On her Monday night MSNBC program, Rachel Maddow reacted to the weekend’s proceedings at the Alabama Republican Party summer meeting, primarily the party’s decision to not impose an edict banning steering committee members from publicly opposing any part of the party’s national platform.
An amendment to the party’s bylaws was originally conceived after Alabama College Republican chairwoman Stephanie Petelos reacted to the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act by voicing her support for gay marriage.
The ALGOP executive committee’s decision to reject that amendment was a move to prevent the party from stifling free speech and expression, but Maddow seemed to interpret the vote as somewhat of an endorsement of “marriage equality.”
After criticizing “deep blue Illinois” for pushing out a pro-gay marriage GOP chairman, Maddow suggested they take a cue from “crimson red Alabama.”
“Well, if you head a couple states south of Illinois, and a little to the right, you will find yourself in the great state of Alabama, which is not a blue state. It is not even close. Not even remotely purple, crimson tide and all that,” Maddow said. “Well, in Alabama on this issue, something weird has also just happened. After the pro-gay marriage ruling from the Supreme Court earlier this summer, the chair of the Alabama College Republicans came out in support of what the Supreme Court did. She came out in support of marriage equality in Alabama — in Alabama Republican politics.”
“She even went so far as to criticize the record of harsh anti-gay rhetoric from her fellow Republicans saying, quote, ‘We are governed by the Constitution and not the Bible,’” Maddow continued. “Alabama Republicans did not see that coming, right? Once that happened, though, what happened next was probably inevitable. The old muckety-muck in the state Republican Party decided this upstart president of the College Republicans needed to feel the wrath of a Republican Party purge. They decided they would set out new bylaws requiring that anybody in a job, like, say, being head of the college Republicans in the state, would have to agree with everything in the Republican Party’s national platform. No dissent allowed. If you did not agree with the national party’s anti-gay official platform, you could not be in a leadership role in the state.”
The dispute received national attention when the amendment sponsored by Don Wallace of Tuscaloosa and Bonnie Sachs of Double Springs was made public by Yellowhammer News and then picked up by national media outlets, including left-leaning websites like Talking Points Memo and BuzzFeed Politics, which put the issue on Maddow’s radar.
“So, College Republican president says something shockingly not anti- gay,” Maddow said. “Alabama party elders decide to change the rules of the party so to as allow themselves to kick her out of her job for not holding that anti-gay enough views. And this weekend, the party voted on this issue and decided that they would side with the president of the College Republicans. In Alabama — Alabama Republicans voted not to change their rules to allow themselves to fire her. So, she gets to keep her job. And that means if you are keeping score at home, Republicans in Alabama it turns out are less anti-gay than Republicans in Illinois. Go figure.”
Maddow continued on by saying that Republicans are the key to increasing the number of states with laws endorsing gay marriage.
“Republicans are the ones who are all over the map and changing fast, and changing in unpredictable ways and in unpredictable places,” she added. “And those internal Republican dynamics which we will be learning about and we will be surprised by one red state at a time all over the country, those are going to be the determining force for what happens in this major civil rights issue in our country right now, which is why it makes sense that when the ACLU decided to hire a new strategist to try to flip more states into being pro-marriage equality they did not hire a Democrat, they hired a Republican. They hired a major league hugely respected Republican heavyweight strategist [Steve Schmidt] to try to flip more states into supporting marriage equality.”
Maddow clearly doesn’t understand what happened in Alabama over the weekend, which I suppose is hardly a surprise.
Follow Jeff on Twitter @Jeff_Poor
