John Avlon notes what I remarked on last night:
Among the night's revelations: leading candidates Romney and Pawlenty have formally joined the one-note social conservatives in supporting a federal marriage amendment to block same-sex marriages in the states (so much for the guiding principles of originalism and federalism).
Likewise, opposition to abortion even in cases of rape and incest is the new pro-life litmus test. To hear Michele Bachmann tell it, the founding fathers’ wrote the Declaration of Independence almost solely to illuminate the post Roe v. Wade world and victims of rape and incest are outliers who too often cloud the debate.
I see no distancing from the most extreme positions on homosexuality and abortion.
The view that the federal constitution is the place where gays are to be permanently excluded from family life and that abortion should be criminal even when the woman has been raped by a relative or a non-relative: these are now non-controversial in the GOP.
I think that many observers have gotten things the wrong way round. Because the emphasis is understandably on the economy and the debt, some have concluded that the social issues do not count so much any more. But it seems to me that the economy and debt act more as a distraction from the underlying story that the GOP keeps moving ever rightward against modernity's toleration of minorities and established social norms on abortion. As society shifts on gay rights, the right has dug into a position that was unserious and impractical six years ago. But that doesn't matter. Both issues are doctrine, you see. And this party is, at heart, a church.
The Dish 