Mitt Romney's opposition to gay marriage unites base

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Politico:

Social conservatives who doubted Mitt Romney now have a reason to rally around him after President Obama’s embrace of gay marriage.

Despite the fact that very conservative and religious voters didn’t support Romney in the primary, their fierce opposition to the issue will give the presumptive GOP nominee a way to harness conservative enthusiasm in November.

And for Romney, whose position on same-sex marriage has been consistent over the years, conservative activists say Obama’s declaration may be a way for Romney to finally prove to his bona-fides to voters on the right who have always been suspicious that he’s not one of them.

“President Obama just ‘evolved’ himself into a one-term president,” said Brian Brown, the president of the National Organization for Marriage. “This is a disaster for the Democratic Party: the reality is that the exact states he needs to win are the states that have overwhelmingly passed legislation defining marriage as between a man and a woman.”

“What I’m hearing from folks around the country is ‘game on, we’re in, we will do whatever is necessary to elect Mitt Romney now because Obama has shown where he really stands,” Brown said.

But it’s unclear that Romneyland plans to aggressively use the issue to their advantage — at least among the general public. Reacting to Obama’s announcement, Romney was muted, reiterating his opposition to gay marriage and calling it a “very tender and sensitive topic, as are many social issues.”

He didn’t even take the bait when asked whether Obama had changed positions on the issue, saying that was up to the media to determine.

The reason may be because polling shows increased acceptance of and support for same-sex marriage around the country. But despite that, North Carolina became the 30th state to ban same-sex marriage on Tuesday. And a handful of other states, like Maine, Minnesota, Washington and Maryland, are poised to vote on some form of same-sex marriage measure in November.

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Obama continues to "evolve" into a possible one-termer...