Sad: Openly Gay Romney Adviser Steps Down Under Pressure From Social Conservatives

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Written By:
Rob Port

May 1, 2012
5:29pm

The Romney campaign drew the ire of social conservatives by hiring an open gay foreign policy adviser named Richard Grenell. The Family Research Council was griping, as were some folks at the Media Research Center.

This week Obama turned up the volume on foreign policy issues, what with his ball spiking on the bin Laden operation and his trip to Afghanistan, and one would have expected Grenell to be a part of the Romney campaign’s response. But he wasn’t, and according to Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post, Romney’s decision to keep him under wraps combined with criticism from social conservatives was enough to make him want to quit the campaign.

The Obama campaign has responded, and while there is an element of blatant point-scoring here, I find myself sort of agreeing with their position:

“Today we learned that in the year 2012, a Republican nominee for President can’t have a gay person as spokesman,” wrote Obama Digital Director Teddy Goff on Twitter. “This is the kind of bigoted, anti-gay extremists a Romney administration would find itself held hostage to,” added pro-Obama super PAC founder Bill Burton. “After a brief and wondrous moratorium, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell once again firmly in place inside the Romney campaign,” said former White House speechwriter Jon Lovett.

This attitude about gays is only going to drive the GOP to the margins. The Republican party, and the conservative movement, are supposed to be the champions of individual liberty and small government. And yet here conservatives are in a circular firing squad over an openly gay Republican working for a Republican presidential campaign.

Sad.