Well done, Governor Brewer
Well, good for Jan Brewer. Yesterday, the Republican governor of Arizona vetoed a bill allowing business owners to discriminate against customers on religious grounds. The bill wasn't explicitly, exclusively aimed at gays and lesbians, but come on—it was aimed at gays and lesbians, part of a multistate effort to create broad protections for people who don't want to serve same-sex couples.
The electoral-politics-focused, not-all-that-antigay Republican establishment stepped in to kill the Arizona bill, and Jon Stewart is not impressed. These GOP leaders should be speaking out against the bill's aims directly, not simply pointing out that it's unnecessary, bad for business, etc.! And well, sure. But I find it hard to get worked up about politicians doing the right thing for the wrong reasons and then giving the cameras politically calculated talking points instead of pure moral outrage. This is pretty much how it usually works (when they do the right thing at all). If you want your politicians with purely moral motivations, stop watching actual Washington and go binge-watch The West Wing.
Will the Republican impulse that got the Arizona bill vetoed continue to win out against the Republican impulse that created the bill in the first place? It's hard to say, and the fall midterms could change the math. But as Paul Waldman points out, it's notable that the Republicans are the more divided party right now—that's a big turnaround in recent years. (Not that the Democrats are all that unified, but still.) Rolling back LGBT rights has never been a high priority to the John McCains of the world, and these days it's a high priority to a quickly shrinking share of the electorate.
