Insights | Social Conservatism Wins the Day?

With the fickle Republican Platform Committee seemingly at odds -- if only momentarily -- over whether to include anti-Internet-gambling language in the party platform, we asked J. Daniel Walsh, a leading Internet gambling lobbyist in Washington, D.C., whether the language's inclusion or exclusion was really all that significant to begin with.

Mr. Walsh told IGamingNews the following by telephone this afternoon:

It's not. Here's the significance:

In 2000 and 2004, I'm certain -- and maybe in '96 as well -- the Republican platforms contained anti-Internet-gambling language. And there was no discussion.

The platform committee, to start with, are social conservatives -- they're people who want to talk about guns and abortion, gay marriage and things like that. So, the platform committee skews pretty heavily toward social conservatism.

The Poker Players Alliance tried to approach the staff of the platform committee to talk about at least Internet poker, if not all Internet gambling. And they weren't given a lot of heat at that level.

They made a pretty concerted effort to have e-mails sent to the platform committee on that.

Now, I don't know whether that grassroots interaction was what did it, or whether it was just that people on the subcommittee had a more personal-freedom bent.

But, for whatever reason, for the first time, some consideration was given to the millions of Americans who play online and who feel they -- and not the government -- should determine entertainment choices.

So, the drafters at the subcommittee level chose not to include that plank.

To be honest, had that just gone forward as it was, there's a chance it might've stayed that way. But when CQ (Congressional Quarterly) ran that story, the sports leagues and the family groups were made aware of it -- and that was it: They didn't even really have to win the argument.

And that's something endemic in the Republican Party; that is, the big piece of the Regan revolution -- the term I use as a Republican -- was that the government's main function was to provide for and protect individual freedom.

And there is a strong strain of that in the Republican Party, but on the issues that the social conservatives care about, if you divide the world into freedom conservatives and social conservatives, on the issues the issues the social conservatives care about, freedom conservatives are generally no match for them.

At least this year there was a debate; in the previous Congresses, there hasn't been. Hopefully, if we're still doing this in 2012, maybe there will be an even more robust debate -- maybe one we can win.

But for those of us who consider ourselves freedom conservatives, it was disheartening. But certainly we're not worse off than we were in 2000 and 2004, and in some ways we're better because at least there was a debate.