The GOP adopting/pushing the social conservatives' agenda has not served them well ~ so I'm thinking that abandoning the GOP is probably the biggest gift social conservatives could give the GOP ~ not winning while "partnered" with the GOP makes me think there are a limited number of states, mostly southern, where the social conservatives would survive politically ~ Sooz

Social conservatives warn Priebus they could abandon GOP
By Michael O'Brien, Political Reporter, NBC News

A group of high-profile social conservatives warned Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus in a letter this week that their supporters could abandon the GOP if the party seeks to change its position on social issues, particularly same-sex marriage.

Thirteen social conservatives, representing various influential groups, wrote Priebus ahead of the RNC's quarterly meeting this week in Los Angeles to sternly rebuke the conclusions of a post-election report that advised Republican elected officials to adopt a softer tone toward social issues.

"We respectfully warn GOP Leadership that an abandonment of its principles will necessarily result in the abandonment of our constituents to their support," concludes the letter, which was obtained by and independently verified by NBC News in advance of the meeting this week.

The letter further asks GOP committeemen to pass a resolution at their meeting this week re-affirming the party's 2012 national platform, which includes language calling for bans on abortion and same-sex marriage.

"Chairman Priebus agrees that we must stand up for our conservative principles while we work together to grow our party and win elections and has been traveling the country with that message," said Kirsten Kukowski, an RNC spokeswoman. Furthermore, she said that a resolution re-affirming the platform was currently being drafted, and would likely win approval from the full RNC this Friday.

The Growth and Opportunity Project report, commissioned by Priebus in the wake of Republicans' losses in last fall's elections, offered a number of recommendations for the party to broaden its appeal and be more competitive in future national elections.

Among its recommendations were that Republican officials speak with a more welcoming tone on social issues, particularly abortion rights and gay rights, the latter of which the report said had become a "gateway" for whether young voters decide whether to identify as Republicans.

To that end, several high-profile Republicans have emerged in recent weeks (along with a slew of elected Democrats) to back marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples, including Sens. Rob Portman, Ohio, and Mark Kirk, Ill.

Much of the conservatives' letter to Priebus stresses the issue of gay rights, and challenges the logic of the Growth and Opportunity Project's advice to broaden the party's appeal. Holding the line against same-sex marriage, the letter argues, would allow Republicans to make better inroads, for instance, into more traditionally-minded corners of the African American community.

"It is the faith-based community which offers Republicans their best hope of expanding their support in these groups," the signatories wrote. "Going 'vanilla' or even changing long held positions would quickly end this opportunity."

The conservatives additionally expressed their anger at what they said was an insinuation that they had treated gays and lesbians unkindly.

"The fact that the party is strongly committed to traditional marriage has not prevented their involvement through GOProud or Log Cabin Republicans," they wrote. "We deeply resent the insinuation that we have treated homosexuals unkindly personally."

The letter speaks to the difficulties Republican leaders face in their efforts to broaden the GOP's appeal. While party leaders have spoken, for instance, about the need to pass comprehensive immigration reform to appeal to the increasingly important Latino electorate, there are corners of the conservative establishment which harbor deep resistance to reform.

“This letter makes it perfectly clear that the GOP is caught between a rock and hard place. For decades, they’ve made a devil’s bargain with the Religious Right, and now they’re finding that they can’t reach out to moderate voters without totally alienating the base," said Michael Keegan, the president of People for the American Way, about the GOP's struggles. “There’s no question that continuing to pander to the Religious Right is a recipe for becoming a permanent minority party. We’ll see this week if the RNC is ready to contemplate making some tough changes or if they’re just going to keep drifting towards irrelevance.”

The same is generally true for leaders who have called for a more inclusive tone on social issues. Republican leaders are quick to note the missteps of Senate candidates Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana, and how their comments about rape and abortion both cost them each a chance at a Senate seat, and weighed nationally upon Republicans.

In response, social conservatives have begun to flex their muscle within the GOP to assert their relevance as a major part of the modern GOP's foundation. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who became a darling among social conservatives during his 2008 presidential campaign, has also warned social conservatives could abandon the Republican establishment. He told Newsmax magazine that if the GOP shifts its position on same-sex marriage, "they're going to lose a large part of their base because evangelicals will take a walk."

