This week, the gay Republican organization GOProud endorsed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for president. It’s a move that is (somewhat) surprising and disappointing.
GOProud’s board did not unanimously endorse Romney, with at least one board member backing Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.
GOProud came to being around the time the Tea Party movement started and describes its membership as “seeking to promote freedom by supporting free markets, limited government and a respect for individual rights.”
Though the organization’s agenda emphasizes “conservative and libertarian principles” — and doesn’t mention the Republican Party — the name GOProud seems to indicate who they support.
Why the founders felt inclined to start a group to rival the long-established Log Cabin Republicans is a different conversation.
But why endorse Romney, particularly when his track record on LGBT issues leaves much to be desired? For starters, he said he would work to reinstate “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
When he ran against Sen. Ted Kennedy, he said he was better than the senator on gay-rights issues, then backed away from that position in a later campaign.
Certainly, Romney opposes same-sex marriage. Wouldn’t that stance alone impede GOProud from endorsing him? If you are promoting freedom, limited government and a respect for individual rights, wouldn’t same-sex marriage be covered in that?
And why doesn’t GOProud support a candidate that more closely aligns with the group’s mission and tenets — specifically the tenet that opposes an antigay federal marriage amendment — such as Johnson or openly gay Republican candidate Fred Karger?
Because those candidates aren’t going to win the Republican presidential nomination.
Somehow, instead of seeming like an astute political move, this group’s endorsement of Romney feels more like a calculated political move, so GOProud can later say it was allied with a winning campaign — since Johnson and Karger don’t have much of a shot and the allegedly unaffiliated GOProud would never back a Democrat.
In its endorsement, GOProud lauds Romney’s private-sector business background, saying he has the “experience and expertise to turn this economy around.”
While the parties can debate and slam each other’s economic, free-market and size-of-government policies, lauding Romney’s business background seems somewhat shortsighted.
Romney’s record of “cleaning up” faltering companies by downsizing workers doesn’t necessarily translate to effectively leading a country. What would happen if he shrunk the federal government by firing those workers? Where would they go? Would they get unemployment?
Though Republicans often criticize Democrats as supporting “big government,” it’s historically been the latter who have reduced the number of federal workers.