As pundits and analysts debate the impact of Barack Obama’s support for gay marriage on the 2012 election, Matthew Dowd, a top strategist of the 2004 Bush campaign, writes at the Huffington Post that “marriage initiatives in 2004 on the ballot in 11 states had no discernable effect on turnout among conservatives.”
In 2004, I worked on President Bush’s campaign as chief strategist and was deeply involved in examining and determining which issues would motivate conservatives and evangelicals. In all that analysis preparing for the campaign, not a single social issue rose to the top five motivators (not abortion, not gay marriage, not a one). The motivators for that election were national security issues, issues concerning the budget and taxes, and issues surrounding the economy. And these are the issues the campaign put all their resources behind and I constantly advocated internally as our focus.
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