The signatories to this week's letter were:

• Gary Bauer, President, American Values
• Paul Caprio, Director, Family-Pac Federal
• Marjorie Dannenfelser, President, Susan B. Anthony List
• Dr. James Dobson, President and Founder, Family Talk Action
• Andrea Lafferty, President, Traditional Values Coalition
• Tom Minnery, Executive Director, CitizenLink
• William J. Murray, Chairman, Religious Freedom Coalition
• Tony Perkins, President, Family Research Council
• Sandy Rios, VP of Government Affairs, Family-Pac Federal
• Austin Ruse, President, Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute
• Phyllis Schlafly, President, Eagle Forum
• Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, Founder, Traditional Values Coalition
• Tim Wildmon, President, American Family Association

http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/10/17691775-social-conservatives-warn-priebus-they-could-abandon-gop?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=3

So if they abandon the Republican Party these social conservatives are making themselves more irrelevant than they already are. Surely they don't think they can form a Holy Roller Party and have more influence than they have now in the GOP, even with Priebus' changes to it.

It's like if I got on the bus to go to 20 miles to town, and decided halfway there I disapproved of the driver's hat and got off. The driver still has hat on, and I am still 10 miles from town.

'Cept the GOP is driving in the wrong direction.

Good point, Oskar. They think the GOP is going to Hell rather than heaven, and they've gotten on the wrong bus. But bus line to heaven has been discontinued.

They have the wrong tickets anyway.

Sounds a lot like extortion to me ~ or bratty 5yos who want their own way or else ~ Sooz

Thursday, Apr 11, 2013 01:51 PM CDT
Will the Christian right flee the GOP?
Republican civil war heats up as social conservatives feel abandoned and threaten to form a third party.
By Alex Seitz-Wald

Will social conservatives really make good on their threats, and form their own political party? With the course of history and their own political allies leaving them in the dust, the group is facing an existential crisis that has left them at the nadir of their power with no obvious path to recovery — and now they’re getting desperate.

Inside the conservative movement, the Tea Party has displaced evangelical activists as the dynamic force, pushing economic issues ahead of social ones, while voters affirmed their support for gay rights and punished candidates with restrictionist views on abortion in 2012. In their “autopsy report,” the Republican National Committee essentially suggested abandoning social conservatives — despite leaning on them heavily just a few years ago to elect and reelect George W. Bush — and even the movement conservatives at CPAC had little appetite for the Christian-right causes of yore.

Needless to say, social conservatives who are not happy about this state of affairs are lashing out against their friends, threatening to leave the GOP if it doesn’t join them on the wrong side of history.

“The vast majority of the GOP base believes that marriage is a non-negotiable plank,” Family Research Council president Tony Perkins said recently. “If the RNC abandons marriage, evangelicals will either sit the elections out completely, or move to create a third party. Either option puts Republicans on the path to a permanent minority.”

Yesterday, Perkins and a dozen other social conservative leaders warned RNC committee members to affirm their opposition to same-sex marriage at the annual spring meeting, happening now in California, or face the consequences. “We respectfully warn GOP Leadership that an abandonment of its principles will necessarily result in the abandonment of our constituents to their support,” read their letter, obtained by NBC News.

Other signatories included American Values president Gary Bauer, who recently threatened, “If you bail out on this issue, I will leave the party and I will take as many people as I possibly can.”

And at least three former Republican presidential candidates are echoing the calls, and even hinting at the creation of a third party. If the GOP gets loose on marriage, “they’re going to lose a large part of their base because evangelicals will take a walk,” former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee told Newsmax the other day. “Many of us, and I consider myself included, base our standards not on the latest Washington Post poll, but on an objective standard, not a subjective standard.”

Just a few years ago, during the 2008 election, Huckabee flatly rejected the idea of forming a third party to push the Christian-right message. “I don’t see that being a good strategy for those who really care about pushing a pro-family, pro-life agenda,” he said, explaining that social conservatives should work from within the GOP to advance their agenda.

Meanwhile, Rick Santorum warned supporters in an email this week that “an alliance of political consultants and unprincipled politicians want to throw social conservatives like you and me out of the Republican Party.”

Santorum told the Des Moines Register last week that “it would be suicidal if” the GOP walked away from the fight on marriage.

Shortly after the November drubbing, Herman Cain was even more forthright. “I never thought that I would say this,” Cain told social conservative extremist Bryan Fischer, “but we need a third party to save this country. Not Ron Paul and the Ron Paulites. No. We need a legitimate third party to challenge the current system that we have.”

In California yesterday, the RNC resolutions committee passed a measure to reiterate the party’s belief that marriage should only be between one man and one woman, and the full committee is likely approve the measure tomorrow, but it’s unclear if that will do enough to apease social conservatives. There are plenty of planks in the platform the party never discusses, and same sex-marriage could easily be something that is opposed in name only, without any real rhetoric or organization heft thrown behind it.

