No No NOM

Splendid piece in the SF Chronicle yesterday details the unresolved angst and conflicts in the GOP over marriage equality.

Despite nearly 40 states having anti-same-sex marriage laws or amendments in place, GOP and independent voters have moved on. The paranoid, puerile panic was the ephemeral anomaly and not the new, permanent norm.

Writer Carolyn Lochhead compiles trends, including things many of us already know — such as Dick Cheney supporting SSM and President Obama not getting any measurable blow-back from announcing he favored it before the last election.

She brings in analysts who say that Latinos and African Americans are not the only groups the GOP is turning off. For one, Cato Institute Senior Fellow Walter Olson said bluntly, "Republicans have to be delusional to think they can take that position into a national campaign, that there ought to be a constitutional amendment against something that there is now majority support for."

She also offers a small taste from the bowl of nuts, notably National Organization for Marriage President Brian Brown. He seems virtually alone in his dire, "Practically, the Republican Party dies if it abandons marriage." GOP voters and many of its pols are muttering or even shouting that it's time to get past this irrational obsession, in light of a solid majority of the nation approving of SSM.

The piece touches on changes by the Church of the Latter Day Saints.She even ends up with a crisply applicable history lesson no states-rights and alcohol prohibition,with some counties remaining dry even today.

Dems might appreciate the national GOP remaining stupidly diverted by anti-equality fights they've already lost.  We probably can't count on that much longer.