The United States hasn’t passed significant national gun laws in more than a decade, and despite urging from President Obama and other lawmakers, there’s little sign we’re close to new legislation. A large part of this has to do with the continued influence of the National Rifle Association, which has announced its complete opposition to new gun control laws.
I noted last week that Republicans haven't backed off from their zeal for new voter-identification laws. In just the last three months, 55 new voting restrictions have been introduced in 30 states, with Republican lawmakers leading the charge. North Carolina is one of those states, and there, the GOP hasn't even tried to hide its push to keep Democratic voters from the polls.
When it comes to any issue, it's important to remember that there's no even distribution of support or opposition. A majority of Americans may support same-sex marriage, but that doesn't translate to a majority of people in a majority of states. In Virginia, for example, a new survey from the University of Mary Washington—which polled 1,004 adults living in the state—45 percent of respondents favored marriage equality, while 46 percent were opposed. This is a dramatic shift from seven years ago, when Virginians passed a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, 57 percent to 43 percent.
So far, Republican outreach efforts have focused on Latino voters and consist of a major push to pass immigration reform. The premise is straightforward, if debatable: To win national elections, Republicans will have to repair their relationship with Latinos, and move away from the anti-immigrant rhetoric of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. And while comprehensive immigration reform isn't the preferred policy of the GOP, it seems to offer the shortest path to greater credibility with Latino voters.
If there’s anything that’s always struck me about the GOP’s response to Barack Obama, it’s the extent to which conservatives have grossly underestimated Obama’s political prowess. It seems obvious to me that the first African American president would be a terribly effective politician, but it’s a lesson Republicans are only beginning to learn—four months after Obama won a second term in the White House.
Conservative writer John Podhoretz has a skewed view of Obama’s priorities—he calls the center-left Democrat a “statist” who holds an “anti-exceptionalist” view of America—but he understands the extent to which Barack Obama is a formidable opponent that Republicans underestimate to their peril:
Buzzfeed’s McKay Coppins has a great examination of the Republican Party’s renewed attempt to reach out to minority voters. In short, it’s not just that the GOP needs to recruit nonwhite candidates—it also needs “to overcome is own overwhelming whiteness” as an organization. “There is not a single racial minority among the 20 most senior officials who run the Republican National Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee, and National Republican Senatorial Committee,” writes Coppins. And absent any connection to nonwhite communities, it’s difficult to make genuine inroads.
Here's a contrast: At the same time the Supreme Court held oral arguments on a case that could legalize same-sex marriage, North Dakota lawmakers passed one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the nation. It's a sign, argues Sarah Kliff in The Washington Post, that the two have decoupled as issues of controversy, "Younger Americans have become increasingly supportive of gay marriage in a way that hasn’t necessarily happened for abortion rights."
This morning's gathering at the Supreme Court in favor of marriage equality was matched—in numbers if not intensity—by a march against marriage quality on the National Mall, organized by the National Organization for Marriage. A long line of people, two columns deep, walked from one end of the Mall to the other, and then made their way to the steps of the Supreme Court, where they demonstrated against the push for same-sex marriage.
At TheWashington Post, Greg Sargent reports that five red-state Democrats—Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota—have been unwilling to voice support for expanding the background-check program—"the centerpiece," he writes, "of President Obama's package of gun reforms." Their rationale is straightforward: Supporting this policy might hurt us in our states, or leave us vulnerable to Republican attacks.
Recent polls show majority support for marriage equality, a rapid change from just a few years ago. Unfortunately, the same isn't true of Congress. The same malapportionment that gives Republicans a structural advantage in the House and Senate also overweights the votes of social conservatives, who tend to reside in the nation's more rural areas. Congress will eventually voice its support for same-sex marriage, but it will lag behind the country as a whole.
For the next year, at least, Republicans will have one less talking point to turn to when they want to hit Democrats on the budget. Over the weekend, Senate Democrats came together to pass their first budget since 2009, a comprehensive package that calls for additional stimulus and modest deficit reduction, stretched over the next ten years. Under Senate rules, lawmakers can’t filibuster a budget resolution, allowing Democrats to pass it by a vote of 50 to 49, with four Democrats—Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mark Begich of Alaska, and Max Baucus of Montana—voting against the bill.
Given Washington’s obsession with spending, this won’t enter the picture, but this figure—from a recent Gallup poll on immigration—is more important to the future of entitlement reform than any policy discussed by President Obama or Congress:
Pro Publica has a long and excellent take on the plaintiff behind the challenge to the University of Texas’ affirmative action program, Abigail Fisher. In short, her central claim—that UT denied her application because of her race (she’s white)—just isn’t true:
Even among those students, Fisher did not particularly stand out. Court records show her grade point average (3.59) and SAT scores (1180 out of 1600) were good but not great for the highly selective flagship university. The school’s rejection rate that year for the remaining 841 openings was higher than the turn-down rate for students trying to get into Harvard.
