The GOP Puts On Its Act
News: You'd almost think the Republican Party was becoming kinder and gentler -- but then you read the party platform.
August 31, 2004
|
|
"We further believe that legal recognition and the accompanying benefits afforded couples should be preserved for that unique and special union of one man and one woman." – 2004 Republican Platform.
The stage has been set for four days showcasing a kinder, gentler Republican Party. House Majority Whip Rep. Tom Delay has been ushered out of sight, kept busy by fund-raisers and lobbyists. The Christian Right has forgone a major primetime speaker. And Tuesday’s lineup will be called “People of Compassion.” You'd almost think the party was shifting -- until you read the 2004 Republican Platform.
The result of a truncated platform committee process -- one that ticked off party conservatives and moderates alike -- the platform is very much in keeping with the Republican Party of old, especially as regards social issues. The party officially opposes counseling school children about contraception or abortion. Abortion is still aggressively condemned, as is physician-assisted suicide. Not only gay marriage, but the legal rights afforded to civil unions, are said to violate not only the law but “millennia of human experience.” And a vocal minority of Republicans is making its displeasure known.
“Our party cannot have it both ways,” said Patrick Guerriero, the executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans at a Monday morning press conference near Times Square. “We cannot have the voices of exclusion crafting a vicious and mean-spirited platform, while at the same time putting the voices of inclusion in prime time.” The group had gathered the press to announce a new ad campaign highlighting the issue of gay marriage. After describing Ronald Reagan as a paragon of inclusiveness, the commercial flashes pictures of the group’s most vocal foe, Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, just before a picture appears of two signs that read “God Hates Fags.” “Our choice is clear,” the voiceover intones. “You have a party platform in 2004 that is remarkably worse than it was in 2000,” Guerriero continued, after screening the ad. “This document would be outrageous in 1904.”
Ann Stone, who heads Republicans for Choice, had a similar reaction. “It doesn’t recognize us,” says Stone, who had been pushing with Log Cabin a Unity Plank for the Platform. That plank would have mentioned specifically the issues of gay marriage, abortion and family planning, saying “The Republican Party welcomes all people on all sides of these complex issues.”
It was abandoned in favor of one line in an appendix that says, “while steadfast in our commitment to our ideals, we respect and accept that members of our party can have deeply held and sometimes differing views.” “If they think words like that are going to allow moderates to flood back into the party, they are in a dream world,” said Stone.
Just hours later and ten blocks south, the Republican Main Street Partnership, a group that supports moderate Congressional candidates, held their own press event on the importance of including a broad range of views in the party. But none of the excluded were included in this event either.
Instead, Newt Gingrich, among the main movers of the nation’s still ascendant conservative movement, sought to put moderation in perspective. “There is a party of narrow-minded bigotry, the Democrats,” Newt explained, noting that there were no pro-life speakers at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. “There is a party that is diverse and open to ideas, and it happens to be the Republican Party.”
Former New Jersey Governor Christie Todd Whitman, who also sat on the panel, was somewhat more diplomatic toward the Republican fringes. “I can understand their frustration,” she said of the Log Cabin Republicans. But, she added, “We are a party of diversity and we are a party of different opinions.”
That idea will be tested over the next several nights, when politicians who support choice and domestic partner benefits for gay couples will headline the primetime lineup. The size of the party’s big tent can be measured by the willingness of Republicans like Arnold Schwartzenegger, Rudy Giuliani and Sen. John McCain to address the parts of the Party’s own platform that go against their own stated views.
One Republican, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, did just that Sunday afternoon when he addressed a group of gay Republicans in Bryant Park. “When you talk about gay rights,” he said, “you talk about fundamental rights of equality, and you ought not to have votes on it.”
Michael Scherer is Mother Jones' Washington correspondent.
