When Democrats announced that their 2012 platform would include a historic first -- gay marriage written in as a plank -- the reaction from mainstream Republicans was near silence.
There were no statements blasted out from Mitt Romney's campaign. The same was true for the Republican National Committee. Romney has yet to address the fact.
Most Republican Party leaders seem to have lost the stomach for this fight," said Dan Schnur of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. "Some of that results (from) the number of large-scale donors who support same-sex marriage, some of it's a result in an increasing number of party leaders who support same-sex marriage, and a lot of it is public opinion polling which shows a shift in the way voters feel about same-sex marriage," he added.Right, so it's a combination of familiarity with gays and the increasingly knowledge that a gay marriage battle gets our side just as engaged as their side.
It is, Schnur said, "still an issue that motivates the party base, but it motivates the Democratic base, too."
The battle isn't over, but I've written about this before - the GOP is increasingly afraid of touching our issues, and that's a good thing. Even if their leadership in Washington is still bashing us in the courts.
