Two "hidden" issues

I believe that it is possible that two issues, apart from what is now just plain old "habit", hold many people in the Republican Party. They weren't really mentioned by McCain; Palin did bring at least one of them up. I was reminded of this by what Rep. Mike Pence said on Fox News today. When asked by Chris Wallace what "conservative solutions" the GOP would bring to their current minority-party status, Pence said social issues like "the sanctity of marriage" will remain the backbone of the Republican platform.

So "sanctity of marriage" and "right-to-life", the two ideals, both very emotional issues, may be what the Republicans will begin banking upon. By emotional, I mean NOT logical. Truth to tell, "right-to-life" as an issue, snares many Catholics, of course, and many fundamental Christians. Not letting homosexuals "marry", even though they might be allowed to have civil unions, certainly snares the Mormon vote, as the vote on the California referendum proves. Both are not meat-and-potatoes issues, such as taxation or health care or even the overall economy, but are "values" issues. These two issues can trump, so to speak, issues that may in fact be even more important to the voters involved, but which they knowingly or unknowingly ignore in favor of the strength of these two issues. And the Republicans, even if they don't really care about either of these two issues, know they can use them to snare voters (some fundamental Christians have begun to see the light about this and realize they've been snookered by a group in the GOP who could care less about whether abortions are performed or gay people can marry).

These, by the way, are often hidden in campaigning and only surface with code words. The parties involved know what's involved, including the makeup of the Supreme Court, which will determine if Roe vs Wade gets struck down, but still talk about - I love the phrase - "sanctity of marriage." Why, just for the heck of it, couldn't marriage between two men or two women be "sanctified"?

I'm always impressed by the hypocrisy involved here. I always thought that a true Republican, a true Conservative, believed in less government involvement when it came to telling the populace what to do. They rail, loud and clear, about Big Government. The NRA would agree with this. Yet, when it comes to these two issues, all of a sudden it becomes imperative that the government stop all women from having abortions and all doctors from performing them; and the government must not perform marriages for all gays, male or female. In these two instances, Big Government is allowable and even smiled upon.

To Obama's credit, he seemed to steer clear of these two hot issues, as if they were landmines that could blow everything up. He might even have convinced a few true believers that the economy and other problems trumped these two very idealistic issues.