Lisa Lerer on Gay Marriage Ruling: GOP Can Now Have a ‘Secret Sigh of Relief’

WALLACE: “Lisa, let me pick up on what George was discussing which is the political fallout from all this. While conservatives clearly lost in both cases, some people are arguing they are in fact in better shape politically going forward. One, your thought about that and, two, how big an issue does the court now become in the 2016 election?”

LERER: “Well, I think publicly certainly as George pointed out, there's a lot of consternation amongst Republican candidates, but there is certainly a sentiment within the Republican Party, a sigh of relief, the quiet secret sigh of relief that maybe this has wiped the table clean of these divisive social issues, now Republicans can pivot to the kind of economic and foreign policy issues that they would like this election to be about. I think that's going to be really hard. Because the incentives for a Republican candidate to win a primary are very different than the incentives to win a general. So you have this inherent conflict. It makes a lot of sense in a primary to talk about social issues when 40 percent of the party self-identifies as white evangelical voters. In a general, that doesn't make as much sense. So, it's a tough political issue for them to work their way through. On the court, look, there's always a lot of talk that the court will become a political issue.”