Sunday Open Thread [7.5.15]

Amanda Marcotte from Talking Points Memo explains why some conservative men, like Ross Douthat, are so vehemently opposed to marriage equality. Douthat’s argument in opposition is that gay marriage somehow undermines traditional marriage.

This argument, that same-sex marriage somehow undermines “traditional” marriage, never really made sense to many Americans, for good reason. Since conservatives would rarely define what they meant by “traditional”—saying that it’s about a man and a woman and declining to elaborate beyond that—it ended up sounding like they were saying that if gay people were allowed to marry, then straight people would all get divorced or something. This makes conservatives sound like idiots and ended up backfiring on them, helping many fence-sitters to figure if that’s the best they’ve got, then they must have nothing.

In reality, however, there was a subterranean argument that actually is logical and makes perfect sense. It was never just about man-woman marriages. The tradition that is disappearing is the belief that marriage is a duty, especially for women. As Douthat argues, Americans are rejecting “the old rules, its own hopes of joy and happiness to chase.”

Douthat isn’t wrong on the facts, even if he’s wrong on his assessment of them. It’s true that women in modern society no longer feel like they have to be married to be granted entrance into adult society. Single women living by and supporting themselves is no longer considered scandalous. Marriage is, bit by bit, becoming more about a partnership between equals who choose each other for the purpose of love and happiness. Which means it’s becoming less about giving men control over women’s lives.

In this sense, Douthat isn’t wrong that “support for same-sex marriage and the decline of straight marital norms exist in a kind of feedback loop.” To accept same-sex marriage is to accept this modern idea that marriage is about love and partnership, instead of about dutiful procreation and female submission. Traditional gender roles where husbands rule over wives are disintegrating and that process is definitely helped along by these new laws allowing that marriage doesn’t have to be a gendered institution at all.

Politico on how the South skewers America: “A lot of the traits that make the United States exceptional these days are undesirable, like higher violence and less social mobility. Many of these differences can be attributed largely to the South… Minus the South, the rest of the U.S. probably would be more like Canada or Australia or Britain or New Zealand—more secular, more socially liberal, more moderate in the tone of its politics and somewhat more generous in social policy. And it would not be as centralized as France or as social democratic as Sweden.”

Martin Longman on the irrational exurberance among some of Bernie Sanders’ supporters.

I don’t dispute that a surprisingly strong Sanders campaign can and will leave a lasting impact on American politics, but it’s a little premature to be getting overly excited about Bernie’s prospects. For Sanders to really reshape our politics, he’ll need to do more than pack stadiums in large, liberal college towns or attract hundreds of thousands of small donors. These are encouraging signs, to be sure, and right now there aren’t any better ways of measuring the appeal of his campaign. But Sanders understands that the key is building a grassroots army of organizers, and those organizers have to be able to deliver something.

Obama’s political team and grassroots army delivered victory and proved along the way that many things were possible that experts had previously thought impossible. Ross Perot took down a sitting president and put budget deficits on the public’s mind.

Unless Sanders somehow wins the Democratic nomination, he and his organizers will have to accomplish something more akin to what Perot accomplished than what Obama accomplished. This is definitely doable, and it could be that single-payer health care gains more credibility than anyone thought possible, or that Washington politicians finally concede that the public fucking hates the post-Citizens United world and does something about campaign finance laws, or it could be that President Clinton gets a massive transportation and youth employment bill through Congress. It could be as simple as providing a different model for financing and organizing a big presidential campaign.

Steve Benen writes about how Republicans have it backwards when they argue that President Obama lacks international respect.

Actually, it’s incredibly easy to name countries that have more respect and admiration for the United States today than when President Obama took office. The Pew Research Center published a report last week on “Global Attitudes & Trends” and found that America’s overall image around the world remains quite positive – and in much of the world, impressions of the U.S. have improved since the end of the Bush/Cheney era.

More specifically, though, President Obama is an especially popular figure in many parts of the world.

Half or more in 29 of 40 countries surveyed say they have confidence in President Obama to do the right thing in world affairs. Throughout his terms in office, Obama has received particularly strong ratings in Europe and Africa, and that continues to be the case this year. Majorities in every EU and sub-Saharan African nation surveyed give him positive marks. […]

Overall, Obama’s image has improved in the last year. In 14 countries of the 36 countries where trends from 2014 are available, more people now say they have confidence in the U.S. president. The largest gain occurred in India, which Obama visited in January. Almost three-in-four Indians express confidence in Obama, up from 48% a year ago. Double digit gains are also found in Ghana (+22 points), Turkey (+21), Nigeria (+20), Uganda (+11) and Brazil (+11).

[…] And therein lies the irony of contemporary GOP whining – Republicans seem absolutely convinced that President Obama is seen abroad as a hapless failure, but the argument is completely backwards. Obama is quite popular across much of the planet, while it’s Bush who was reviled abroad. GOP candidates promising to restore global respect for the White House have a problem: they’re six years too late. The sooner Republicans realize this, the better. It’s not just a matter of saying things that are true – though I tend to think that’s an appealing quality in a presidential candidate – it’s also the fact that GOP confusion is causing some Republicans trouble. Remember, it was just a couple of weeks ago that Scott Walker said British Prime Minister David Cameron told the governor directly that he’s unsatisfied with Obama’s leadership. The incident quickly blew up in Walker’s face.

Nancy LeTourneau writes at Washington Monthly that the Republicans’ choices in opposition to President Obama has led to the demise of the Republican Party itself.

While a lot of our attention has been focused over the last six and a half years on what President Obama did about [the horrid mess George W. Bush and the Republicans left him], it’s important to also take stock of what the Republican Party did. This was a make-or-break moment for them. How would they move forward after a failure – not just of a presidential campaign – but their whole agenda?

By now we all know that the very night that picture above was taken, a small group of party leaders met to plan their strategy. They didn’t come up with a set of policies to put forward. Their entire approach would be one of obstructing anything the new President and his party attempted to do.

In order to pull that off, they used every trick in the book to convince their voters – who were already in a panic over the Great Recession – that every move President Obama made was a threat to them. Thus was the Tea Party born.

But as David Frum pointed out so effectively, the real engine of all that was not the Republican Party itself or any of their leaders. It was right wing media.

I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination…If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.

That strategy worked reasonably well for the midterm elections in 2010 and 2014 with lower voter turnout. But following a disastrous primary in 2012, it didn’t work so well in a presidential election.

By ceding the microphone and the agenda to Fox, Newsmax, and Talk Radio, the official Republican Party also ceded control of the Party itself. The Party’s autopsy on what went wrong in 2012 and what to do about it has been ignored, and in fact, Republican elected officials and candidates have doubled and tripled down on the rhetoric and policies that lost them the White House in 2008 and 2012. The failure to come up with an opposition policy other than NO has ceded the policy agenda of the Republican Party to the loudest and most bigoted voice.

The old saying about how power abhors a vacuum comes to mind. When the elected leaders failed to step up to the plate in January 2009 and actually articulate a Republican vision, they ceded control of the party to the folks with the most money and largest microphones. There is no sign that they’ve caught on to that error yet. But I suspect that Reince Priebus has noticed. He’s the one that has been left holding the bag for a dying institution.

Thus, the demise of the actual Republican Party. As an institution and organization. And the best evidence of it is the 2016 Presidential Primary. Normally, the establishment pick is obvious and backed by all major donors as the deserving next in line. Reagan in 1980. Bush in 1988. Dole in 1996. Bush in 2000. McCain in 2008. Romney in 2012. The establishment party pick this year is Jeb Bush. And look how well he is doing.