Democrats’ same-sex ‘marriage’ plank may swing election for Romney: Huckabee, others
WASHINGTON, D.C., August 2, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Democratic Party’s decision to adopt a platform embracing same-sex “marriage” “may end up sinking” the party, and hand Mitt Romney the issue he needs to energize Republican voters in the fall, according to one of his former rivals.
Former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee told AFR Talk’s “Today’s Issues” yesterday the Democrats’ formal support for marriage redefinition “will be the best thing that’s ever happened to the Republican Party, especially in the South and the Midwest.”
“If there was any vestige of the Democrat Party in some of these areas, this may end up sinking the ship,” he told the hosts.
A Quinnipiac poll shows the constituency known as “Reagan Democrats” – whites without a college education – favor Romney over Obama by 20 points, 53 percent to 33 percent. Political scientist Larry Sabato has said “those Reagan Democrats have long since become operational Republicans.” But pundits have noted Romney’s “enthusiasm gap” among many conservatives, especially cultural traditionalists.
Christian Heinze writes in The Hill newspaper, “The gay-marriage wars, though, could turn them out on Election Day. ”
Huckabee, who championed that constituency in 2008, agrees. “Once a major political party and a president of the United States has now openly declared war on Biblical marriage and the traditional concept of one man, one woman for life, they no longer are going to support that,” he said.
A host of other pro-life, pro-family leaders agree the Democrats may have gone too far for middle America.
“They are further alienating themselves from the mainstream of America,” Pat Robertson said on the700 Club. If that’s what they want to do, fine, but it will mean the death knell of their party.”
“Maybe they have a death wish,” he shrugged.
Bryan Fischer, the host of AFR Talk’s “Focal Point” radio program, wrote on his blog the party of Jefferson “sealed its own doom” and has begun a “permanent slide into political oblivion.”
“The Democrats have now lurched to the fringe of American culture on this profound issue,” he said.
Voters have rejected the issue by often landslide majorities in all 32 elections in which marriage redefinition has appeared on the ballot. Peter Sprigg, Senior Fellow for Policy Studies at the Family Research Council, said, “If President Obama were to lose those 32 states, he would face an electoral debacle.”
The party shift threatens to imperil Democrats in battleground states that hold to traditional cultural values.
“There are many Democratic members of Congress, and office-holders further down the ticket, who live in states and districts where it will be a serious disadvantage to be identified with ‘the gay marriage party,’” said Sprigg.
Fischer said every Democratic candidate in the country should be asked their views on the issue, reducing their chances to be elected in much of the country.
Commentators agree it is a winning issue for Mitt Romney, who made much of his opposition to same-sex “marriage” during the 2008 primaries.
“Romney, who has signed a pledge to support a marriage protection amendment to the U.S. Constitution, should not shy away from making a clear distinction with President Obama and the Democrats on this issue,” Sprigg wrote.
Fischer agreed, “If Republicans can remind Americans that they are voting on two utterly incompatible views of marriage when they mark their ballots on November 6, it will be a landslide of epic proportions.”
