Obama vs. "Insert Anti-LGBT GOP Candidate Here" in 2012

Not wasting any time before focusing in on the 2012 Presidential elections, a new poll out surveying the Republican field in 2012 shows that the top four vote getters have a lengthy record of homophobia and trying to take away the rights of LGBT people.

Clarus Research Group ran a poll of 1,003 registered voters between August 14-18, 2009, and their results show that among the GOP, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney leads the field with 30 percent, followed closely behind by former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee at 22 percent.  Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin?  She's in there, too, coming in third at 19 percent, and then former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich at 15 percent.

Wow, don't those four names read like an anti-LGBT barbershop quartet?

So the bad news is, of course, that four extremely anti-LGBT candidates are leading the way.  The good news?  In Clarus's poll, Obama pounds them all in a general election match up.

Being more than three years away from the Election, much of what can be read into this research poll probably revolves simply around name recognition.  At the moment, people just don't know Republican names like Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, or Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, or South Dakota Senator John Thune - all of whom have expressed an interest in running.

But it should be telling that the four most popular people in the Republican party are not only anti-LGBT, they pride their careers on advocating for discrimination toward LGBT people.  It should also be telling that after a disastrous 2008 election and eight years of George W. Bush, the GOP top contenders are all to the right of Sen. John McCain, if not to the right of George W., on the issue of LGBT rights.

For Romney's part, he tried to push a constitutional referendum in Massachusetts that would have stripped gays and lesbians of their right to civil marriage.  Romney also used an archane law from nearly 100 years ago to prevent out-of-state couples from getting married in Massachusetts.  Sure, in the 1990s Mitt Romney said he would be better for gay rights than the late Sen. Ted Kennedy.  But in the 2000s, he hit the trail hard opposed to almost any and all LGBT issues.

Huckabee might just be the most anti-LGBT candidate for the Republican Party in history.  He's railed about gay people committing sodomy on Fox News.  He champions a federal constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.  He'll be appearing before the extremely anti-LGBT (and once defined as a hate group) Illinois Family Institute (IFI) in Fall 2009, despite the fact that the IFI has compared LGBT people to Nazis.  He also told "Meet the Press" in 2007 that LGBT people are aberrant and unnatural.

Palin essentially needs very little explanation.  She fought efforts to recognize National Coming Out Day in Alaska.  During her Vice Presidential debate with Joe Biden this past year, she trashed the idea of same-sex marriage.  And earlier this year, she jumped to the side of former Miss California and Miss USA contestant Carrie Prejean, after Prejean said that "opposite marriage" was superior to same-sex marriage.

And Gingrich, of course.  Gingrich helped usher the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) through Congress in 1996.  Since then, he hasn't quit in railing against LGBT rights.  Most notably last year, Gingrich spoke of a gay fascism that was taking over the country, as LGBT rights groups organized and fought back against California's Proposition 8.  Gingrich also has become buddy-buddy with a controversial pastor, Rev. Lou Engle, who has not only fought to deny rights to gays and lesbians, but has called for Christians to become martyrs when it comes to defending issues like "marriage" or fighting against abortion.

Yup, there's not buts about this one.  We still have at least another year and a half or two years before we know who's all in for the GOP in 2012.  But if polls right now are any indication, the GOP is lurching right-ward on civil rights issues and will be far to the right of Sen. John McCain when it comes to issues pertaining to LGBT rights.

Though they deny it, it sure as hell seems like this is just one more step toward the GOP becoming nothing but a regional party of very conservative elements of the South.