Moral Issues Being Overstated?

Are these results coming from the same pollsters that gave Kerry both the popular and the electoral majority?

Why are we giving any credence to anything they say at this point?

MSNBC reported last night that those who claimed moral values as the number one reason for their vote also held the following positionson gay relationships . . .

26% favor gay marriage
36% favor civil unions
36% oppose gay marriage

This means that a majority opposes gay marriage, but a majority also favors civil unions. Hardly a clear-cut statement of growing support for a Taliban-style Christian government.

Those of us who actually watched what happened in VT a couple of years ago, when more than a few legislators who voted in favor of civil unions--as opposed to same-sex marriage--don't really believe the statistics that Mr. Willis provided.

On the other hand, as someone who is paying attention in Massachusetts, I'll let you know that (a) not one legislator who was in favor of same-sex marriage was ousted, (b) at least one legislator who was opposed to same-sex marriage (Vinny Ciampa) was ousted by a gay man who was in favor of same-sex marriage (this was in the primary, and SSM wasn't the only issue), and (c) at least one legislator (Marian Walsh) from a conservative Catholic area who was specifically targeted by the Catholic church because she was in favor of SSM retained her seat. And these were by overwhelming margins. Walsh won almost 2:1. My legislators Alice Peisch (representative) and Cynthia Creem (senator) easily won 2:1 or so. Peisch had been targeted by the Romney crowd (they even brought up Margaret Hecker--a name from the past), and her challenger couldn't even get close.

BTW, it should be clear from the election results that Romney's toast in MA. Last Spring, he announced a huge multi-million dollar effort to increase the number of Republicans in at least one of the chambers of the legislature to sustain a veto. (Even Republican Bill Weld, who was elected in 1990, had enough Republicans in the state Senate to sustain a veto.) Romney lost. Big time. He a net gain of minus one seat in the state senate and minus two seats in the state house. Romney couldn't even get a gay Republican, Richard Babson, of Babson College fame, who opposed him on the gay marriage issue, elected in the liberal BackBay section of Boston.

The carpetbagger Romney lost.

I could say more--like about the fact that another carpetbagger, Ron Crews (former state legislator from GA, who moved up here to run against Jim McGovern for the US House seat, on the gay marriage issue) also lost, big time, but I'll refrain. Actually, I guess I didn't ;-)

I just look at it this way. If 22% thought that morality was the most important issue, that means that 78% thought that something other than morality was the most important issue. To someone like Pat Robertson who I saw on Hannity and Colmes tonight, the idea that anything other than morality was most important should be deeply disturbing. It does not even make sense to me that the religious right would be celebrating these poll results. It's pure political spin.

Perry Willis wrote:
This means that a majority opposes gay marriage, but a majority also favors civil unions. Hardly a clear-cut statement of growing support for a Taliban-style Christian government.
I agree, Perry, as I wrote in the previous post. I really don't think that most people hate gays so much that they refuse to even consider any legal protections for gay relationships at all, and numerous polls bear that out. So while this election certainly isn't good news for those of us who favor true equality for gays, it shouldn't be seen as the end of the world either. There will always be backwaters of America where people are so ignorant and bigoted that nothing will ever convince them; witness South Carolina, who just voted into office the stunning Jim DeMint. But the same thing is true of civil rights for blacks and women as well, and that will always be the case. Society eventually just leaves those people behind.
Still, I think great progress has been made in terms of how the average person views gay rights and I think it's following the classic pattern of all struggles for equality in this country. 20 years ago, a huge majority would have been staunchly opposed to any legal protections whatsoever. A mere 18 years ago, the Supreme Court upheld laws that would throw gays in prison for consensual sex in the privacy of their own home. Yet here we are today with a solid majority favoring legal protections for gay relationships in one form or another. In another 20 years, anti-gay bigotry will be as universally frowned on as racism is today.

Perry,

The numbers that you cite are almost precisely the numbers that one usually finds in a nationwide poll of ALL VOTERS. I would be amazed if they were so similar among just the subset of voters who identified moral values as the most important issue.

I searched for a reference to this information, but I could not find it. I'm still a little incredulous... Could you give me a pointer?

Let's face it: in this election cycle, the Democrats got outdone on virtually every political front. From the Slime Boat Veterans to Iraq to gay-marriage and state referenda to grassroots politics, the Republicans were way out in front. Kerry and the Democrats generally were always several steps behind, rarely (if ever) effectively answered, much less counterpunched, and danced to the tune named by the Republicans. The only thing about this election that really surprised me was that it was as close as it turned out to be. Karl Rove may be amoral and despicable, but you've got to give credit where it is due. He engineered a brilliant top-down campaign for his side.

This is really the culmination of a decades-long effort by the Republicans to dictate and control the national agenda. It will take the Democrats that long, or longer, to do the work they need to do to reverse the lineup. Of course, the Democrats are largely to blame for their own plight. Complacency got them here, together with an inability or unwillingness to do the difficult bottom up issue and coalition building that enabled Republicans to carry the day.

Those at the top of the Democratic party need to take a good hard look at themselves. Daschle's defeat was a bitter pill, but it may, in fact, be one of the best things that could have happened. Some painful changes are in order; whether the Democrats have the will to change remains to be seen.

Jason,

The numbers were put up on the screen during the late edition of Harball on Wednesday. It came during a disucssion with Hilary Rosen, a Democratic strategist. You can find the transcript here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6407147/

I haven't check the exit polls themselves to see if MSNBC reported correctly. Hopes this helps.

Jason,

Virginia Postrel refers to the same numbers here:

http://www.dynamist.com/weblog/index.html

And the exit polls themselves can be found here:

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html