John Avlon

The Conservative Political Action Conference’s annual Washington convention this week is not where you’d expect to find a new front in the gay civil rights movement. But that’s going to be the story this week at CPAC.

America has been going through a gay civil rights movement for more than a decade. One measure of its success is that it has finally reached the Republican Party.

Former first daughter Barbara Bush made news by announcing her support of gay marriage, joining the former GOP presidential nominee’s daughter Meghan McCain.
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Last year, former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman came out. These stands have exposed fundamental fault lines within the conservative coalition between libertarians and social conservatives, between a new generation and the old. Read More…

There has been more bipartisan accomplishment in Washington over the past two weeks than in the past two years.

That’s because the balance of power is back in the center of the Senate, a shift from the hyperpartisan trench warfare that characterized the first two years of the Obama administration.

Yes, the president deserves a great deal of credit for quickly internalizing the results of the election and resetting the tone in Washington with his tax-cut compromise.

But look at the litany of accomplishments from this lame duck—from the the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell to ratification of New START—and you’ll see that an emerging group of centrist Republican senators made the margins of victory possible. Significantly, the name John McCain is not on that list. Read More…

From savior to heretic in one week—well, that was fast.

Some conservative activists are already taking aim at Massachusetts Senator-elect Scott Brown by calling him a RINO, or Republican in Name Only.

With Martha Coakley out of the way, they’ve belatedly discovered that Brown is (gasp) pro-choice. It’s an accusation that was always hiding in plain sight. A glance at his campaign Web site revealed that Brown believed “this decision should ultimately be made by a woman in consultation with her doctor.” It’s not that he was ever going to be on NARAL’s Christmas card list; he opposes partial-birth abortion and supports parental notification. But like a libertarian, or a centrist Republican, he believes that government shouldn’t ultimately make this most difficult personal decision for a woman outside reasonable restrictions. Read More…

When entering the wilderness after two consecutive election defeats, it is good to have a vigorous and clarifying debate — because something is not working.

Demographics are destiny, and election returns show that the GOP base is shrinking. The party is decisively winning only whites, regular church-goers, voters over age 60, and residents of towns with populations under 50,000. In a country that is increasingly diverse and urban, that is a recipe for long-term disaster. Read More…