Mike Pence: GOP Agenda To Include Social Issues

MIKE PENCE
RECLAIMING THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
AND
THE AMERICAN DREAM

by

Chris Dickson

http://mikepencethebook.blogspot.com

Mike Pence has led the campaign to ensure social issues would not be ignored. | AP Photo Close

By JONATHAN ALLEN | 9/22/10 1:28 PM EDT Updated: 9/22/10 2:17 PM EDT

An election year agenda being unveiled by House Republicans Thursday will include language affirming the party's support of "traditional marriage" and its opposition to abortion rights, House GOP sources tell POLITICO.

The document, to be unveiled at a hardware store in Sterling, Va., will include "a commitment to life and a commitment to marriage," one source said. Two other sources cautioned that the language on marriage is likely to be in the preamble to a series of legislative goals and that an effort to put a bill along the lines of the Defense of Marriage Act into the package was rebuffed.

House Republicans had a spirited debate behind closed doors about the degree to which social issues should be included in the new agenda, and social conservatives have been pressing for the GOP to be more explicit in putting social issues in writing on this 2010 agenda.

Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-Ind.), winner of a 2012 presidential straw poll at the recent conservative Values Voters conference, led the campaign to ensure social issues would not be ignored. Some others believed that the plan should focus more narrowly on fiscal and security issues that unite a broader swath of the GOP.

The decision to at least affirm opposition to abortion and gay marriage appears to represent a compromise between the factions.

House Republicans will be able to review the new agenda this afternoon, after which they will discuss it at a conference meeting. Republican leaders will unveil it to the public Thursday morning.

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