Days before the Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in a case that could make gay marriage the law of the land, a number of Republican presidential candidates spent the weekend in Iowa, assuring social conservatives that they won’t ever give up the fight.
There’s just one thing: It’s getting harder to believe them.
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Sure, they all continue to publicly support “traditional marriage,” and some will eagerly throw red meat to their audiences about the assault on religious freedom, but, for all but a few candidates, their personal commitment to that position, long a pillar of conservative orthodoxy, is less and less convincing.
Scott Walker told reporters he’s attended the reception for a gay couple after missing the wedding ceremony itself. Marco Rubio said he would go to a gay wedding “in a heartbeat” but believes marriage itself should remain between a man and a woman. Jeb Bush said on Tuesday he’s never been to a gay wedding but that “of course” he’d attend one “if invited.”
Like Bill Clinton explaining in 1992 that he once smoked marijuana but “didn’t inhale,” Republicans are struggling with one of 2015’s first cultural litmus tests, not wanting to offend social conservatives, a dominant force, especially in Iowa and South Carolina, or to upset the GOP’s donor class that’s increasingly pushing candidates to better align their position with the nation’s broader, rapidly changing electorate.
“That awkwardness you’re seeing comes from the collision of conviction and calculation,” said John Weaver, a Republican strategist who advised John McCain’s presidential campaigns. “We’re seeing that all of these candidates are uncomfortable when they have to answer what seems like an easy question.”
Look no further than Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who last week told gay donors who hosted a fundraiser for his campaign that he’d love his daughter “just as much” if she were a lesbian; as soon as that statement leaked, he slammed the media for making too much of it and went right back to railing against the cultural forces threatening traditional marriage, asking his audience in Iowa to pray about the Supreme Court case at hand.
“I don’t understand how he can say that to gay donors in New York and then fly to Iowa and ask everyone to drop to their knees and pray that the Supreme Court upholds traditional marriage,” Weaver said. “It looked like he was trying to have his wedding cake and eat it, too.”
As Cruz and other traditional marriage hard-liners took the stage in Iowa last weekend, Bush was eating lettuce wraps served by a drag queen before a number of reporters and cameras at a restaurant on Miami’s South Beach, a mecca for gays.
The tableau served as a symbol of Bush’s quiet evolution on the issue. While he publicly maintains his opposition to same-sex marriage, reaffirmed over the weekend by a surrogate he sent to Iowa, Bush is sending signals that he may be more accepting of “marriage equality” — the strongest signal, perhaps, coming when he referred to the issue using that term favored by LGBT advocates — than he’s able to let on.
“His use of that term, ‘marriage equality’ — that was a first for a Republican,” said Gregory Angelo, executive director of Log Cabin Republicans, a group of LGBT Republicans. “In general, it reflects a degree of far greater shrewdness in how potential candidates are talking about this issue as a whole. You’re not seeing the same stridency that marked the opposition to marriage equality in 2012.”
Carly Fiorina, who will announce her own run for president next week, is the only Republican in the 2016 field who fully supports marriage equality. But among the leading candidates, Bush has been the most impressive to Angelo.
“There is a respect, a sympathy and an understanding that Jeb Bush has on this issue,” Angelo said. “We think it’s terrific that he’s hired a communications director who is openly gay and stood by him.”
Beyond Communications Director Tim Miller, who is gay, Bush’s inner circle of staffers have all expressed strong support for marriage equality, including Mike Murphy, hired to run his messaging shop, who wrote about the GOP’s need to evolve on policy following Mitt Romney’s defeat in 2012.
“The Republican challenge is not about better voter-turnout software; it is about policy,” Murphy wrote after the 2012 election. “We repel younger voters, who are much more secular than their parents, with our opposition to same-sex marriage and our scolding tone on social issues.”
Bush’s spokeswoman has already disavowed a statement he made as Florida’s governor opposing special designations and protections for a class of people who engage in what he then termed “sodomy.”
Republicans changing their tone may simply be following the money.
