Rick Santorum: GOP Would Be 'Suicidal' to Embrace Gay Marriage

Rick Santorum spoke with the Des Moines Register by telephone yesterday in an interview that dealt with his plans for 2016, the Supreme Court's arguments on marriage, and the Republican party's position on marriage equality.

Santorum said that supporting same-sex marriage "is not a well thought-out position by the American public" and it would be a death wish for the GOP to embrace it:

“I’m sure you could go back and read stories, oh, you know, ‘The Republican party’s going to change. This is the future.’ Obviously that didn’t happen,” Santorum said. “I think you’re going to see the same stories written now and it’s not going to happen. The Republican party’s not going to change on this issue. In my opinion it would be suicidal if it did.”

Santorum also predicted that SCOTUS will rule against same-sex marriage:

“I think you’ll see, hopefully, a chastened Supreme Court is not going to make the same mistake in the (current) cases as they did in Roe v. Wade. I’m hopeful the Supreme Court learned its lesson about trying to predict where the American public is going on issues and trying to find rights in the Constitution that sit with the fancy of the day.”

He also said that running in 2016 is still an unknown but he is frothing at the idea of it:

“I haven’t made any decisions, certainly hoping to do that.”

Karl Rove: 'I Could' Imagine a 2016 GOP Presidential Candidate Saying 'I am For Gay Marriage - VIDEO

Mediaite clipped this moment from a discussion on ABC News' This Week this morning.

“Karl Rove, can you imagine the next presidential campaign a Republican candidate saying flat out ‘I am for gay marriage,’” asked Stephanopoulos.

“I could,” said Rove, before turning the discussion back to the Supreme Court’s hearing on the issue.

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

Rove of course, was key to making same-sex marriage a wedge issue in the 2004 election by placing several measures to ban it on the ballot in key swing states.

More on this roundtable, if and when it becomes available.

RNC Releases Report Calling for Sweeping Party Reforms, Eyes Gay and Younger Voters: READ IT

The Republican National Committee released a sweeping report on Monday with points and recommendations aimed at helping the party recover from losses it suffered in 2012 and revitalize itself for 2016, NBC News reports:

The RNC's 100-page report, the "Growth and Opportunity Project," is the election autopsy ordered by Chairman Reince Priebus last fall.

Culled from more than 52,000 contacts with voters, party consultants and elected officials, it calls for drastic changes to almost every major element of the modern Republican Party.

"When Republicans lost in November, it was a wake-up call. And in response I initiated the most public and most comprehensive post-election review in the history of any national party," Priebus was set to say in remarks Monday morning at the National Press Club. "As it makes clear, there’s no one reason we lost. Our message was weak; our ground game was insufficient; we weren’t inclusive; we were behind in both data and digital; our primary and debate process needed improvement."

Here are the portions of the report which mention gays:

America Looks Different

For the GOP to appeal to younger voters, we do not have to agree on every issue, but we do need to make sure young people do not see the Party as totally intolerant of alternative points of view. Already, there is a generational difference within the conservative movement about issues involving the treatment and the rights of gays — and for many younger voters, these issues are a gateway into whether the Party is a place they want to be.

 

Some people say Republicans don't care

If we believe our policies are the best ones to improve the lives of the American people, all the American people, our candidates and offce holders need to do a better job talking in normal,people-oriented terms and we need to go to communities where Republicans do not normally go to listen and make our case. We need to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian, and gay Americans and demonstrate we care about them, too. We must recruit more candidates who come from minority communities. But it is not just tone that counts. Policy always matters.

Then further down...

If we believe our policies are the best ones to improve the lives of the American people, all the American people, our candidates and offce holders need to do a better job talking in normal, people-oriented terms and we need to go to communities where Republicans do not normally go to listen and make our case. We need to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian, and gay Americans and demonstrate that we care about them, too

Read the full document below:

 

Growth Opportunity Project

News: Maryland, Fiscal Deal, Russian Soccer, 'Oz'

Just a bit more about the Log Cabin's ad against Chuck Hagel, from a Washington Blade piece published last Friday, "Cooper said he couldn’t immediately recall the cost of the ad, but said it was done over the holiday week at a special rate and was financed by Log Cabin donors who are also organization members." According to Cooper, their anti-Hagel page in the New York Times was prepared before Christmas.

Marriage equality becomes the law of Maryland at the stroke of midnight.

President Obama said a congressional deal to prevent our nation from careening off the so-called "fiscal cliff" is in sight. From Reuters: "The tentative Senate agreement would raise taxes on several fronts, with wealthier Americans bearing much of the burden. That might not be popular in the House where Republicans hold sway. The planned tax increases, while substantial, would be smaller than those that will take effect automatically this week if Congress fails to brunt the full force of the fiscal cliff." [UPDATE: Nevermind! No House vote tonight, so no deal.]

Lake Superior State University's 38th annual list of banished words.

A new year's anthem from The Rescues: "Everything's Gonna Be Better Next Year"

Ring in the new year Oz style.

Based on the type of medicine she's being given, CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta thinks it's unlikely Hillary Clinton's blood clot is in her brain. [UPDATE: Actually, it is in her head.]

CNN asked Democratic voters who they would like to see run for president in 2016: 65% said Hillary Clinton; 26% went for Joe Biden.

10 gayest songs of 2012.

Kanye West and Kim Kardashian are having a baby.

