Now that President Obama has come out in support of same-sex marriage (hooray!), there has been some discussion about the effect it will have on his elector chances in this year's election. Whether it will help him, whether it will hurt him, or whether it won't make much difference because everyone who is against same-sex marriage won't vote for him anyway.
But there is another way to look at it, what is the effect this announcement is going to have on his challenger, Mitt Romney? Follow me after the break.
We know that Romney is not a culture warrior. When he was a Mormon missionary in France, he spend most of his three years there not knocking on doors trying to convince wine-drinking French that they should embrace a faith that doesn't allow alcohol. No, he spend most of his time at the local headquarters of Mormon Inc. in Paris, directly working for the head of the mission, building up connections and gaining insigth in how the organization is run. When he tried and failed to defeat Ted Kennedy in 1994, he tried to run to the left of him, because that is what sells in Massachusetts. He has donated to Planned Parenthood, said that he supported equal rights for gays to the Log Cabin Republicans, and even came up with a state-mandated health insurance system. Now of course he says the opposite, because it is better for his political prospects now, but I doubt he cares that much one way or another.
He is also not comfortable in the role of culture warrior. As reported by Olympia in her diary, Mitt got rather testy when a Colorado interviewer asked him some social issues questions:
“Aren’t there issues of significance you’d like to talk about?” he said, after the string of social issue questions, one of which came from a viewer. “The economy, the growth of jobs, the need to put people back to work, the challenges of Iran? We’ve got enormous issues that we face but you want to talk about medical marijuan–go ahead, you want to talk about Medical–”
See? Same-sex marriage, medical marijuana, the education of the children of undocumented immigrants? These are issues of no significance to Romney. He wants to talk about the economy, jobs and bombing Iran. Can you imagine Rick Santorum implying that same-sex marriage is a issue of no significance? Can you imagine the people who voted for Santorum thinking that same-sex marriage is a issue of no significance?
So what affect has President Obama's announcement of support for same-sex marriage on Mitt Romney? Well, Romney might want to avoid the subject, but his party sure as hell doesn't. Remember Ric Grenell, Romney's foreign policy advisor who resigned within two weeks because him being gay was unacceptable for the social conservatives? Romney hired him in the first place, because as mentioned above, he is no culture warrior. Romney doesn't care if someone is gay as long as he is a reliable neocon foreign policy hawk. But he caved in as soon as there was a little pressure. Not that that completely convinced the social conservatives that he is to be trusted. So now that President Obama has explicitly made same-sex marriage a topic in the campaign, Romney has to spend more time on convincing the social conservatives that he is to be trusted, and he will have to spend more time in general fielding questions about a topic he is not comfortable with. Romney just want to talk about a topic he thinks he is good at and he thinks Obama is bad at: transferring wealth to the 1% the economy. But the social conservatives won't let him, because Obama's endorsment of same-sex marriage is like waving a red flag to a bull to them. They will demand strong statements from Romney against marriage equality instead of talking about the economy. Note that Obama doesn't have to do much after his statement today, his position is clear. Romney will have a lot more work though.
And when Romney thinks he has the marriage equality insurrection in his own party under control, Obama will wave another red flag at the Republican base: immigration reform. And again, for a time the talk will be about social issues rather than the economy, and again Romney will have to cave to the nutters in his party and spend time on a topic he doesn't really care about, for Pete's sake.
Romney btw is not the only person who cares more about the economy than marriage equality or immigration, a lot of voters do as well. But instead of these voters hearing Romney talk about the economy, they will hear him talk about other issues, because Obama forced him to. Obama can keep talking about the economy, because he has made his positions clear.
And then of course there will be the Republican Convention. Rick Santorum must already be working on his speech about the evils of marriage equality and man-on-dog sex, and people will say that it sounded even better in the original Latin. Jan Brewer or some other Arizonan will talk about scary Mexicans, headless bodies in the desert and the need for a 300 foot high fence from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico.
Obama is using Romney's own party against him to prevent him from avoiding topics he wants to avoid and from moving to the center for the general election. The GOP base will yank Romney's chain on these topics and he will be forced to the right, and farther to the right a lot of voters are comfortable with. Quite a lot of people are against marriage equality but are ok with civil partnerships. Romney will have to condemn civil partnerships as well (he already did today), and have to condemn them hard. He has mentioned that he is for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, and the base will now expect him to make that a major point in his platform and his acceptance speech. Obama upped the bet on this, and Romney will have to double down. The same will happen with immigration reform, Obama will take a position slightly ahead of where the polls are, and Romney will be forced to take a position far behind of where the polls are. Obama will suggest something along the lines of the DREAM act, and the base will force Romney to support abolishing the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment.
There is one little bit of good news for Romney, there's a single person who will still want to talk about the economy at the Republican Convention. The bad news for Romney is that that person is Ron Paul :)