GOP says it will continue to fund homosexual candidates despite Congressman’s objections
WASHINGTON, D.C., – As the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC) continues to tout two openly homosexual Congressional candidates as part of a “new generation” of Republicans who reflect the socially libertine values of voters under age 30, at least one Congressman is arguing that the GOP should not be funding candidates who oppose the party platform on social issues.
Politico reported last week that Congressman Randy Forbes (R-Va.) has been privately urging GOP leaders to cut off campaign funding to Carl DeMaio and Richard Tisei, two openly gay candidates who are trying to unseat Democratic Congressmen in blue states – California and Massachusetts, respectively.
Both DeMaio and Tisei break with the Republican platform by supporting same-sex “marriage” and legalized abortion-on-demand. (As a state legislator, Tisei earned a 100 percent approval rating from NARAL and Planned Parenthood.)
Rep. Forbes told Politico that while individual party leaders “can do whatever they want to do” when it comes to donating to homosexual, pro-abortion candidates, he objected to the idea that the dues he and other House Republicans pay to the NRCC might also be used to support them.
“There would be a different situation if they tried to force other members to give money,” Forbes said.
“The definition of marriage is an issue with widely divergent opinions passionately held by both sides. This is true of the Republican Party, as it is of society,” Forbes explained later, in a statement sent to his home district’s Virginian-Pilot newspaper. “Our goal is to make certain every individual has the right to express his or her belief, while no one is compelled to support financially or otherwise, those who disagree with them. It is my belief that we are trying to strike this balance and we will continue to work to accomplish this goal.”
But sources at the NRCC have said that is unlikely to happen. The group is focused on only one thing, and that’s increasing the number of Republican seats in Congress.
“Typically, most, if not all, members of the House Republican Conference were focused on one thing — winning the majority,” one former NRCC senior aide told the Washington Examiner. “That requires diversity in the candidate recruitment class whether that has to do with positions on issues from the Second Amendment to abortion rights or a candidate’s ethnicity or sexual orientation.”
NRCC Chairman Greg Walden said, “Our decisions on the Republican nominees we support will not be based on race, gender or sexual orientation but will be based on the strength of their candidacy and their ability to defeat Democrats.”
Despite – or perhaps because of – their unorthodox positions on social issues, both DeMaio and Tisei have become darlings of the GOP leadership, who have named both men as picks for the NRCC’s “Young Guns” program, which funds the most promising would-be Congressional freshmen. Their candidacies are part of a larger strategy being referred to among Republican insiders as the “new generation,” seemingly a reference to a 95-page election year post-mortem by the College Republicans examining what went wrong between the GOP and young voters.
That report, titled “Grand Old Party for a Brand New Generation,” argued that as public support for same-sex “marriage” increases, especially among so-called “Millennials” between the ages of 18 and 29, the party should downplay its opposition to gay unions and seek out “diversity of opinion” in its candidates.
“There is hardly an appetite from this generation to see the GOP crusade against same-sex marriage,” the group wrote. “In the short run … the best course of action for the party may be to promote the diversity of opinion on the issue within its ranks (after all, for quite some time, former vice president Dick Cheney was to the left of President Obama on same-sex marriage) and to focus on acceptance and support for gay people as separate from the definition of marriage.”
The same report described the party’s pro-life platform as a liability with young voters who, although largely supporting limits on legal abortion, see the Republican Party as “extreme” on the issue.
“Unfortunately for the GOP, the Republican Party has been painted – both by Democrats and by unhelpful voices in our own ranks – as holding the most extreme anti-abortion position (that it should be prohibited in all cases),” the authors said.
Since the report’s release, the “new generation” label has been placed on any Republican candidate who bucks the party platform on social issues. The NRCC even used the phrase in push polling for the DeMaio race, while assuring likely voters from both parties that despite his Republican label, DeMaio is openly gay and plans to ignore social issues in favor of fiscal ones if elected.
Meanwhile, some socially conservative candidates have complained of abandonment by the party leadership. After pro-life senatorial candidate Todd Akin awkwardly defended his opposition to rape exceptions for abortion laws during the 2012 elections, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus vowed that “not a dime” of GOP money would go to his campaign. In the recent high-stakes Virginia governor’s election, GOP leaders largely refused to fund pro-life conservative Ken Cuccinelli, while spending millions to elect the more liberal Chris Christie in New Jersey.
But the establishment has largely thrown its weight behind the diversified “new generation.” In addition to naming both DeMaio and Tisei to the “Young Guns” campaign funding program, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has donated $10,000 to DeMaio’s campaign, and also gave $10,000 to Tisei during his first unsuccessful run in 2012. And House Speaker John Boehner, when asked by reporters whether the GOP should be financially supporting homosexual candidates, answered with an unequivocal “I do.”
