It's a scary new world for Republicans.
One political party has entered the 21st century. The Republicans, on the other hand, seem to at least have learned their lesson that when they talk about social issues—abortion, marriage equality, women's rights—they get into trouble. So they're trying really, really hard to
hide the fact that they're troglodytes.
Here's what's at work:
American households have changed significantly. Nearly half of adults are unmarried. Fully 10 percent of opposite-sex married couples are interracial or interethnic. Acceptance of same-sex marriage has expanded with astonishing speed.
Legalization of medical marijuana has moved, in two states, Colorado and Washington, to legalization of recreational marijuana. […]
Democrats profit politically—among young voters, college graduates, single women, blacks and Latinos—from the sense that they welcome these cultural shifts while Republicans resist them.
That they resist cultural shifts is a gross understatement.
Only 18 percent of staunch conservatives say society should accept homosexuality, compared with 62 percent overall; 16 percent believe society is “just as well off” if people have priorities other than marriage and children, compared with 50 percent over all; and 28 percent favor legalization of marijuana, compared with 54 percent over all.
Six in 10 want their representatives to stick to their positions rather than compromise. Seven in 10 call immigrants “a burden” on society, and say America’s best years have passed. While 61 percent of the population says the globe is warming, three in four staunch conservatives see “no solid evidence.”
It's the same old story. Republican candidates have to play to their base that is still living in the first half of the last century. But as we're moving into general election territory, they don't want to be caught saying that kind of stuff to the general election crowd. So in a strange reversal, they're abandoning social issues in their campaign speeches and saying, as Brad Dayspring of the National Republican Senatorial Committee does, "All [Democrats] talk about is birth control, 'personhood,' abortion." They're running away from these core issues faster than Rand Paul can flee a DREAMer.