The guy from the hate group gets to explain Republican policy on television. So yes, good luck moderating that.
I see we are playing the "pretend the Republican Party may see reason on an important issue that they have devoted themselves to being assholes about" game again. This time it's a group of stalwart activists seeking to moderate Republican opposition to marriage equality, and ideally to
remain silent on it altogether.
[T]he task that day in Iowa wasn't to show Republicans how much has changed in a decade or to nudge them toward acceptance of those unions. It was to force them to concede that going neutral on gay marriage is critical to winning the White House. It was, very specifically, to persuade them to take a series of tactical steps that would ultimately see language opposing gay marriage wiped from the Republican Party platform in 2016.
This is all well and good, but the inherent problem faced by these groups is best demonstrated by the nice man from the other side of the fence that our reporter chose to use as the voice of the opposing viewpoint: Tony Perkins, head of the SPLC-designated hate group Family Research Council. He may head a SPLC-designated hate group, after all, but at the end of the campaign he will be able to sport photographs of himself shaking hands with every one of the current crop of Republican presidential candidates. It's not likely that Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry will get the same privilege.
Perkins seems confident the gay-marriage effort will fail, and he has the ear of enough decision-makers to make his opposition well known. He was a delegate to the 2012 GOP convention, and while Perkins says he's not sure he will take on that task again in 2016, a devoted socially conservative ally is sure to play a central role in drafting platform language.
And indeed, note that
all of the Republican presidential candidates have expressed opposition to marriage equality, even the ones that ostensibly believe in
states' rights and government
getting out of people's lives. Which of these people are we expecting to shift positions, earning the fire-and-brimstone wrath of religious conservatives, in order to please that far tinier percentage of Republicans who want their party to not be such raging assholes on these things?
Yes, we should applaud that groups of younger Republicans are indeed trying to pry a bit of party control from the designated hate group wing of the party. But I can't help but feel that each and every one of these stories minimizes the extent to which the party is captive to hard-right extremism. Read it yourself, and then ask yourself whether our plucky little band of rational reformers has a snowball's chance in Republican Hell.
I think it's far more likely that the party will eventually sunder into two sub-parties than it will go any more gradual moderation, because at this point all the efforts at moderation have resulted only in strengthening the more extremist elements. Reformers seeking a rational immigration policy instead saw that effort dismantled and the xenophobic wing of the party, aka Steve King, cement their own power; Republicans for marriage equality have in these past years been barred outright from presenting their case at CPAC, the top conservative convention, after the nice people from the hate groups told conference organizers that they simply wouldn't tolerate that—so the odds that they'll be allowed to help draft the party platform seems a bit thin. The anti-environmentalists have been put in place of environmental policy, the fabulously wealthy have been given the reins of tax policy, and the Republican House spends more time on various schemes to wound or defund or dismantle "Obamacare" than they do on any actual efforts to keep the government functional. If anyone has been looking for a glimmer of potential Republican reformation or moderation in the midst of any of that, God help them.