House Speaker John Boehner speaks to the media in Washington, D.C.
By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — What "religious freedom" bill?
Republicans stung by the culture wars that dominated the nation's political discourse this year are standing down on social issues, acutely aware that the presidential and congressional elections five months off are expected to turn on a thin margin of cash-strapped independent voters neither party can afford to alienate.
How about House Speaker John Boehner's vow to reverse President Barack Obama's birth control policy? There's no sign of any such legislation. The Ohio Republican reminds people daily that he is focused on jobs now.
[Read: Bitter Primaries Undercut GOP Hopes.]
Obama's revelation that he supports gay marriage? Told ya so, said social conservatives at the core of the GOP — before they turned back to assailing the president's stewardship of the economy.
And what happened to the GOP's efforts to curb abortion? House Republican leaders made it go away by offering a vote on a bill to ban gender-based abortions Thursday — under special rules that guaranteed it would fail.
There is a growing sense among Republicans that, with Mitt Romney all but crowned as their presidential nominee, social issues generally are losers for the party at a time when the GOP is trying to appeal to swing voters. Through a searing primary season that erupted repeatedly over gender politics to the general election now under way, polls have consistently shown that voters remain most concerned about jobs and the economy.
"I'm not trying to dismiss the social issues ... they are important to a lot of people," said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, one of Romney's liaisons to Congress. "But we must stay focused on the jobs and the economy. That does more to affect people's social (policy) than anything else."
Polls and the party's recent experience suggest the strategy also is smart politics. For one thing, Friday's economic news showed unemployment rose slightly in May, with the jobless rate ticking up from 8.1 percent to 8.2 percent.
The GOP took a drubbing over the winter after picking a fight over a provision in Obama's health care law that required employers to provide workers access to contraception, even when religious views prohibit its use. In a coordinated effort, Republicans on both sides of the Capitol denounced the policy as a violation of the Constitution's guarantee of religious liberty and vowed to reverse Obama's rule. Democrats fired back that Republicans were trying to limit access to contraception as part of a "Republican war against women."
[Read: In New York 27th, a Fierce GOP Congressional Primary Rages.]
Polls showed that the Democrats won that early round, key to their mission to retain Obama's wide lead among women, who account for a majority of voters in presidential election years. Republicans were slow to respond, and Romney never engaged in the debate over contraception, convinced then as now that all Americans view the election as referendum on Obama's stewardship of the recovering economy.
Recent voter research offers support for the move away from the sort of "culture war" that conservative Patrick Buchanan called for from the podium of the Republican National Convention in 1992. Many Republicans viewed that approach as one that alienated moderates. Two decades later, as the candidates battle over that same voting bloc, polling suggests that social issues are a motivating factor for female voters — but not in the Republicans' favor.
An AP-GfK poll conducted earlier this month showed Obama holding a 53 percent to 32 percent advantage over Romney as the candidate who would do a better job handling social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.
And while a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Wednesday showed Republican women warming to Romney, other surveys suggest he still faces a broad gap on issues of concern to women.
A Kaiser Family Foundation poll also released Wednesday found that 4 in 10 women have taken some political action as a result of things they've heard, read or seen recently about women's reproductive health choices and services. Among liberal women, 51 percent said they had taken action, compared with 41 percent among conservative women.
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