WASHINGTON (By Eleanor Clift, Newsweek) November 25, 2006 — There ought to be a prohibition against opportunistic politicians messing around in state laws to further their presidential ambitions. With his days as governor of Massachusetts nearing an end, Mitt Romney is trying to reopen the issue of same-sex marriage in the only state where it is legal.

Romney opposes gay marriage, and he hopes to ride the issue to the White House. Talk about retro. Rallying the right around fear of the so-called homosexual agenda worked in 2004, but it failed to rouse the same degree of passion in ’06. Voters are wising up to the games politicians play.

A relative unknown, Romney is fashioning himself as the conservative alternative to John McCain for the Republican presidential nomination. The right doesn’t trust McCain, and Romney thinks he can prove his bona fides with social conservatives by forcing a measure onto the Massachusetts ballot in '08 to amend the state constitution and ban gay marriage. The state legislature adjourned without doing his bidding, so Romney has appealed to the state Supreme Court, asking it to order a ballot initiative because 170,000 citizens have signed a petition asking for it. This is the same court that in 2003 ruled same-sex marriage legal; since then, 8,000 gay and lesbian couples have been joined in matrimony in Massachusetts.

The issue would be settled in Massachusetts if not for Romney’s meddling. A survey done by the progressive Campaign for America’s Future found that the more gay marriage is debated, the more tolerant the country grows, with a majority (51 percent) now saying “homosexuality is a way of life that should be accepted by society” rather than something that should be “discouraged by society” (42 percent). Romney is going to battle stations over yesterday’s issue. He says McCain is “disingenuous” because he opposes same-sex marriage but believes it should be left up to the states. Romney wants to amend the U.S. Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman. Yet he was elected governor as a social moderate and once ran against Ted Kennedy for the Senate as a liberal Republican. Where does he get off accusing McCain of trying to have it both ways when it comes to gay marriage?

The conservative movement is in a real meltdown since the election. Conservatives have been so wedded to this White House that they don’t know which way to turn for ’08. This will be the first election since 1922 where there is no sitting president or vice president on the ballot. President Bush has been derelict in positioning a successor, and thankfully so, since the policies he advocated have brought America worldwide condemnation and deserve to be retired with him. There is no conservative darling to capture the hearts of the right, no candidate who can check off all their boxes. McCain was clearly squirming when ABC’s George Stephanopoulos pressed him on "This Week" last weekend about whether he supports civil unions, a loaded term among social conservatives who see it as a fig leaf for gay marriage. McCain avoided the phrase but said he supported various partnerships to facilitate hospital visits and the like. His home state of Arizona just voted down an anti-gay marriage initiative that also would have banned domestic partnerships even among heterosexual couples. The state’s large retired population took the lead in defeating the measure. Many older couples opt to live together rather than marry to keep their retirement incomes intact.

McCain gets more latitude on this subject because we sense that in his heart, he’s a Goldwater libertarian. Social issues are not what drive him in public life. He’s playing to his party’s conservative base as newly defined by the religious right, but if elected president, he’s not going to be beholden to them the way Bush has been. Romney is harder to read. As both a Mormon and a onetime moderate, he can expect some tension with and suspicion from the evangelical community about his conversion to social conservatism. The voters may be less inclined to give Romney a pass if he goes overboard with his fealty to the right. His father, the late George Romney, a three-term governor of Michigan, famously offended his party’s hawks when he belatedly confessed after visiting Vietnam that he’d been subjected to “the greatest brainwashing that anybody could get.” The admission subjected him to ridicule (“all it would have taken is a light rinse”), and ended his presidential hopes.

The Republicans took control of the House in 1994 on the strength of the Contract with America, which stayed away from social issues. Former House majority leader Dick Armey, architect of the contract along with Newt Gingrich, recalled to NEWSWEEK that when he first ran, the head of Texas Right to Life thanked him for his pro-life stand but recommended he not talk about it on the campaign trail. Puzzled, Armey asked why. He was told the subject makes a lot of people uncomfortable. The Gingrich revolutionaries championed reform and fiscal responsibility. How the GOP got from those issues to gay marriage is not evolution, it’s devolution.