On Hillary Clinton’s official campaign website, the Democrats are reviving an old line of attack: criticizing Republicans for their so-called “radical” positions on social issues.
A webpage on the Hillary for President official website titled “Donald Trump and Mike Pence literally said all of these outrageous things” seeks to catalogue “all of the ignorant, incoherent, and divisive things these two have said.”
However, the first three issues the website references — abortion, LGBT issues, and gay marriage — are each issues that the Trump campaign has largely tried to avoid. Indeed, in his keynote acceptance address last night, Trump made an explicit appeal to the LGBT community for their support, and he has otherwise mostly refrained from discussing these issues in recent weeks.
As for Pence, his record has sometimes shown a similar deference to the left on social issues. He particularly drew ire from conservatives for caving to big business interests and neutering the Indiana version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act last year.
Trump and Pence have both, at various points, seemed comfortable with the “truce strategy” articulated by some Republican leaders since the 2012 election — the idea that the GOP has to focus on economic and national security issues at the expense of social issues.
Clinton’s latest line of attack goes to show one of the fatal flaws of the truce strategy: Democrats aren’t interested in declaring a truce. They will continue to attack GOP candidates on issues like abortion and marriage, regardless of Republicans’ actual stances.
Michael Lucchese works for the American Principles Project.
