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House Republicans Plan Strategy To Overturn DC Marriage Equality Law

Submitted by Brian Tashman on March 30, 2011 - 12:00pm

A leading House Republican is pledging to follow-through on his promise to force a referendum on the District of Columbia’s 2010 marriage equality law. In January, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Religious Right activists demanded that the rights of gays and lesbians to marry in D.C. be put to a popular vote after the Supreme Court rebuffed an attempt by Harry Jackson to compel a referendum. Jordan is head of the Republican Study Committee, the principal caucus for House conservatives, and wants to take advantage of Congress’s disproportionate power over District affairs in order to push his opposition to marriage equality. CQ reports (subscription only):

Jim Jordan, chairman of the 176-member Republican Study Committee, is leading an effort by conservatives to press House leaders for floor votes in opposition to gay marriage.

Jordan’s first project is a draft proposal that would set up a referendum to overturn a year-old District of Columbia law recognizing marriages of gay and lesbian couples. The move comes as conservatives express a desire to move beyond a focus on spending cuts and expand the House majority’s legislative agenda to include social issues.

The Supreme Court declined in January to take up a case aimed at clearing the way for a referendum to ban gay marriage in the nation’s capital. City officials have blocked the referendum on the grounds that it would violate a city human rights law.

Jordan said he expects the draft measure to draw strong support from House Republicans. He and other conservatives say they are weighing how best to promote the vote as an example of Republicans fulfilling a campaign promise. The GOP’s 2010 Pledge to America vowed that a Republican majority would “honor families, traditional marriage, life and the private and faith-based organizations that form the core of our American values.”

…

Jordan says he will press for a floor vote to allow fellow conservatives to make clear their opposition to gay marriage. “We want to advance marriage. That’s the pledge. Our party should be all about defending marriage as it has always been defined,” he said.

Reps. Steve King of Iowa and Vicky Hartzler of Missouri have also been calling for floor action to demonstrate opposition to gay marriage. Hartzler has gathered 98 cosponsors for a resolution condemning the Obama administration’s decision to stop defending restrictions on gay marriage.

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House GOP Looks to Overturn Marriage Equality in DC

Submitted by Brian Tashman on January 25, 2011 - 11:16am

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said that his Republican Study Committee, the ultraconservative group that counts a majority of the GOP caucus as its members, told The Hill that he supports congressional action to reverse Washington DC’s marriage equality law. “I think RSC will push for it, and I’m certainly strongly for it,” the Ohio Republican said, “I don’t know if we’ve made a decision if I’ll do it or let another member do it, but I’m 100 percent for it.” Jordan voted against every major piece of gay-rights legislation and recently announced his boycott of CPAC over the conference’s inclusion of GOProud.

Even though the Republican Study Committee claims to be committed to “a limited and Constitutional role for the federal government” and reducing “government regulations [and the] size of government,” anti-gay attacks apparently take priority over its dedication to federalism and small-government.

The DC Council voted overwhelmingly in favor of marriage equality in 2009, and marriage rights for gays and lesbians went into effect in early 2010. National and local Religious Right groups, led by Bishop Harry Jackson, just last week lost a lawsuit challenging the law.

Bishop Jackson has unsuccessfully demanded a popular referendum to decide the fate of marriage equality in the District, saying that the issue should be left up to DC voters rather than their elected representatives in the Council and going so far as writing to Congress to demand a popular vote on the issue. In Congress, however, DC’s Delegate does not have the right to vote on legislation and was stripped by Republicans of her limited voting powers.

Clearly, given his aggressive stance in support of DC’s voters’ ability to have a say in the matter, Bishop Jackson will come out strongly against Congressman Jordan’s proposal any minute now…

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Right Wing Marks Katrina Anniversary

Submitted by Anonymous on August 31, 2007 - 3:51pm

New Orleans after KatrinaTwo years ago this week, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and other stretches of the Gulf Coast. At the time, the response by many on the Right was to blame the victims and/or social-service programs, and to take advantage of the “golden opportunity” to advance a far-right economic agenda. Remember Pat Buchanan, who criticized the “failure” of the “character and conduct” of the population of New Orleans, who “waited for the government to come save them” and “screamed into the cameras for help”? Then-Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) called for “tougher penalties” for those who were stranded when the storm hit and the city was flooded. Bill O’Reilly saw video footage of the tragedy as an ideal object lesson for young people: “If you refuse to learn, if you refuse to work hard, if you become addicted, if you live a gangsta-life, you will be poor and powerless just like many of those in New Orleans.” (Watch the video.)

