I am attending the CA Republican Convention at the relentlessly stylish J W Marriott Hotel at LA Live. (I’m not kidding: even the bathroom fixtures are funky!) There is a movement afoot to change the Platform of the CA Republican Party, including removing the pro-life and pro-marriage language that has long been part of the platform. A few of us have come up from San Diego to see what is going on. Some of my Ruth Institute students have shown up from different universities around the state.
Last night, Michele Bachmann gave the dinner speech. She was electrifying. Intelligent. Persuasive. I agreed with virtually everything she said. And yet, and yet. …
She did not say a single word about social issues. Not a word, to a state party that is on the verge of gutting its platform of pro-life and pro-marriage language. Not a word, in the deep blue state that nonetheless won Proposition 8. Not a word about marriage, in spite of the fact that far more people voted for the marriage issue, than who voted for Republican Party candidates. The GOP has no statewide elected officials, but 7 million people voted for Prop 8, far more than the voters for any Republican candidate in a long time.
Not a word about marriage, even in the aftermath of the upset election in NY’s 9th Congressional District, where marriage surely gave the district to a Republican for the first time since the 1920’s. No word from Michele Bachmann on the marriage issue, even though the pro-life, pro-marriage Catholic Republican candidate in NY defeated a guy who voted for redefining marriage. No word, even though the marriage issue brings together constituencies who normally do not vote together or work together, constituencies who do not usually or reliably vote Republican: African American pastors, Hispanics, and now, in upstate NY, Orthodox Jews.
And Michele Bachmann is a reliable social conservative. She believes in the pro-life and pro-marriage issues. If she doesn’t talk about marriage, who among Republican contenders will? Social conservatives will have to insist on getting attention for their issues, cuz the politicos certainly won’t do it voluntarily!