A Small Surprise

Here's a more serious follow-up to the last post, which sampled cherry-picked Wingnuttia's hysterical reactions to Steve Schmidt's suggestion that the GOP drop opposition to same-sex marriage.

Robert Farley of LGM passes along a link to an online poll of bloggers conducted by NationalJournal.com, which asked, "Which statement comes closest to your political views on gay marriage?"

Results from the left are unsurprising: 88.9% chose "My party should support it," 11.1% chose "My party should avoid the issue," and 0% (i.e., nobody) chose "My party should oppose it."

However, the righties are surprisingly split: 29.4% chose "oppose," another 29.4% chose "support," and 41.2% chose "avoid the issue."

Which ... wow. That means close to 70% of the rightosphere thinks the GOP should join the 21st century or at least not stay stuck in the Karl Rove mentality of appealing to people's phobias to win elections.

Granted, this is not a scientific survey (although it appears to be done by invitation, and is not just a dumb Web poll), and granted, as Farley notes, "right wing bloggers are more libertarian than the party as a whole," but still. Maybe that Steve Schmidt is on to something.

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[Added] Farley's assertion is backed up by another poll on NJ, which this time asked the same question to "Political Insiders," who they claim are "members of Congress or political operatives."

Results for the Republicans are: support (8%), oppose (50%), avoid (37%).

The Democratic PIs are a little behind the curve of their bloggers, but not too horribly: support (59%), oppose (2%), avoid (32%).

(Good for you for doing the arithmetic, math nerd. The numbers don't add up to 100% because Political Insiders, unlike bloggers, apparently get to order off the menu.)

I'm reminded of an episode of This American Life from two or three years ago. The show was all about evangelical Christians, and part of it was an interview with a minister. He was staunchly opposed to the idea of same-sex marriage, but he did startle me when he said, "In another generation, we'll have lost on this one. Even the kids in my church just don't see what the big deal is."

We're getting there, maybe even faster than that. Group hug!