A.B. Stoddard: What the religious freedom debate means for the GOP in 2016

The debate over the restoration of religious freedom this week showed a lot about the Republican Party — it needs a restoration of its own. 

On Monday the GOP presidential field had Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s back. Then came the backlash, and then the back down. Pence signed and defended, but then retreated from, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act he signed a week ago, ultimately signing a “fix” after a firestorm broke out that threatened his state’s economy.

Too bad the GOP can’t quickly sign a fix of its own. The party is in worse shape at the end of this week than it was at the start. And the GOP is far more divided now than when Mitt Romney lost his bid for president and sullen Republicans blamed his inelegant jerk rightward in the primary for his defeat. The gulf between social conservatives and establishment, business-minded Republicans is not closing, it’s growing larger and louder — just in time for the 2016 presidential campaign.

{mosads}Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), and the perception it would discriminate against homosexuals, was immediately devoured by big business, big sports, electoral demographic realities and the definition of “tolerance” in 2015. Many in the party know that tension, and the burgeoning support for same-sex marriages, is not going away.

“Republicans have to fix this and fix it fast. It has been a complete disaster,” said John Feehery, a GOP consultant and The Hill columnist who served as top aide to several Republican congressional leaders, including former Speaker J. Dennis Hastert. Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who once called for the GOP to adopt a truce on social issues, used the word “disheartening” to describe many Hoosiers feelings about the religious freedom law and the controversy surrounding it.

Playing to the primary electorate, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush joined several other potential GOP presidential candidates in immediately defending the law when Pence was under fire, but Bush then changed his tune at a Silicon Valley event a day later, telling the pro-business crowd a consensus approach would have been better. At that point key interests like Wal-Mart and the NBA had weighed in against it. Some knew to avoid the issue, like Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who disappeared into a media blackout to spend time with family before his expected campaign announcement next week.

On the issue of gay marriage, most Americans accept the 1990s have been left for dead. But tell that to the armies of social conservatives not only pushing for more RFRAs across the nation but who specifically urged forceful pushback to the pushback this week.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz blasted the Fortune 500 companies he said are “running shamelessly to endorse the radical gay marriage agenda over religious liberty.” He is working aggressively to court evangelical voters as the first official presidential candidate for 2016, trying to get ahead of several other social conservatives who will be running to challenge the establishment front-runner. Cruz doesn’t have much of a chance of winning the White House, but will be bent on pushing the party rightward before the general election. 

Republicans must look beyond the statistics showing an increasing majority of Americans who support same-sex marriage. It’s not gay people Republicans have to be worried about turning off, it’s anyone who thinks gay people should have the right to marry. Among voters under the age of 35, that percentage is staggering. Rest assured, that number will be even higher in November of 2016 when the country elects its next president.

Whit Ayres, pollster to likely presidential contender Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), conceded in his new book that the “uncomfortable reality is the GOP has a worn out business model for the 21st century presidential electorate.” And though Rubio strongly defended Indiana’s law, Ayres admitted at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast this week: “We are headed to a point where a political candidate who is perceived as anti-gay at the presidential level will never connect with people under 30 years old.”

It’s not clear whether that “point” is next year or in 2020, but writing off not only a generation of voters but possibly some of their parents as well is not what a party does if it wants to win.

Stoddard is an associate editor of The Hill.