Thank you, Barack Obama.
In one fell swoop, you have given legs to Mitt Romney’s campaign for president and his need to unify conservatives behind his campaign.
Gay marriage.
I know the polls show general public indifference to Obama’s pro-gay marriage position.
This is not about the “general public.” This is about those die-hard (Christian) conservatives who always vote, who talk amongst themselves and to others, and who have influence that extends to their homes, their places of business, their churches.
Romney badly needed an issue to help him with the most conservative of the electorate, Republicans especially.
He now has it.
I’m not alone in this conclusion. Prominent social conservatives say Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage is the fuel Romney needs to unite the right in November.
Rick Santorum says Romney needs to use this “potent weapon” against the president in the general election. And Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Sunday called the president’s announcement a “missing piece of intensity” for the presumptive GOP nominee.
Reports Fox News: “Though gay marriage was not an issue that factored prominently into the 2012 election season until this past Wednesday, when Obama made his historic announcement, the clear distinction now between Obama and Romney has elevated the matter. Obama has said he didn’t make a political calculation when he decided to take the plunge and announce his support for the unions. Now officials and activists on both sides of the aisle are suggesting that, while Obama has used the issue to raise millions of dollars for his campaign this past week, the announcement is not necessarily a political winner in the fall.”
“I don’t think the president did a political calculus to do this because if he did, he needs to go back to the calculator because it’s a bad formula,” Perkins told CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Perkins called gay marriage a “serious issue” for Americans, and reportedly claimed Obama “helped fit that missing piece of intensity that Mitt Romney is going to need.”
Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” American Values President Gary Bauer claimed Obama had taken “six or seven states he carried in 2008 and put them in play” with his endorsement of same-sex marriage.
Obama’s embrace of gay marriage has support; the left-wing leadership of the Oklahoma Democratic Party, so far removed from mainstream “normal” Democrat thought in Oklahoma, loves Obama’s position. And if they really entertained any thought that Obama could carry a single county in Oklahoma in November, they can forget it. It’s likely Obama will lose the state worse than he did in 2008, and he got trounced by a weak John McCain then.
For additional national reaction to Obama’s statement, read http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/05/13/social-conservatives-claim-obama-gay-marriage-endorsement-could-unite-right/?test=latestnews#ixzz1upoJXocM.
