top republican announces he is gay - no one cares

[Bilge_Rat]

Is this a sign that U.S. Conservatives are moving away from their obsession with social issues and joining the 21st century?

The center of gravity of the conservative movement in this election season is with fiscal conservatives. The Tea Party is infusing the Republican Party with new energy, and Tea Party leaders and supporters say they do not want to talk about social issues: even if they do not personally support same-sex marriage or abortion, they think the Republican Party spent too much time talking about them and not enough time trying to rein in spending.

As head of the Republican National Committee, Mr. Mehlman advocated the Bush administration’s push for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, which Republicans had hoped would galvanize the party’s conservative base in 2006.

Now he joins several other members of the Bush inner circle who have publicly stated their support for same-sex marriage. Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who has a daughter who is gay, has said he supports the right of gay people to marry, as has the former first lady Laura Bush.

“There are now more and more Republicans, and conservative Republicans, who have talked about this issue through the prism of being an equal rights issue, and being an issue that should not define the conservative movement and the party,” said Steve Schmidt, who was part of that inner circle as a spokesman and strategist for Mr. Bush’s 2004 campaign.
Mr. Schmidt spoke of his support for same-sex marriage in 2008 to the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay rights group, when he was chief strategist for John McCain's presidential run. Like Mr. Cheney, he spoke in personal terms, telling the group that his sister is gay and that she and her partner are an important part of his and his children’s lives.

Matthew Dowd, another top strategist for Mr. Bush who broke with him after the re-election campaign, said that same-sex marriage had ceased to be a big issue for many voters — including conservatives and religious ones — even in 2004. In polling and focus groups before that election, he said, Republicans and conservatives cited terrorism, taxes and the war in Iraq as the issues that would move them to the polls.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/us...l?ref=politics