Last night the Republicans who touted a message of fiscal conservatism won big while the Conservative whose message included a strongly socially conservative message (especially viz opposition to gay marriage) lost.
Roger Simon pretty much nails it:
Well… I might as well say it… social conservatism. America is a fiscally conservative country – now perhaps more than ever, and with much justification – but not a socially conservative one. No, I don’t mean to say it’s socially liberal. It’s not. It’s socially laissez-faire (just as its mostly fiscally laissez-faire). Whether we’re pro-choice, pro-life or whatever we are, most of us want the government out of our bedrooms, just as we want it out of our wallets.
I suspect there remain as a majority opposed to gay marriage but here's the important point: Only a small portion of that majority has passionate feelings about it. Most Americans do not care who you love or who you sleep with (unless it can be fodder for a media fueled scandal, of course.) In time gay marriage will probably win at the ballot box simply because those in favor have the more compelling arguments and it is far more important to them than to the average American. It seems to me that the electorate took a fairly mature approach (ie, not a regressive approach, which would have involved demonizing the opponent.)
In short, the message to the Democrats is that becoming identified as the party of corruption, high taxes, and profligate spending is a losing proposition.
The message to the Republicans should be that identifying (and behaving) as the party of fiscal sanity is a winning proposition. Diluting the message with extraneous and extreme sounding appeals to the core will lose more votes than it will win.
Most of us don't want the government telling us what to do, whether in financial matters or in personal matters. One hopes the politicians are paying attention.
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