Department of Flailing About

 

“I’m with South Carolina,” said GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, who also faces voters next year. “I believe in traditional marriage — between a man and a woman, without animosity. I don’t mind if people are able to transfer their property, visit their loved ones in hospitals, but marriage to me, I’ve stayed with the concept of traditional marriage.”

Graham's comment reflects the ongoing GOP dilemma- how to say something that sweetly concedes gays exist but no, they still can't have anything. That and, of course, that most of SC really isn't with him.

Graham is relatively unique in that he is protecting an institution he has never joined.

But he gets points over retiring Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss, the war hawk with six Viet Nam war  deferments, who said:

When asked if his views had changed on gay marriage, the Georgia Republican quipped: “I’m not gay. So I’m not going to marry one.”

Chambliss and Graham are among the Republicans who really haven't a clue what to do next. One of the five authors of the so-called GOP Autopsy, published this week, is SC RNC member Glenn McCall. The report offered a scathing evaluation of the party's mining of dead-ends, including these:

At the federal level, it says, the party is “marginalizing itself,” and, in the absence of major change, “it will be increasingly difficult for Republicans to win a presidential election in the near future.” Young voters are “rolling their eyes at what the party represents.” Voters’ belief that “the G.O.P. does not care about them is doing great harm.” Formerly loyal voters gathered in focus groups describe Republicans as “ ‘scary,’ ‘narrow-minded’ and ‘out of touch’ and that we were a party of ‘stuffy old men.’ ” In a rare intervention in policy making for a political committee, the R.N.C. report calls for abandonment of the party’s anti-immigration stance, flatly declaring that “we must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform.” In an equally radical challenge to Republican orthodoxy, the Priebus report states:

We have to blow the whistle at corporate malfeasance and attack corporate welfare. We should speak out when a company liquidates itself and its executives receive bonuses but rank-and-file workers are left unemployed. We should speak out when C.E.O.s receive tens of millions of dollars in retirement packages but middle-class workers have not had a meaningful raise in years.

The report also warns that Republicans need to mute, if not silence, anti-gay rhetoric if they are to have any chance of regaining support among voters under the age of 30.

For the G.O.P. to appeal to younger voters, we do not have to agree on every issue, but we do need to make sure young people do not see the Party as totally intolerant of alternative points of view. Already, there is a generational difference within the conservative movement about issues involving the treatment and the rights of gays — and for many younger voters, these issues are a gateway into whether the Party is a place they want to be. If our Party is not welcoming and inclusive, young people and increasingly other voters will continue to tune us out. The Party should be proud of its conservative principles, but just because someone disagrees with us on 20 percent of the issues, that does not mean we cannot come together on the rest of the issues where we do agree.