If you want to get an idea of how social conservatives are going to be treated by the media in this election cycle, look no further than Saturday night’s ABC debate. George Stephanopoulos’s endless exchange with Mitt Romney about whether he favored a ban on contraception and whether he would consider it constitutional if a state voted to ban it may have seemed like a puzzling digression. In fact, Mitt Romney probably reflected in his flustered answer the puzzlement of the whole audience at this line of questioning. What state was trying to ban contraception again? But presumably Stephanopoulos thought he was showing some great fissure in the Republican party. It’s true that Rick Santorum doesn’t favor contraception but the vast majority of his constituency–even the pro-life ones–are not against contraception. Does Stephanopoulos really think this is going to be the deciding issue–or even an issue at all–for conservatives?
More revealing, though, was Diane Sawyer’s “what do you say to gay people in their living rooms?” question. Admittedly, this was a question submitted through Yahoo, but Sawyer was clearly taken with it, repeating over and over that she wanted Santorum to explain his position against gay marriage to a gay couple sitting in their living room. One can just imagine what goes on in the mind of Sawyer. “Maybe Santorum doesn’t know gay people have living rooms? Or that they’re just normal people like the rest of us sitting home and watching debates on Saturday night? Maybe he thinks they’re all out partying and engaged in deviant activities. But if he really had to explain his position to actual gay people, he just wouldn’t be able to. He would just sound too mean. He probably hasn’t even though about how his position could affect real people!”
In fact, my guess is that Santorum has engaged in serious political discussion with a lot more real live gay people than Sawyer has with real live religious conservatives.
Speaking of engagement, Santorum’s exchange last week at a town hall meeting with a woman who wanted to know how he could possibly deny gay couples the right to marry when that would make them happy also got some interesting play in the media. Reporters were outraged by his comparison between gay marriage and polygamy and some ended their report there. But that was not the end of the story. Santorum went back and forth with the questioner several times and finally she acknowledged that she would be perfectly fine with legalizing polygamy as well. Liberals can laugh all they want about Santorum’s slippery slope arguments, but this woman anyway slid right down it.
