Oh, what a difference an election makes
Why the Culture Wars Now Favor Democrats
Gay marriage, gun control, immigration—the wedge issues now divide Republicans
By Ronald Brownstein, National Journal
Updated: April 4, 2013 | 3:22 p.m.
It’s no coincidence that gay marriage, gun control, and immigration are all in the news this month. Their prominence measures a critical political shift: In the culture wars, the offense and defense have switched sides.
For decades after the cultural upheavals of the 1960s, Republicans regularly provoked confrontations on a broad array of polarizing noneconomic “wedge issues,” from crime and welfare to immigration and gay rights. Democrats, with a few exceptions, mostly tried through those years to neutralize the debates and quickly pivot back to economic terrain.
Now, that has flipped. In Washington and in blue-leaning states, Democrats are forcing the collisions on these issues. Democrats may not win all of these fights legislatively, in Congress or in the state capitals. And in most red states, Republicans are still pursuing their own culturally conservative agenda, particularly on abortion. But the Democrats’ willingness to take the offense on so many cultural issues represents a stark change—and a measure of their confidence that they now represent the national majority on these disputes. “If you look across the board, they are on offense. They feel like the wind is at their back, that the demographics are in their favor, and there is a confidence in prosecuting these issues,” says longtime GOP strategist Pete Wehner, a senior fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. “Republicans are on their heels.”
That almost completely inverts the politics that reigned from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush. The late, great wordsmith William Safire, in his classic Safire’s Political Dictionary, described a wedge issue as “a hot-button subject that splits a coalition or constituency.” Initially, wedge issues were mostly a Republican weapon. Tutored by political strategists such as Paul Weyrich and Lee Atwater, GOP leaders for years highlighted cultural and racially tinged disputes (such as abortion, school prayer, welfare, and affirmative action) that split Southern evangelicals and working-class Northern whites (particularly observant Catholics) from the Democratic coalition as if shearing an iceberg. The process peaked in the 1988 presidential race, when George H.W. Bush, at Atwater’s direction, used these cudgels to disqualify Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis as a liberal elitist “born in Harvard Yard’s boutique.”
(More here.)
By Ronald Brownstein, National Journal
Updated: April 4, 2013 | 3:22 p.m.
It’s no coincidence that gay marriage, gun control, and immigration are all in the news this month. Their prominence measures a critical political shift: In the culture wars, the offense and defense have switched sides.
For decades after the cultural upheavals of the 1960s, Republicans regularly provoked confrontations on a broad array of polarizing noneconomic “wedge issues,” from crime and welfare to immigration and gay rights. Democrats, with a few exceptions, mostly tried through those years to neutralize the debates and quickly pivot back to economic terrain.
Now, that has flipped. In Washington and in blue-leaning states, Democrats are forcing the collisions on these issues. Democrats may not win all of these fights legislatively, in Congress or in the state capitals. And in most red states, Republicans are still pursuing their own culturally conservative agenda, particularly on abortion. But the Democrats’ willingness to take the offense on so many cultural issues represents a stark change—and a measure of their confidence that they now represent the national majority on these disputes. “If you look across the board, they are on offense. They feel like the wind is at their back, that the demographics are in their favor, and there is a confidence in prosecuting these issues,” says longtime GOP strategist Pete Wehner, a senior fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. “Republicans are on their heels.”
That almost completely inverts the politics that reigned from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush. The late, great wordsmith William Safire, in his classic Safire’s Political Dictionary, described a wedge issue as “a hot-button subject that splits a coalition or constituency.” Initially, wedge issues were mostly a Republican weapon. Tutored by political strategists such as Paul Weyrich and Lee Atwater, GOP leaders for years highlighted cultural and racially tinged disputes (such as abortion, school prayer, welfare, and affirmative action) that split Southern evangelicals and working-class Northern whites (particularly observant Catholics) from the Democratic coalition as if shearing an iceberg. The process peaked in the 1988 presidential race, when George H.W. Bush, at Atwater’s direction, used these cudgels to disqualify Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis as a liberal elitist “born in Harvard Yard’s boutique.”
(More here.)
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