The Republican Party’s wealthy donor class is working behind the scenes as the nomination race rages in the foreground to ensure the Party’s platform adopts language that accommodates same-sex marriage.
The American Unity Fund – financed by some of the GOP’s biggest donors — has launched what Politico calls “a well-organized, behind-the-scenes effort to lobby convention delegates who will draw up the platform,” which they intend will include an accommodation for same-sex marriage.
“We are working to ensure that each and every delegate is empowered to vote their conscience and truly craft an inclusive Republican Party platform,” said Jerri Ann Henry, who is leading the organization’s convention campaign. “We need to be inclusive.”
Backing the group are billionaire investors and hedge fund managers Paul Singer, Dan Loeb, Seth Klarman, and Cliff Asness.
Singer’s participation in the GOP primary has been noteworthy since his backing of former 2016 contender Sen. Marco Rubio, who insisted that Singer’s support would not lead him to change his views on marriage.
From a Breitbart News report:
Internationally, Singer funded a campaign run by the anti-Christian Human Rights Campaign that attacked American Christian leaders for getting involved in marriage fights overseas. The report issued by HRC and funded by Singer paints people like Brian Brown of NOM [National Organization for Marriage] and Ben Bull of Alliance Defending Freedom, two widely respected conservative leaders, as little more than criminals, complete with mug shots.
Singer is also a supporter of the highly unpopular Common Core standards and his foundation, the Paul E. Singer Foundation, has been a donor to the heart of former GOP 2016 contender Gov. Jeb Bush’s education empire, the Foundation for Excellence in Education, which also backs the Common Core standards.
As Politico reports, in 2012, the Republican Party’s platform supported a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union of one man and one woman, and assailed what it referred to as “the court-ordered redefinition of marriage” as “an assault on the foundations of our society.”
The American Unity Fund, however, hopes to lobby delegates from across the country who may have been discouraged by recent religious freedom measures in states such as Indiana and Georgia, and so-called “bathroom bills” in states such as North Carolina that would limit public restroom use to individuals by birth gender alone.
Henry says the message is that the Republican Party needs to moderate its positions on social issues in order to grow in numbers.
“It’s necessary if the party is to remain viable in the years to come,” she said.
Conservative host Rush Limbaugh observed Monday to his radio audience the behind-the-scenes plan to alter the GOP platform:
See, nobody’s talking about it, ’cause everybody’s still focused on who’s gonna be the nominee. Nobody’s talking about the party platform except the people working on it. And they are busy little beavers, and they’re working under cover of darkness, and they’re hiding behind the cloak of invisibility brought on by the coverage of the horse race.
Conservatives for traditional marriage and religious liberty, however, are prepared to fight to keep the traditional marriage plank of the GOP platform in place.
“Conservative forces need to understand there is a serious challenge, and they need to take it seriously,” warned Jim Bopp, a social conservative activist who was influential in designing the 2012 GOP platform.
Similarly, Eagle Forum president Ed Martin said, “We’re prepared for the fight. It’s hand-to-hand combat.”
Martin added that a change in the GOP’s position on marriage would lead to evangelical Christians staying home on election day in November, a situation that is often cited as the primary reason for 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s loss to President Barack Obama.
“If the Platform Committee is fighting over marriage,” he continued, “we’re coming out of the convention without any momentum at all.”
Martin and colleague Phyllis Schlafly – who has endorsed Donald Trump — have already met with the candidate to articulate concerns about the importance of traditional marriage to the GOP platform.
“I hope we win. The platform is really good,” Martin said. “But the Paul Singers of the world are spending millions.”
“[A]s you think about how the establishment is attempting to manipulate this convention to get a nominee they want, somebody not currently running, it will give you an idea of what they want this party to be once they finish running a convention with results they have engineered,” Limbaugh explained. “And it would not look anything like what the Republican Party has appeared to be during this campaign.”
Limbaugh emphasized the importance of cultural issues such as marriage and abortion.
“Safe to say, I’ll betcha within the bowels of the GOP establishment this campaign, everybody in it is embarrassing them — the donors — or troubling them, maybe not embarrassing some of them,” he added. “But it is an illustration of just how quickly things can change culturally. Four years and we’re gonna do a 180 on this.”
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