MSNBC Panel Chides GOP For Being An Insular Party ' Are They Right?

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On Monday, MSNBC anchor Thomas Roberts hosted a panel debate over the impact of Obama's recent rhetorical embrace of gay marriage on the electorate with former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum's campaign advisor Hogan Gidley and Democratic strategist David Goodfriend. Goodfriend chided Gidley and the GOP for shunning traditional Democratic voting blocs, saying that they should own large percentages of minority as well as gay and lesbian voters. He is right. The GOP should take a page from the Democratic party's playbook and not be afraid to court Democratic-leaning demographics and take a risk with the base by knowing that they always come home in the fall.

RELATED: Kirsten Powers: Obama's 'Flip Flop' On Gay Marriage 'Less Evolution, More Intelligent Design'

In the clip below, Gidley said there is a movement within some segments of the Republican party that 'want to move with the polling' towards an acceptance of same-sex marriage rights but there is also a fear that the base of the GOP will lose enthusiasm and hand the election 'and the down-ballot races'to Democrats. Gidley said that there is a similar instinct on the Democratic side, with more cautious Democrats worried about the center of the electorate rejecting advocates of same-sex marriage on the left, while others want the party to make a stand for gay marriage as a civil rights issue.

Goodfriend agreed, saying that both parties are feeling the pressure from their 'true believer' wings. However, he says that the 'true believers' on the right will be driving Romney over a cliff while the President's supporters are not pushing Obama into an untenable political position.

'The polling shows that's [gay marriage] is going to hurt him with moderates and independents in the middle,' said Goodfriend. 'By contrast, with the Democrats and President Obama abiding by his base and coming out so forcefully in favor of gay marriage, he's not doing any damage to himself and the party and the polling shows he's actually going to help himself with moderates and women ' with the people who have to be won this election.'

Well, not quite.

President Obama did not spend his weekend on a conference call with black ministers, according to the New York Times, who are vehemently opposed to gay marriage because it is a fun way to kill an 75-degree Saturday afternoon.

The ministers, though, were not all as enthusiastic. A vocal few made it clear that the president's stand on gay marriage might make it difficult for them to support his re-election.

Of course, the Times notes that at least one of the minsters came around by the end of the call and told the President that they would happily 'work aggressively' on his behalf ahead of November.

And that was the calculation that the White House made. They knew that gay marriage was popular among their base on the coasts and deeply troublesome for their more religious supporters; particularly African Americans and seniors.

The campaign determined that the goodwill that their embrace of gay marriage would generate among independents, not to mention their openly gay bundlers and donors who support gay marriage, would outweigh the costs associated with taking this controversial position.

Meanwhile, with the conventional wisdom suggesting that conservative African Americans would exhibit the most resistance to Obama's embrace of gay marriage, the Daily Beast, writing about a Pew Research Center from April, say that the group is moving towards Obama's new position on the issue with stunning alacrity.

The most recent Pew poll taken this past April showed only 47 percent of African Americans oppose gay marriage today, nearly 20 percentage points lower than in 2008.

Back in the MSNBC studios, Goodfriend concluded his segment by telling Gidley that 'you Republicans never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity'

You should own the Latino vote. You should have half the African American vote. You should have half the gay vote. You know what? Because there are plenty of people in those groups who agree with you on everything and then you spurn them with these exclusive and obnoxious policies. We'll take those votes, thank you very much.

He is partially correct. Jay Cost, writing for the Weekly Standard, has noted for several months how the Democratic party has become an institution that promise to reward its political clients to the exclusion of all else. The Republican party hopes to appeal to voters based on a blanket ideological position that espouses the maximization of opportunity if not results. In that sense, they do appeal to segments of all demographics. But the Republican party almost never makes the calculation that Democrats do ' in particular, that portions of the base can be neglected six months out from an election in order to expand the big tent.

The GOP has been married to Karl Rove's base-rousing strategy since, well, 2004. The Republican party has not won a national election with more than 51 percent of the popular vote since 1988. A base-courting strategy in presidential years has become gospel. But it has the disadvantage of projecting an image of the Republican party as being insular.

The GOP could triangulate many of the divisive social issues and fracture Democratic groups ' If they had the temerity to shun their base for a week ' with the understanding that those groups that represent the Republican's bread and butter (evangelicals, white, working-class males, married couples) would be there for them in the fall. Particularly in a year like 2012 which is shaping up to be a referendum on a lackluster incumbent.

Republicans could embrace tax code reform: embrace a flatter tax. Eliminate deductions across the board, including those for marriage. By getting government out of the marriage issue, they can truly return the issue of marriage to the states (as President Obama has advocated without offering any substantive policy approach as a means of accomplishing that).

Republicans could address black and Hispanic voters on their terms, talk about strengthening the family and increasing economic opportunity while simultaneously attacking those progressive organizations that would seek to vilify reformers of the entitlement state as salesmen who are to be mistrusted.

But there is risk-aversion within the Republican party's political operatives, and a sense to that level of experimentation is too dangerous when the stakes are as high as they are in presidential years. Meanwhile, despite argumentation to the contrary, demography is destiny. It is incumbent on the GOP to broaden their appeal to key voting blocs or devolve into a regional party.

Democrats have been spectacularly neglectful of their coalition. The problem with being a party of clients, as Cost notes, is that you have to continually deliver once you are rewarded with high office. Republicans have a phenomenal, once-in-a-generation opportunity to wrest portions of traditional Democratic voters away from the party, but to do so they have to cast off the base-election strategy.

By November, gay marriage will not register with swing voters ' the economy will. All those funds that were generated for Obama in the last week will have long since been invested in ads, offices and staffers. Democrats took a risk and will be rewarded for it in the long-term ' both in this cycle and in future cycles.

The GOP should listen to Goodfriend ' he is correct. The Republican party's support of traditional marriage also extends to their marriage to a dated electoral strategy. Maybe it's time the GOP contemplated divorce.

Watch the panel discussion below via MSNBC:

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• ROTH MAN quoting the NY Times? That's not going to get you a 'high paying' gig at the DC, WND or Deadbart'

• Do you think you might be just a bit more cynical, Noah? Or, a bit more ahistorical. The Democratic party is always been a coalition, and the Republican party has always been a 'members only' club. Is it any surprise they work in different ways to win elections? Is one inherently worse than the other? 

• No matter how you slice it, Obama will lose some votes and pick up some votes directly because of his support for same sex marriage. But I also think ' over the long haul ' Obama benefits more because he comes across looking decisive, willing to take on a difficult issue, and be true to his core principles of equality for all.

  Especially when contrasted with Mitt Romney, a valueless, shape-shifting tower of jelly.

• 'Democrats have been spectacularly neglectful of their coalition.'
  Is that why Democrat Congressmen from swing states trying to separate themselves from Obama?

• Deadbart, that's sooo funny! You know what's funnier? That Breitabrt continues to haunt you libs! BOO!

• Looking decisive after changing his mind on a hot button issue? I agree with the rest of what you said, but decisive, really? 

• Breitbart is as factual as my niece's book of fairy tales.

  Fortunately, when she grows up she'll realize that it's all make-believe. Not so much for you sheep, though, about Breitbart.