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Right-Wing House Republicans Call for 'Blood on the Floor' Strategy

Submitted by Anonymous on February 7, 2007 - 11:59pm

To win back House, in the words of Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) at the Republican Study Committee retreat. Romney was there, but not McCain, because “90% … don’t like him,” according to one member.

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Right Offers Minority Leader Pence as Their Map to Lost GOP

Submitted by Anonymous on November 8, 2006 - 6:03pm

“[T]he American people didn’t quit the Contract with America, we did,” proclaimed Rep. Mike Pence (R-Indiana) of the Republicans’ loss of the House. As rumored in September, Pence has announced his intent to run for minority leader in the next Congress. His “new vision” is, in fact, the old vision: to “rededicate [the party] to the ideals and standards that minted our majority in 1994.”

Pence speaking at the Values Voter SummitAlready, Pence has garnered the endorsement of Human Events, which certainly sounds a lot like the magazine’s attempt to make him majority leader last winter, when they named him “Man of the Year” after his rise to prominence for his dramatic plan to address the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina by cutting funding to safety-net programs and a grab bag right-wing bugbears.

Other right-wing leaders seeking to regroup and ensure they don’t get left behind as the GOP assesses its political options are also rushing to bolster Pence’s early claim. Pat Toomey, whose Club for Growth worked hard to unseat supposedly moderate Republicans in primaries this year, was nonplussed about the prospect of his PAC helping to topple the Republican’s hold on Congress, and he looked forward to the Club playing an “enormous role” in “rebuild[ing]” the GOP. Today, he says: “I think that Mike Pence would be a great leader for House Republicans.”

David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, insisted that yesterday’s vote was not a rejection of the “ideological vision[]” of the modern GOP, presumably represented by right-wing groups like his, but merely an expression of dissatisfaction in “Republicans' performance in taking us there.” Keene also expressed early support for Pence.

Other groups have yet to weigh in, perhaps preoccupied as they scramble for their own spin on yesterday’s results – see, for example, “Integrity Voters Reveal Values Gap,” from the Family Research Council. But Pence did receive a standing ovation at FRC’s “Values Voter Summit.”

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If It Loses the House, GOP May Look Even Further Right

Submitted by Anonymous on September 12, 2006 - 4:45pm

Rep. Mike Pence (R-Indiana), chairman of the right-wing House Republican Study Committee (RSC), may face a dilemma this November. On the one hand, he calls on readers of Human Events to elect more far-right ideologues, touting the RSC’s efforts over the past two years in pushing tax cuts, advocating Social Security privatization, and – in the name of Hurricane Katrina – pushing for opportunistic cuts in safety-net programs and other longstanding right-wing bugbears, all while blocking stem-cell research and making a spectacle out of Terri Schiavo. Until his recent proposal for a guest-worker program, the Right regarded him as a hero, and there was even a campaign to elect the young congressman majority leader of the House after Tom DeLay’s resignation.

On the other hand, if Pence does not get his wish and the Right loses control of the House, he may find himself leader of the minority party, according to U.S. News and World Report’s “Inside Washington”:

The talk this week among conservative House staffers and GOP strategists is that a Democratic victory in the fall elections could lead to a wholesale junking of the House Republican leadership.

While that would likely lead to a nasty leadership bid for minority leader, the conservatives say that it could lead to the election of Rep. Mike Pence, the Indiana lawmaker who heads the budget-conscious Republican Study Committee.

"If we lose, I can see everybody being thrown out and Pence's fiscal conservative team in," says an adviser to House conservatives. It's an unlikely scenario because insiders say that House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Leader John Boehner are secure and that, at worst, Boehner would get the minority leader's post. But the staffers said a loss of power could lead to a major party revolt against the leadership, opening the door to Pence, who has led the effort to cut spending and pork.

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