The furor this week over Indiana’s religious freedom law means new trouble nationally for a Republican Party that’s been fighting an image of intolerance for years.
Politically, this is the first big, bruising social issue skirmish of the 2016 campaign. Most potential Republican presidential candidates have lined up in support of the law, which in its current form is seen by many as allowing discrimination against gays.
Such full-throated support for the law may appeal to the evangelicals and born-again Christians whom hopefuls would need to win the Iowa Republican caucus and some key Southern states, but it’s also likely to alienate a lot of people needed to win a general election.
Republican leaders are well aware of the problem – and of the powerful ammunition the Indiana law hands Democrats – and have worked feverishly to soften their party’s image.
It’s been a rough ride. A Pew Research Center poll in February found 59 percent of respondents saw the Democratic Party as “tolerant and open to all groups of people,” while 38 percent viewed the Republican Party that way.
The Indiana law “reinforces commonly held perceptions of the party,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a Virginia-based nonpartisan political analysis organization.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, seen as a rising Republican star and a potential presidential candidate, ignited this firestorm Thursday when he signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It protects companies and individuals from government actions that would substantially burden religious practices.
Pence has suggested the law is supposed to mirror a 1993 federal law, signed by President Bill Clinton, as well as laws in 19 other states. But there are some differences, including the coverage of business, and critics said the law is a legal license to discriminate.
Businesses have threatened boycotts of Indiana. The mayor of Washington and the governor of New York have banned official travel there. The NCAA, hosting the men’s basketball Final Four in Indianapolis starting Saturday, has voiced concern. The Indianapolis Star ran a front-page editorial Tuesday demanding “Fix This Now.”
Pence said Tuesday he would seek to change the law to make it clear businesses can’t discriminate. “I’m determined to address this, this week,” he told a news conference.
The political damage may already be done. What matters now is how the media portray the issue, said Drew Gold, executive director of the Saint Leo University Polling Institute in Florida.
Most potential 2016 Republican presidential candidates have weighed in supporting the law. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum tweeted, “I stand with Mike Pence.”
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former business executive Carly Fiorina and Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., also offered support. A spokeswoman for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said he supports “broad religious freedom.” None of the likely Republican candidates came out opposed to the state law.
“No one here is saying that it should be legal to deny someone service at a restaurant or at a hotel because of their sexual orientation,” Rubio told Fox’s “The Five” on Monday. He added: “The flip side is, should a photographer be punished for refusing to do a wedding that their faith teaches them is not one that is valid in the eyes of God?”
Democrats, gay rights groups and a lot of others are pouncing.
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley on Tuesday called Republican candidates’ support for the law “shameful.” “We shouldn’t discriminate against people because of who they love,” tweeted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the day Pence signed the law. Both are considering presidential runs themselves.
Public opinion is with them. Support for same-sex marriage nationally has grown sharply over the last decade, according to the McClatchy-Marist Poll, and last summer it was at 54 percent.
Add to this an image the Republican Party is having a hard time shaking.
“We do need to make sure young people do not see the party as totally intolerant of alternative points of view,” said a 2013 Republican Party report on its future. “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.”
But just as powerful a force in the party is the Christian right, particularly in Iowa, the nation’s first caucus state. Caucus entrance polls in 2012 showed 57 percent of voters were born again or evangelical Christians, and Santorum easily won that group.
Several potential 2016 candidates, including Cruz, Huckabee and Santorum, are vying for their votes.
Being too closely identified with that wing, though, can become a liability as the campaign moves elsewhere. In New Hampshire, the nation’s first primary state, “We don’t have a lot of social conservatives,” said Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. “You don’t have to endear yourself to the far right.”
Candidates have to decide “are they running to be president of America, or president of Christian America?” said Dennis Goldford, a professor of political science at Drake University in Des Moines.
The Republicans’ challenge, he said, is that “for some, there’s no distinction.”
Anita Kumar of the Washington Bureau contributed.
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