Let’s put aside for a moment the pure absurdity of the number of candidates potentially vying for the Republican nomination for United States president. There could be as many as 15 people throwing their hat in the ring by the end of it all.
Primaries by nature pull candidates closer to their base, while a competitive general election pulls candidates back to the center. We all remember the craziness of the 2012 Republican primary — the first that featured the voice of the Tea Party fringe — but already the 2016 field may top the last one.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, widely regarded as the most moderate potential candidate for the Republicans, said in an interview Saturday with the Christian Broadcasting Network that he believed business owners should have the right to deny service based on sexual orientation.
Right after Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act debacle, Bush initially showed support for Gov. Pence but did so in the same “this discriminatory law isn’t really discriminating” way that all Republicans did. In an interview just days after the law’s passage, he said, “This law simply says the government has to have a level of burden to be able to establish there has been some kind ?of discrimination.”
This would be a reasonable explanation had the law actually been intended to protect religious freedom, but in the ensuing debate following its passage, it became clear — whether through the actions and words of those who lobbied Pence in the first place or through the blatant refusal on the part of the Indiana legislature to pass true civil rights protections for the LGBT community — the RFRA was intended to allow business owners the ability to discriminate against customers based on sexual ?orientation.
Now the most moderate Republican in the field not only doubles down on his support of such laws but goes even farther by supporting the intentions that were initially denied even by its supporters. This is all following the law’s failure in not one but two deeply conservative states — the other being Louisiana, where fellow presidential hopeful Gov. Bobby Jindal signed an executive order to bypass his legislature’s defeat of the RFRA. I know a crowded primary is going to bring out some extra crazy in a presidential cycle, but when candidates are supporting measures too extreme even for their friendly territories, things are getting out of hand.
If this is what we are to expect from the established candidates, I can’t imagine what we will get from the extremes. This is a serious problem within the Republican Party, and if they have any hope of success they should shut these extremes down now. Until then, however, this offers a clear example of why we need a change of leadership in Indiana — so we are no longer viewed as the birthplace of our country’s most extreme viewpoints.
thompjak@indiana.edu
