Post-Election Message to Republicans

The vote counts are more or less final in all the states except Florida, where vote counts never seem to be final, and a few points are clear.  First and foremost, Barack Obama has been reelected President of the United States.  The polls were correct, and your pundits who argued bias, especially Karl Rove during his semi-nervous breakdown around midnight on Fox, were dead wrong.

The Senate, which had been all but conceded to the Republicans a year ago, not only didn't go to the GOP, but the Democrats actually added two seats.  Majority Leader Reid is safe for two more years.

A large consolation prize, the House of Representatives, remains under Republican control.  All federal bills involving taxes or spending must originate in the House, so if Speaker John Boehner can maintain the support of 217 colleagues, he can directly shape the budget.

You may be telling yourselves that Romney lost because he wasn't conservative enough or because he didn't scream "Benghazi" at the top of his lungs.  You may say the Obama majority are "parasites" who suck the financial blood of "true Americans" and pay fealty to a Marxist Kenyan Muslim.

If that's you, you probably ought to quit reading this post.  Many of us liberals are perfectly familiar with the "severely conservative" (his choice of terms) Romney, and we want answers about Benghazi, too.  I also happen to go to work every day, pay my taxes, and think I would have enough sense to see through some sort of Marxist-Muslim (an odd combination if one ever existed) Manchurian President bent on taking America down. 

Before you start telling me how big a fool I am, please reread the first sentence of the last paragraph. Then, if you still want to call me a fool, find another url.  Move on, please.

Okay, now, if you're still reading, I'd like to share some comments on three social issues: immigration, same-sex marriage, and abortion.  Yes, I'm going there.

No one knows exactly how many foreigners are living illegally in America, but we do know most of them aren't going anywhere.  We're not going to create some vast national program to round them up and send them back to Mexico, where a lot of them aren't even from.  We aren't going to head down to the heat of Florida and start picking our own oranges, either.  Many of these immigrants have relatives or friends who were born in the same places and now live here legally.  And they vote.

If you got to know them, you'd find these legals and illegals have a lot in common with you.  They participate eagerly in their churches, they want to educate their children well (in English, no less), and they work, work, and work.  Given a choice between Obama and Romney, however, which candidate do you think they supported yesterday, particularly after Romney's talk of self-deportation?

America's population is getting browner, and no wall across the Mexican border will reverse that trend.  If you can't earn more immigrants' and their children's votes, you're toast.

Karl Rove and his other George W. Bush strategists used the same-sex issue brilliantly in the early 2000s.  State after state passed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage after the Massachusetts Supreme Court found for it in 2003.  The amendment passed by a greater than 3 - 1 margin here in Georgia.

A funny thing happened then.  The people's legislatures in some states began legalizing same-sex marriage there as well.  Sometimes, as in Maine and California, the people themselves overruled the legislature and banned same-sex marriage again.

An even funnier thing happened last night.  Voters in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington either approved same-sex marriage or refused to ban it.

No matter how angry my next few words make you, do read on this time: same-sex marriage is inevitable.  The younger people are, the more likely they are to approve of it.  And now the argument that the people in no state have ever voted it in no longer holds.  It may not reach Georgia or Oklahoma soon, but it is coming to Virginia and Florida.

Holding out against same-sex marriage doesn't make you look like principled defenders of God's plan; it makes you look like bigots.  You are denying a natural-born right to your fellow citizens for no other reason than you find some people's sex lives yucky.  Get over yourselves -- please.  You really won't want your great-grandchildren to read some of the comments you're making about gay people in 2012.

I saved the toughest, abortion, for last.  I get it that you think all life is sacred.  I understand that to you, abortion is murder and that the "killing fields" of abortion clinics have destroyed tens of millions of people.  I find abortion pretty disturbing myself, and I'd like to see the numbers greatly reduced.  On this, Bill Clinton was right: abortion should be legal, it should be safe, and it should be rare.

"But abortion is abortion," you may be muttering or shouting.  I feel you.  But let me ask you a Dr. Phil question: how's that working out for you?  Last night, two of your United States Senate candidates lost races they almost certainly would have won if not for intemperate remarks about abortion and rape.  Our country is largely pro-life, but even a significant minority of you think those two candidates went too far, and they lost in states that Mitt Romney won handily.

There's a larger issue about abortion, too.  Roe v Wade was handed down in January 1973, when Barack Obama was ten years old.  Since then, many of you have fought tirelessly to ban it.  And where has that gotten you?  How much closer are you to overturning Roe v Wade, returning the abortion issue to the states, or passing a right-to-life amendment now than you were in 1973?

Barack Obama's reelection, along with a majority Democratic Senate, means the elderly Supreme Court Justices have at least two years to start looking at retirement properties if they like, knowing (or dreading) that pro-choice Justices will take their place.

Might not moral suasion be a better use of your pro-life energies than failed attempts to ban abortion?  Do you really think some 50 million American women and their doctors are cold-blooded murderers?  Put some of your energy into showing women with crisis pregnancies that they really do have choices.  Show that you will love and accept the biracial, meth head baby.  Try not to look quite so far down your noses at the upper class, suburban teen who makes a mistake and then decides to keep her baby.

And for goodness' sake, let the schools teach a little more about human sexuality than abstinence.  Condoms are not murder weapons.  In fact, they're a lot less scary than male Senate candidates who tell a woman she should be grateful for a child begotten upon her during a horribly violent assault.

If you're still reading, your blood pressure has probably risen several points.  That's okay.  Still, if you try to be a little more accepting of same-sex couples, I promise you your own kids won't suddenly turn gay.  Finding some path to citizenship for people who are here illegally but who love this country and would give anything to gain its acceptance won't destroy American culture and render English extinct.  And while you may not be able to save a million babies this year, you -- individually and in faith communities -- may save one or ten or ten thousand.

I won't deny being a liberal.  I voted for Obama in 2008 and then again yesterday.  You may think I'm hopelessly naive (which I may be) or that I'm trying to set you up (which I'm not).  You may decide, in fact, that allowing sometimes cynical party leaders to lead you only to nominate national candidates who vow to oppose same-sex marriage, to deport as many illegals as possible, and to appoint judges who are pro-life in all instances (except maybe what one failed Congressional candidate called "the rape thing").  You may decide nothing else is acceptable in 2016, just as it wasn't in 2012 or 2008.

And given our country's disposition and its demographics, you'll probably lose again.