Stacy Kiebler and Michael Phelps played beer pong together in Cabo. Where was George Clooney during all of this?

Who is paying for Lindsay Lohan's life?

Russian soccer players Alexander Kokorin and Pavel Mamaev ignited gay rumors after photos of them hugging and kind of kissing during a Miami vacation surfaced over the weekend.

As the National Geographic Channel prepares to air "Are You Tougher Than A Boy Scout?," a Change.org petition calling on the cable channel to denounce the group's a    nti-gay politics.

This is fabulous: Bahaman Bishop Simeon Hall apologized for past comments about gay people and said that pastors who still preach against LGBT people may be overcompensating for their own closet. "Psychologists tell us that sometimes the things we strike out against, we do so because a bit of it lies within us on a subliminal level," he said.

"The Pope and Killing Gay People."

Nate Silver Looks at Hillary Clinton's Ratings, and 2016

Nate Silver takes a look at Hillary Clinton's chances in 2016 with regard to a moving average of Mrs. Clinton’s favorable and unfavorable ratings dating back to 1992. Silver notes that Clinton is popular now, but boosted by the fact that her role as Secretary of State is for the most part non-partisan, and that at the times when she has become an "explicitly political figure" her favorability has also taken a hit:

The surge in Mrs. Clinton’s favorability ratings late in the 2008 campaign, although perhaps partly testifying to her steadily improving skills as a campaigner and to her new role as an underdog in the Democratic primary race, may also have reflected the fact that Republicans had less incentive to criticize her. Instead, they were trying to woo her supporters — or bolster her chances to prolong the Democratic nomination process.

...

A secretary of state is not necessarily above partisan criticism, but attacking a secretary of state can potentially backfire on the opposition party. As Mitt Romney discovered during the presidential campaign foreign affairs can present an unlevel playing field to the opposition party. The White House and the Department of State have a number of defenses that they can employ to shield themselves from criticism, from claiming that they are protecting the national interest, to accusing their opponents of being unpatriotic, to arguing that their opponents lack knowledge of the situation on the ground. The secretary of state, like the president, also enjoys the symbolic trappings of incumbency when she conducts diplomatic affairs.

Were Mrs. Clinton to run for president again, she would lose most of these advantages. Republicans would begin to criticize her, delicately at first, and then more expressly as the election drew nearer.

Silver's Clinton chart, AFTER THE JUMP...

News: Tim Cook, Nick Gruber, Nevada, 279

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today defended Ambassador Rice from GOP-led attacks and again pushed aside speculation that she'll run for the White House in 2016. "I'm frankly looking forward to returning to living a life that enjoys a lot of simple pleasures and gives me time for family and friends and other pursuits," she said.

Tim Cook, Apple's gay CEO, told NBC News' Brian Williams that the tech giant will start manufacturing a few of his products here in the States. "We’ve been working for years on doing more and more in the United States," he said. But don't expect a deluge of jobs, because Cook tells Businessweek the work done in the USA will be minimal: "Next year we’re going to bring some production to the U.S... This doesn’t mean that Apple will do it ourselves, but we’ll be working with people and we’ll be investing our money.”

Janee Harteau has been sworn in as the first female and first openly gay police chief of Minneapolis. "Thank you to my life-partner and better half, Holly. And for those of you who know us both, she's truly the better half," she said at the swearing in ceremony.

Lindsay Lohan is everywhere The Wanted want to be - and she takes the bus there.

Congratulations to Steve Elmendorf: the political strategist has just been voted in as chair of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund.

Judd Apatow guest edited the latest edition of Vanity Fair. Yes, there is a Freaks and Geeks reunion, of sorts.

Rejoice! Morning sickness-stricken Duchess Kate has been released from the hospital.

Glee actor Matthew Morrison likes his pants tight.

Here's Terry Miller's shot of him and Dan Savage getting their marriage license.

Get your Game of Thrones on.

Nick Gruber, famous for being designer Calvin Klein's former boyfriend, sat down for an interview with the New York Post's Page Six magazine and claims to be straight, that he presented a military sergeant with a bisexual porn he did to get out of service and that Klein hooked him up to a lie detector test to see if he was cheating.

The U.S. Senate today advanced the nomination of lesbian Judge Pamela Ki Mai Chen, a nominee for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. If she wins the seat, Judge Chen will be the first out Asian-American on the federal bench.

Ellen DeGeneres and Rachel Maddow have both been nominated for Best Spoken Word Grammy Awards, DeGeneres for her book Seriously… I’m Kidding and Maddow for Drift: The Unmooring Of American Military Power.

Like Washington State, Maryland has started distributing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. "I started tearing up when I saw the marriage license; all of a sudden, it's right there in front of you," 34-year old Alli Harper, who plans to marry girlfriend Jennifer Monti, told the Herald Mail.

279 marriage licenses were given to same-sex couples during the first six hours of legality today.

The Coalition for the Protection of Marriage in Nevada is asking the Supreme Court to hear their case against equality, thereby bypassing an appeals court and perhaps intentionally delaying SCOTUS' consideration of same-sex nuptials. "In the past this year, it has appeared that the court held off on considering any of the petitions until all of them were fully briefed. And, with the court scheduled to discuss the 10 petitions at its conference on Friday, this petition could be a last-ditch effort to hold off a decision on which of those to hear," writes Chris Geidner.

A clue for the Doctor Who Christmas special?