A gay conservative who famously renounced his Republican affiliation this year told
Newsmax TV on Thursday that the party will keep handing the White House to Democrats if it doesn't stop coddling religious-right voters.
"We're already seeing candidates in 2016 pander to those out-of-touch cultural conservatives who are holding the party back," Jimmy LaSalvia, founder of the now-defunct organization GOProud, told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner.
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LaSalvia, twice banned from having a GOProud booth at the annual
Conservative Political Action Committee convention, was responding on Thursday to a
Daily Beast article about the uphill electoral battle facing so-called values voters in 2016.
He said the answer is not a nominee willing to treat homosexuality and contraceptive use as issues up for debate, because that will only alienate mainstream voters who accept both as facts of life.
"When you take positions … that don't seem to be based in reality, then people start to wonder if [anything] that you're for is based in reality," said LaSalvia. "And that's a fundamental problem."
He said a nominee who opposes gay marriage can make that case, but must do so without coming across as anti-gay — and therefore definable by Democrats as bigoted or culturally clueless.
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