Our political Quote of the Day is actually an entire column by David Frum for CNN. I often retweet Frum’s Tweets on my Twitter account. Frum is the former special assistant to President George W. Bush who has increasingly broken from his party as it has become more identified with conservative talk radio hosts and the Tea Party movement in the post-Bush years.
Here’s part of his column on why he now believes he was wrong about same-sex marriage:
I was a strong opponent of same-sex marriage. Fourteen years ago, Andrew Sullivan and I forcefully debated the issue at length online (at a time when online debate was a brand new thing).
Yet I find myself strangely untroubled by New York state’s vote to authorize same-sex marriage — a vote that probably signals that most of “blue” states will follow within the next 10 years.
I don’t think I’m alone in my reaction either. Most conservatives have reacted with calm — if not outright approval — to New York’s dramatic decision.
Why?
The short answer is that the case against same-sex marriage has been tested against reality. The case has not passed its test.
Since 1997, same-sex marriage has evolved from talk to fact.
If people like me had been right, we should have seen the American family become radically more unstable over the subsequent decade and a half.
Instead — while American family stability has continued to deteriorate — it has deteriorated much more slowly than it did in the 1970s and 1980s before same-sex marriage was ever seriously thought of.
By the numbers, in fact, the 2000s were the least bad decade for American family stability since the fabled 1950s. And when you take a closer look at the American family, the facts have become even tougher for the anti-gay marriage position.
Middle-class families have become somewhat more stable than they used to be. For example: College-educated women who got married in the 1990s were much less likely to get divorced than equally educated women who got married in the 1970s.
What’s new and different in the past 20 years is the collapse of the Hispanic immigrant family.
Go to the link to read the rest.
This essentially continues the process by which Frum increasingly morphs into a center right or a more moderate Republican. The problem for him and those who believe as he does: there seems to be increasingly little room for center-right Republicans and moderate Republicans (derisively labeled “RINOS” by those who want to purge them from the GOP ranks for not being ideologically pure enough) — Republicans who don’t follow the line put forth by talk show hosts or prominent GOP pundits.
Frum will take heat from liberals and others who’ll now say, “Well, you were wrong before” in the unending ideological and partisan grudge. But on a host of issues he seems to be taking exception with some of the most vocal members of his party while not being a Barack Obama fan. Those who believe as he does could have a future in the GOP if the Republican Party one day suffers a massive defeat following its current increasingly 21st century-style conservative path — which is not to be confused with the “compassionate conservatism” his old boss advocated.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.