports.
Over the course of the past week or so, James Richardson, who served as online communications manager for the Republican National Committee in the 2008 cycle, was signed up by Gov. Haley Barbour (R-Miss.) to serve as a communications adviser for his Political Action Committee and, likely, his presidential campaign, Huffington Post writes.
A well-respected operative within GOP circles, Richardson had run a personal blog in between those two stints. And at some point in time — more than two years ago — he argued that the Republican Party should embrace the philosophical concepts (and political benefits) of gay adoption and gay marriage, according to Huffington Post.
“The Republican Party is at a defining crossroads,” Richardson wrote on his site. “Now is not the time for an echo chamber. And homosexual demagoguery is not the answer to the Party’s woes, particularly when gay men and women represent the only demographic in which John McCain bested President Bush (35% to 19% based on exit polling)”, Huffington Post reports.
Such musings are increasingly common among younger conservatives. But, a Democratic source pointed out, after Richardson signed up with Barbour — who has long opposed gay marriage — his post was removed, replaced with a “no results found” message, Huffington Post writes.
Richardson declined to comment for this report,according to Huffington Post, but stressed that he took the site down of his own volition, not at the behest of anyone in Barbour’s orbit. He could have kept it up, but that would have produced the awkward spectre for a candidate and a top staffer arguing opposing sides of a prominent social issue. Communications aides, after all, are supposed to be the messengers, not the message.
Of course, it’s not groundbreaking that a campaign hand has a policy disagreement with the boss. But the removal of Richardson’s post underscores a far more telling feature of the modern Republican Party: A large chunk of the GOP operative class has no problem with expanding gay rights, but those staffers nonetheless work for candidates who are principally opposed to such moves, according to Huffington Post .
What could be driving younger GOP conservatives toward such libertarian gay acceptance? Maybe this…
The GOP’s sainted Ronald Reagan — as Governor of California — successfully opposed a referendum that would have out-lawed the hiring of known gay people as public school teachers. Recently, eight GOP US Senators under the age of 60 voted to repeal “Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell”, the military policy to ban open gay people from serving in the military.
The twin daughters George W. Bush, and former First Lady Laura Bush, have come out in support of gay marriage…while conservative super-hero and talk-radio giant, Rush Limbaugh, told his 23 million listeners he can support same-sex civil unions (but not gay marriage).
In the triumphant 2010 GOP mid-term elections, at least one-out-of-three Gays voted for the Tea Party-driven GOP, according to gay and straight news services.
And some of the 1950’s most celebrated anti-communists who exposed communist infiltration into the American government, media and arts were gay themselves !!!
This was a commentary to the Huffington Post, article For Younger Class Of Political Operatives, Gay Rights Issues Often Pit Them Against Their Candidates , written by Huffington Post’s Sam Stein.