And why should the Republicans bend? Third parties have almost uniformly failed in American history, and nothing — neither demographics, money nor public opinion — is on the side of the breakaway traditionalists.

http://www.salon.com/2013/04/11/will_social_conservatives_flee_gop_form_3rd_party/

GOP should actually ignore them and encourage them to form a thid party.
It's the quickest route to relevancy for them though they'll lose a few feathers along the way.

the calculus for the GOP is not how many people they would lose by adopting more liberal social positions, but how many they would gain.

Primo Benen commentary ~ a blistering, targeted bull's-eye ~ emphasis/bolding below is mine ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

Social conservatives' misplaced fury
By Steve Benen - Fri Apr 12, 2013 10:45 AM EDT

Officials at the Republican National Committee can read polls just as well as anyone else, and they realize their party's social agenda is not popular with the American mainstream. Indeed, just this week, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found by a 2-to-1 margin, Americans disagree with the Republican Party's approach to social and cultural issues.

With that in mind, Reince Priebus and others are at least paying lip service to rebranding the party, hoping to move away from "Old Testament" associations. It's apparently driven social-conservative activists and the religious right movement to the brink of apoplexy.


That nine of the 13 groups involved in this effort are 501(c)3 tax-exempt organizations, legally prohibited from supporting political parties, may be of interest to the Internal Revenue Service.

Nevertheless, the warning coincides with a call from Tony Perkins, president of the right-wing Family Research Council, that social conservatives stop contributing the RNC until the party starts "defending core principles."

I understand that social conservatives are furious. I just don't understand why.

Given the intensity of the reactions from these far-right leaders, one might think Republicans were giving up on the culture war altogether and the RNC had just named a new LGBT outreach coordinator.

I'm not sure where social conservatives are getting their coverage of current events, but I've got some news for them: the Republican Party hasn't given up on their issues. On the contrary, GOP officials appear to be fighting the culture war harder than ever.

Why, exactly, do social conservatives feel so aggrieved? On a purely superficial level, the party does not want to be perceived as right-wing culture warriors because Priebus and Co. realize that this further alienates younger, more tolerant voters. But below the surface, Republicans, especially at the state level, are banning abortion and targeting reproductive rights at a breathtaking clip, pursuing official state religions, eliminating sex-ed, going after Planned Parenthood, and restricting contraception. Heck, we even have a state A.G. and gubernatorial candidate fighting to protect an anti-sodomy law.

What's more, folks like Priebus are condemning Planned Parenthood and "infanticide," while Paul Ryan is speaking to right-wing groups about a future in which abortion rights are "outlawed."

And social conservatives are outraged that Republicans haven't pushed the culture war enough? Why, because the RNC hasn't officially declared its support for a theocracy yet?

Religious right activists, I hate to break it to you, but Republican policymakers are already doing your bidding. You're not the ones who should be whining.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/04/12/17720687-social-conservatives-misplaced-fury

Repub strategists are whispering sweet Biblical nothings in to the ears of their evangelical base while waving welcome placards to gays and Hispanics

Can't say the GOP/TPers don't understand how extortion works since it is one of their favorite tactics ~ maybe they just need someone to explain how the concept of "rebranding" works ~ ~ emphasis/bolding below is in the original, along with "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

Republicans Unanimously Approve Anti-Marriage Equality Resolution Without Debate
By Zack Ford on Apr 12, 2013 at 3:11 pm

At a retreat in Hollywood, California on Thursday, the Republican National Committee caved to pressure from social conservatives and unanimously approved a number of resolutions without any debate, including one opposing same-sex marriage.

As ThinkProgress reported Wednesday, this resolution is based entirely on debunked junk science and assumptions that heterosexual relationships are objectively superior to same-sex couples. Here is some of the text:


A second resolution reaffirming the party’s 2012 platform included a similar provision opposing same-sex marriage:


Last month, as part of its autopsy of the 2012 election, Republicans announced their intention to tone down — though not alter — their opposition to LGBT equality by sugarcoating how they discuss those positions. Adoption of these resolutions followed threats this week from social conservative groups that they would no longer support the GOP if the party didn’t stand strong, and even take guidance, from them on issues like same-sex marriage and abortion. In particular, the Family Research Council urged supporters not to give money to the GOP if it didn’t “grow a backbone.”

Stuck between this rock (trying to recruit young people) and hard place (depending on social conservatives), the Republicans seem to have reverted to their same old positions. This is in spite of the fact there are now two Republican Senators and two Republican House members who support marriage equality, with others evolving. Some have also acknowledged that it’s “inevitable” that a Republican presidential candidate will someday support same-sex marriage. For now, the GOP is dismissing this destiny and doubling down on baseless bigotry.

http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/04/12/1861101/republicans-unanimously-approve-anti-marriage-equality-resolution-without-debate/