(derekbaker)

Hypocrisy on Marriage, Yet Again

A couple of weeks ago, Newsweek released a poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International. It got included in some of the usual poll news roundups, because it showed the president's approval ratings down to 30 percent. Less than a third of the country.

What I don't remember hearing about then were the additional questions some surveys further ask to focus on some timely issue or other. In this one, they were gauging voters' concerns over candidates who were divorced, and whether or not this would affect how they would vote, as well as opinions on some other issues.

This is timely for the Republicans, because several of their announced or potential candidates for president in 2008 have been divorced. John McCain: divorced once. Giuliani: divorced twice. Newt Gingrich (possibly running): divorced twice, most famously presenting terms to his first wife while she was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery. As far as I can tell, Mitt Romney and Sam Brownback are still married to their first wives.

So Newsweek was trying to check Republican primary voters against some questions about how likely divorce would play a role in their decision to support a candidate. To do that, they broke out self-identified "Evangelical Republicans" to compare against the general public, since this is the group that's most likely to turn out for Republican primaries.

No big surprises in some of the data. Evangelical Republicans are more likely to think no-fault divorce laws have been bad for the country or society (52%, versus 42% of the general population). They're more likely to vote for a candidate who seems to have a strong marriage and has never been divorced (60%) than to say it doesn't make much difference (38%); the general public is exactly reverse in those percentages.

They're more forgiving (more likely to vote for such a candidate if he or she takes personal responsibility for mistakes that broke up the first marriage: 50%), but still only 43% of them say it doesn't make much difference, compared to the consistent 60% of the general public who say it wouldn't affect their vote.

They're also far more likely to say "a lot" or "some" to the question of whether a relationship between a candidate and a spouse tells them something about how good a president he or she would be: 70%. (For the general public, that's only 56%.)

Also in the no-surprise category: only 26% of self-described Evangelical Republicans support either marriage rights or civil unions for same-sex couples, whereas 50% of the general population surveyed supports one of these (with marriage rights slightly outweighing civil unions 26% to 24%, in fact).

But — and here's the hypocrisy, yet again — when asked the question if they themselves have ever been divorced, 28% of survey respondents said yes, but 32% of the Evangelical Republicans said they had been divorced.


I realize it isn't all the same people who said they were divorced who also judge divorced candidates more harshly or want to restrict marriage to heterosexuals. Or, for all I know, many of them consider themselves the "injured party" in their divorce, and therefore resolve to take marriage all the more seriously for themselves, their families, and everyone else in the future. ("Bitter" is, I believe, the way that reaction could be described.)

But the numbers don't show any of that. The most one can say from the data is that Evangelical Republicans have managed to come to terms with their own apparent contradictions and now feel ready to pass judgment and decide right and wrong for the rest of us.

And this could put a whole new twist on campaigning for McCain, Giuliani and potentially Gingrich, each of whom later admitted to relationships with a future wife while still married to a previous one. Hey, big guy, playing the field? Call it "playing to the base."

Labels: marriage, politics, values

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