President Obama is convinced that liberals have won the culture war, and he aims to leverage that victory to force a transformation of the Republican party. In a New Republic interview published earlier this week, he noted that attitudes are changing “in the country as a whole around LGBT issues and same-sex marriage” and that this poses a challenge to Republicans. Some Republicans will “embrace” the change, but “there’s a big chunk of their constituency that is going to be deeply opposed to that.”
Unity is the president’s preferred weapon to divide and conquer. As he stated in his inaugural address, “Now more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.” He co-opted the first words of the U.S. Constitution to give a constitutional seal of approval to his policy agenda. “We the people” have spoken, and it turns out We pretty much agree with the president on everything. We the People are certainly as enlightened as the president about a woman’s right to abortion and the rightness of gay marriage. The constitutional standing of those who think differently from We the People is fuzzy.
