The vast majority of you think mainstream Republicans will give up on this issue within 5 years?
Seriously?
I must be in the minority then, because I don't think they'll give up on it. If anything, they'll play it according to the politics of each state. Obviously they'll talk about it a lot more in the Bible Belt states as opposed to the swing states and blue states. As someone already mentioned on here, it's been 40 years and they are still talking about abortion because they know that most rural voters are single-issue voters, and that's the biggest issue to them, and yes, it is still more controversial than marriage equality. Republicans are tone deaf in that sense, if 2012 is any indication when they continued to talk about rape, of all scapegoats to go after rape victims.
The GOP will, in my opinion, continue to exploit religion and claim to be the party of traditional moral family values crusaders and small government but will continue to take a sick interest in what women do with their uteruses and what consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedrooms. They'll continue to do so because they know their base is too uninformed to understand that they vote against their economic interests every time they vote for the party that wants to cut taxes for the wealthy, I mean, "job creators." I think in 2016 they will moderate and take the old Democratic position that they support civil unions with all the same benefits of marriage but oppose marriage equality because of "religious freedoms." They have to do this, otherwise they know that the Bible thumpers will not turn out to vote for them or vote for a more conservative third party candidate. They won't stop talking about it even after it becomes legalized nationally, much in the same sense as Roe v. Wade.
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