When it comes to same-sex marriage and LGBT issues, Jeb Bush has been walking the finest line of all the GOP candidates. While Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Marco Rubio (to some extent) are duking it out to solidify the backing of social conservatives and the right fringe, Bush has
notably vowed to run more of a general election campaign during the primary for fear of being painted into a corner he can't get out of if he ties up the GOP nomination.
That is not to say Bush is a "moderate," as demonstrated by his fiscal policies as governor and his hawkish foreign policy team. But he has tried to strike a more reasonable tone on issues like immigration (where he favors a path to citizenship but doesn't support Obama's executive actions) and same-sex marriage.
So what does that look like on LGBT issues? For Bush, it means trying to walk a tightrope between his antiquated base voters and the general electorate on an issue that's moving at a breathtaking pace.
It means going to the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference and declaring, "I believe in traditional marriage,” but telling reporters this week that he's open to attending a gay wedding.
"I haven't —that's not to say I wouldn't," Bush told a group of reporters in Puerto Rico on Tuesday in response to a question about if he would attend a same-sex wedding. He added in Spanish "claro que sí" that he would attend a wedding if invited.
It means rushing to
signal your early support for Gov. Mike Pence's discriminatory "religious freedom" bill and then trying to walk it back when the tide of the nation turns and you're courting Silicon Valley investors.
Head below on the fold for more on this story.
He stressed at the fund-raiser that he wasn’t criticizing Mr. Pence, but he said that the “better approach” would have been “consensus-oriented,” like the effort in red-state Utah, where gay rights advocates and the Mormon Church negotiated the particulars of an antidiscrimination bill.
It means stacking your team
with gay advisers so that you can potentially keep the spigot of gay money flowing.
As clumsy as he's been, Jeb Bush is still walking this donors vs. GOP base tightrope better than someone like Ted Cruz, who has gotten blowback from the fundies for his ham-handed outreach to gays donors.
But if anyone should wonder where Bush stands on religiously fueled government intrusion into people's private lives, one need only turn to his statement earlier this month on the case of Terri Schiavo.
"I don’t think I would have changed anything," he said.
And then there's his
recent reflection on balancing religious freedom with LGBT rights.
“But I do fear that certain freedoms,” he continued, that “have historically been part of our DNA as a country now are being challenged and I don’t think it’s appropriate.”
In other words, religious freedom should really trump the rights of all else, including that of same-sex couples to live their lives free from discrimination.