Gary Bauer filled in for Family Research Council head Tony Perkins on Washington Watch yesterday where he once again blamed the Republican Party’s problems on a lack of opposition to gay marriage and abortion rights.
Bauer, who once led the FRC but now runs American Values and the Campaign for Working Families, chided President Obama for favoring marriage equality and claimed that “if Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today” he would condemn Obama’s pro-gay rights stance, which Bauer said “twisted and distorted” the legacy of the civil rights movement.
“But in spite of all we’ve done, all of our work, everything that you’ve done at the grassroots level,” Bauer lamented, “we are right on the edge of losing that issue.”
Later in the program, Bauer told a caller from North Carolina that the sole reason Romney won the state and no other swing states was because Bauer ran ads there attacking Obama’s position on marriage equality.
“We lost them all again except for one state and it was North Carolina,” Bauer said. “I believe the only reason that Gov. Romney won North Carolina was because the voters of that state were reminded of that issue, so it’s a lesson I think for the Republican Party.”
Let me give a tip of the hat to North Carolina, you know in 2008 President Obama won all of the swing states that are so important in presidential politics. In this last presidential election in 2012 there was a major effort made by conservatives to get those swing states back. Unfortunately, we lost them all again except for one state and it was North Carolina. The people of North Carolina took another look at Barack Obama and decided, ‘hey, we made a mistake four years ago,’ and this time around they voted differently. I’d like to think at least in part that happened in North Carolina because of some ads that I and other groups ran in that state on the marriage issue, reminding the voters of North Carolina who had just voted just a little over a year ago to keep marriage between a man and a woman, that President Obama had come out right after that vote and had endorsed same-sex marriage. I believe the only reason that Gov. Romney won North Carolina was because the voters of that state were reminded of that issue, so it’s a lesson I think for the Republican Party.
That’s right; Bauer thinks that this ad put Romney over the top in North Carolina.