“2012 was a race to the bottom with every candidate trying to outdo the next in expressing their opposition to same-sex marriage and LGBT freedom,” said Margaret Hoover, president of America Unity Fund, an organization founded by billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer that works for full freedom and equality for LGBT Americans, with special focus on Republican leaders. “The temperature has really changed.”
Singer has found support from other hedge fund managers who have pooled their resources to defend Republicans who back same-sex marriage from primary challenges; and he’s also made large contributions to another bipartisan group, Freedom to Marry, looking to advance marriage equality nationally and in the states.
Winning Singer’s personal support would only add to Bush’s war chest, already anticipated to surpass his rivals’; but his camp isn’t the only one courting the conservative billionaire, who’s already met with all of the top candidates, and other billionaire bundlers like Seth Klarman and Dan Loeb, another hedge-funder known for asking any candidate who enters his office where they stand on gay rights.
A few donors, speaking anonymously, said they believe Bush is more supportive of marriage equality than he’s letting on, likely a shrewd calculation to appease the right given his other vulnerabilities — immigration reform and Common Core — with conservative primary voters.
Others aren’t so sure, citing Bush’s quick defense last month of Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and the controversial religious freedom law he signed that many believe sanctioned discrimination against gays; days later, as controversy drove Pence and Indiana lawmakers to ratchet back the law, Bush walked back his hearty endorsement, saying he thought the embattled governor “would be in the right place by the end of the week.”
“In reality, he’s sending mixed signals,” one donor said of Bush. “It shows how tough it’s proving to be, trying to walk this tightrope.”
For his part, Walker didn’t weigh in on the Indiana controversy and his response to the court ruling allowing same-sex marriages to begin in Wisconsin — he expressed his own support for traditional marriage but promised, in a measured tone, to follow the law — was recognized by one LGBT advocate as a blueprint for other candidates.
At last weekend’s Iowa Freedom Summit, Sen. Rand Paul made a statement with what he didn’t say, eschewing any mention of same-sex marriage, but rallying the crowd with a strong stance against abortion.
Even Cruz, who vows to fight on if the Supreme Court rules in favor of marriage equality in June, has moderated his stance, shifting from advocating a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman to one that merely leaves the question to the states.
“Aside from [Mike] Huckabee, [Rick] Santorum, and maybe [Bobby] Jindal, none of the candidates really care about this issue anymore and want it to go away as quickly as possible,” said a Republican staffer inside a major LGBT-advocacy organization who asked not to be identified. “They’ve seen the polling numbers and realize that this one is a lost cause.”
Recent polls show 59 percent of Americans support full marriage equality, including 52 percent of Republicans under 50.
Rubio, who’s defining himself as part of a new generation of leadership, has also been sending mixed signals in an effort to avoid undermining his own fundamental argument and his chances in Iowa.
He hired a deputy campaign manager, Rich Beeson, who is among 300 prominent Republicans who signed an amicus brief in support of gay marriage filed to the Supreme Court; Rubio has been meeting regularly with the Log Cabin Republicans and even acknowledged in a recent network TV interview that homosexuality isn’t a choice but “something people are born with.” In another interview that same weekend with the Christian Broadcasting Network, he spoke to a far different audience in far different terms.
“You would have to really have a ridiculous and absurd reading of the U.S. Constitution to reach the conclusion that people have a right to marry someone of the same sex,” Rubio said.
However varied and conflicting these public statements are, the dissonance shown by Republicans mirrors that of Democrats just one presidential election cycle ago. If Hillary Clinton’s campaign wants to trumpet her full-throated support of marriage equality in 2016, Republicans will be happy to point out that her newfound conviction on the issue, finally aligning herself with broad public opinion, is no profile in courage.
“It does seem a bit odd that Republicans are being criticized for expressing the same views that every Democratic presidential candidate said was their deep moral conviction in 2008,” said Stuart Stevens, a strategist for Romney in 2012.
“Hillary Clinton followed Rob Portman, Barack Obama followed Joe Biden,” said Stevens. “[I] couldn’t begin to assume what they truly believe.”
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