With the wedge being cast on FMA, Shrub makes a concerted effort to shore up his social conservative base and capitalize on a perceived majority who agree in principle with this position.
However, this strategy can easily backfire not only by uniting Democrats but also by chilling relations with Republican-leaning groups, such as:
- GLBT Republicans: The Log Cabin Republicans are mighty pissed off. They promise to fight from the inside though. Sounds like a sellout position, but having loud and pissed off voices of reason at the Republican convention can only be a good thing, especially if it leads to open confrontation between social conservatives and fiscally conservative, socially moderate or libertarian GLBT Republicans. If the chaos can be caught on TV, so much the better.
- Libertarian Republicans: Those with a strong history of advocating individual rights and freedoms and against federal intrusion on state's rights can't be too pleased with this.
- Legally conservative Republicans: Many rightly believe that amending the Constitution is not something one simply does for the hell of it, including the Founders who made it exceedingly difficult to do. As evidenced with Prohibition, the representation of fleeting public opinion in the Constitution creates chaos and is a quick candidate for repeal.
- Who gives a shit Republicans: Truth is, most of the country is not directly affected by the FMA passing or not. Apart from the nutbars, most have no vested personal interest in restricting others' personal liberties. Many will agree in principle that marriage is between a man and a woman, but fewer will act to restrict that right exclusively, and fewer still will go as far as the FMA does and ban reasonable approximations thereof. They have other things to worry about.
In moving forward from here, Democrats not only have to arrange their own opposition, but approach these groups in
particularly different ways:
- LCR should be actively supported in their fight to influence their party from within and create a little chaos while doing so. They have already done an admirable job co-sponsoring ads in Massachusetts, and enabling them further can only help.
- The Libertarian Party, who was strongly opposed to the original DOMA, should be encouraged to soak up votes from disgruntled Republicans who see this and other Bush initiatives as the evil assaults on civil liberties that they are.
- The LCR's tack in Mass. hits this one square on. The issue of marriage rights simply does not meet the bar for requiring constitutional amendments. An interesting conservative argument to make on this would be to recycle the very arguments used to scuttle passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.
- The most important group since they are the largest. Whatever is done, it is very, very important to allow people (Democrats and Republicans) to hold their own personal views and opinions on the morality of same-sex unions and marriages. The approach has to be more similar to that used by the pro-choice movement. It is perfectly acceptable to disagree with same-sex unions. It is even perfectly acceptable to be homophobic.
Many in the who-gives-a-shit group will follow the easiest option that causes the least dissonance. Anti-FMA people have to be that option by allowing personal preference to be expressed while stressing the need for people to let others do the saem.