It’s difficult to get people even to consider your reform ideas if they think, with good reason, you don’t like or respect them. Building a winning coalition to tackle the looming fiscal and trust deficits will be impossible if we continue to alienate broad segments of the population. We must be happy warriors who refuse to tolerate those who want Hispanic votes but not Hispanic neighbors. We should applaud states that lead on reforming drug policy. And, consistent with the Republican Party’s origins, we must demand equality under the law for all Americans.
While serving as governor of Utah, I pushed for civil unions and expanded reciprocal benefits for gay citizens. I did so not because of political pressure—indeed, at the time 70 percent of Utahns were opposed—but because as governor my role was to work for everybody, even those who didn’t have access to a powerful lobby. Civil unions, I believed, were a practical step that would bring all citizens more fully into the fabric of a state they already were—and always had been—a part of.
That was four years ago. Today we have an opportunity to do more: conservatives should start to lead again and push their states to join the nine others that allow all their citizens to marry. I’ve been married for 29 years. My marriage has been the greatest joy of my life. There is nothing conservative about denying other Americans the ability to forge that same relationship with the person they love.
Liberals might scoff at the idea of changing the Republican Party's policies simply for the sake of attracting more votes, but this is much more common than our partisan political landscape when lead us to believe. Fiorini's research, for example, points out that that ideological positions tend to be quite flexible. This shouldn't surprise anyone, since America isn't that ideological to begin with. The members of the two main parties are sorting into more clearly defined groups, not becoming more extreme. While the actual effect on Congress is slightly different, its obvious that the mainstream discussion about "polarization" is clearly off the mark.
I think identity issues could remain separate from this sorting process. We already have a prominent group of gay Republicans in Washington, proving that gayness is not a prohibiting factor for having strong conservative inclinations. Huntsman's gutsy statements deserve accolades because he shows that Republicans can focus on these factors and stop being a party defined by a narrow set minority interests: those of old, religious, wealthy white men. I think our political process will be substantially improved once this happens, and I don't think a wave of moderation is all that far away. Enough influential people (including guys like Karl Rove) have seen that firebrand conservatism is a huge liability for any major election. The process is not all that different from what Democrats did in the 80's.
The agent of all this change is vote chasing. Deride it all you want, but a politician's primary job is to get people to vote for him. They can't stay employed otherwise. Competition has the added benefit of making politicians more responsive to the demands to the public. Political scientists have seen this a lot already. The ideology of parties and politicians can be successfully shaped by forces that can get them elected. In the past, private and public organizations - businesses, unions and advocacy groups - did most of that work. The more participatory system provided by broad-based action committees show the way in the future.
We should obviously be worried when this process begins to favor uncompetitive practices (like gerrymandering) or when diversity of organizations diminishes (when was the last time you heard of an influential American union?). But at the same time, we should be celebrating politicians who are committed to getting as broad a number of supporters as possible, embodying the very best of the democratic process. Even better when they go against the broad positions established by their party, since it can lead to organizational change, increased competition and an even greater number of people included in the political process. And for that, I'm now a huge fan of Jon Huntsman.
