Wed. January 18, 2012
By Waymon Hudson
It is almost universally agreed by pundits and political observers alike that Mitt Romney has locked up the nomination to be the Republican presidential candidate facing President Obama in 2012. The beltway common wisdom (an oxymoron if there ever was one) is that while the GOP nomination fight may drag on because of egos and dissatisfaction from ultra-conservatives, it is pretty much a done deal, with the campaigns just going through the motions. So why should anyone, especially those of us concerned with LGBT equality and progressive issues, even pay attention to the bickering clown car that the primary has become?
The GOP primary matters because this fight has a lasting effect on politics by giving a spotlight to arch-conservatives with their far out-of-the-mainstream views and by driving Romney (or whoever the eventual nominee is) further into the socially conservative wasteland.
The GOP primary process has long been a vehicle for propelling fringe social conservatives to new heights of fame and influence. Crazy televangelist Pat Robertson, who has said everything from gays caused Hurricane Katrina to praying for the death of liberal leaning Supreme Court Justices, finished high in the Iowa caucuses. The spotlight made him an even stronger leader of the so-called "moral majority" movement and an evangelical kingmaker. Pat Buchanan was pushed to prominence with his anti-gay, anti-women, anti-minority speeches in Iowa and at the Republican convention, leading to a gig as a pundit on MSNBC who for years spewed his vile, bigoted views. Perhaps most telling of all is staunch social conservative Mike Huckabee, a little known governor, who after winning the Iowa caucus became a right-wing darling and host of his own influential Fox News show.
All of these views are opposed by a vast majority of Americans of all political stripes. They will surely come to haunt him once he makes it to the general election against President Obama, whose views are diametrically opposed to Romney's fringe ideas on equality. Romney may well try to move back to more moderate positions during the general election, knowing that the conservative corner he has been painted into will turn off many voters. Yet that is why we must pay attention to what is happening now.
We can't allow the hateful rhetoric and the pandering, socially-backwards ideas of the GOP primary to go unchallenged or to be forgotten. This ugly spotlight on the ever-shrinking fringe with bigoted views about LGBT equality is something that we need to confront, call out, and remember as those in our lives head to the ballot box in November. While that spotlight can propel anti-gay politicians to new heights of prominence in the conservative movement, it can also be used to show how out of touch they are with the rest of the country, forever tarring them with their own bigoted views.
Image of Mitt Romney from Wikipedia.org
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