GOP To Use Bush-Rove Anti-Gay Hate Playbook To Battle Obama Re-Election

The GOP has decided to use the Bush-Rove playbook of the early 2000s campaigns to drive voters to the polls by using anti-gay hate and a focus on social issues like gay marriage, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal, religion, and abortion to battle President Obama’s re-election bid, which he announced Monday. Karl Rove, the man who claimed he would install a permanent Republican majority, used wedge issues like marriage equality to win the elections of 2000 and 2004, but left, some say in disgrace, when his tactics ultimately made his boss, George W. Bush, one of the most-unpopular presidents in recent history.

It took less than twelve hours after Obama’s announcement for the GOP’s Republican National Committee (RNC) to launch a new website, “Hope Isn’t Hiring,” as its latest Internet Alinsky-style attack against a prominent Democrat. Previous similar GOP sites included “Fire Nancy Pelosi,” “GOP Valentine,” and the now-defunct “BarackBook,” a Facebook-like parody that reportedly included statements like, “Barack Obama is now friends with Antonin ‘Tony’ Rezko.”

Read: “What The GOP Means By “Jobs Bills”

“Hope Isn’t Hiring,” essentially a fundraising site for the GOP’s upcoming billion-dollar campaign against the incumbent president whose poll numbers have remained remarkably consistent — and consistently above his Republican predecessors — lists five major “issues” in tabs at the top, including “Obama’s spending, Obamacare, Obamanomics, Broken promises, and Social issues.” The latter’s headline, in an attempt to appear like a legal arraignment, states, “The Case Against Obama: Social Issues,” and includes questionable rhetoric like, “Despite It Being The Law Of The Land, Obama Refused To Continue To Defend The Defense Of Marriage Act In Court,” “Obama Repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell While U.S. Troops Are Still On The Battlefield,” and, “Obama Opposed California’s Prop 8 And Has Expanded Government Recognition Of Same-Sex Couples.”

Many of the statements are decidedly anti-gay and homophobic, while others continue the GOP war on women and children, re-awakened after the November 2010 elections that gave the GOP control of the House of Representatives, a majority of governorships, and a heightened presence in other state and local governments.

Read: “The GOP’s War On Women And Children“

Yet this is a major gamble on the part of the GOP, which has decided to ignore polls which find that the majority of the American people do not want their government to focus on social issues. In fact, a recent Gallup poll found that only 17% of Americans who vote or lean Republican say social issues and moral values are important, and rank them third of four major categories, after government spending and business and the economy.

The “Hope Isn’t Hiring” attack on Obama and the gay community also flies in the face of other studies which show that 51% of voters oppose DOMA, the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act that bans the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage (even conservatives are evenly split on DOMA,) and three nationwide polls that show a majority of Americans support marriage equality.

“And you’d have thought the Republican National Committee would have gotten over the gay-baiting, what will all the senior level gays working Republican Hill offices, the RNC, and considering that the former head of the RNC, Ken Mehlman, was himself gay,” wrote gay activist and blogger John Aravosis, in “RNC thinks gays shouldn’t be permitted to visit their partners’ death bed,” Monday evening. “You’d think with all of that, the RNC would know better than to start gay-baiting yet again. But the Republican party just can’t help itself. Hate, intolerance and bigotry is what they know best, whether it’s racism against blacks and Latinos, sexism against women, or homophobia against gays. If it’s not about who you’re supposed to hate today, the Republican party just isn’t interested in hearing about it,” the well-known Washington, D.C.-based blogger stated.

“It’s just mind-blogging that with all of the challenges that face us as Americans, the Republican Party apparatus would resort to this demeaning fundraising stunt so that the red-meat crowd will become energized,” said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest LGBT advocacy organization, Monday night.

HRC rightly points to poll after poll showing Americans of all political affiliations support the LGBT community, and offers these facts:

• According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll last year, 77 percent of Americans supported allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military. According to a November 2010 Pew Research Center Poll, 63 percent of moderate Republicans and 47 percent of Republicans overall supported open service. A May 2010 Gallup poll found that 53% of conservatives supported open service.

• Just a few weeks ago, an ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 53 percent of Americans support marriage equality. A growing number of Republicans are beginning to support the same rights, benefits and obligations for all Americans irrespective of their sexual orientation. The same ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 31 percent of Republicans overall and 29 percent of conservatives support marriage equality. Last year, the Pew Research Center found that 41 percent of moderate and liberal Republicans supported marriage for all Americans.

• According to a 2009 Pew Research  Center poll, 58 percent of Republicans believe that gays and lesbians “face a lot of discrimination.”

It appears that the RNC has horribly misread the strong opinions of Americans. An HRC/Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research Poll conducted last month found:

• Sixty-nine percent of Americans believe that the Republican Congress is doing a fair or poor job of focusing on issues important to the American people.

• Eighty percent of Americans believe that Republican Congress is doing a fair or poor job creating jobs and improving the economy.

• Seventy-one percent of Americans believe that the Republican Congress is doing a fair or poor job of keeping their campaign promises. And 74 percent believe that the Republican majority is doing a fair or poor job of dealing with the federal deficit.

• When giving a list of priorities, 54 percent of Americans rated the economy and jobs as their top priority; only 5 percent of Americans rated gay marriage as their top priority.

What the GOP and the RNC, whose new Chair, Rence Priebus has been conspicuously quiet since his election earlier this year, decide to do next will pave the way for the 2012 elections. But it’s clear that they’ve decided to look back at what worked then, not realizing this is a new millennia, and the American people, who have changed in the past decade, have more on their minds than social issues.