Apalling. Bush, that is. He choose this week to come out in support of–fulfilling a campaign promise made back in ‘o4–an amendment to the Constitution banning same sex marriage. The timing could not be crueler. Twenty-five years ago this week AIDS began to appear in this country.
The religious right could not have been more pleased. I remember a number of talibaptists coming out declaring that this was “God’s Wrath” on the homosexuals and those who would tolerate their perversions. After a quarter century of damping the fires of unreasoning hostility and getting to the point where we now see AIDS as a disease rather than some apocolyptic condemnation from a ficticious super being, Bush times his promise-keeping on gay marriage for this week!
Political opportunism doesn’t come any more raw and cold-blooded.
For yet another look at Bush's hypocrisy, check out http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/06/04/bushs-ol…
Dante put hypocrites all the way down into the 8th Circle of Hell (out of a total of 9 circles). I don't recall Dante placing ANYONE is hell for simply being gay.
You know, the evangelicals keep threatening the GOP that if they don't tow their line, they'll pull their vote.
So what? Who will they then vote for? A Democrat? I don't think so–not that they couldn't find a Democrat to front for them, but the nature of the Democratic Party is too fractured to be politically useful to a group bent on remaking the whole culture.
No, what they'd have to do is create their own party and put their own candidate forward–and that would be terrific, because, like the Libertarians, they would discover very quickly how little they actually represent America. And in turn, we would have a single party in which all these busy-body, Mrs. Grundy, turn-back-the-clock idiots could gather and be seen for the screed-crying hate-mongers and frightened ninnies they actually are.
It would be refreshing for a Republican to call their bluff. I'd actually vote for that one.
I might be wrong, but I think what evangelicals bring to the Republican table is a "swing" voter turnout. Evangelicals can get their flocks stirred up enough to actually go to the polls, and that's not necessarily the case with other groups that traditionally vote Republican. Indeed, stirring up the flocks appears to be the main reason why Bush and Congressional Republicans are talking this year about constitutional amendments to ban things such as flag burning and same-sex marriage. Such proposals have no hope of passing, but they appear every time there is an election, because they do get some core constituents motivated enough to actually go to the polls on election day. In tight political races, that turnout can swing an election (as we've seen in the last two presidential elections). Failure to garner that vote doesn't mean evangelicals vote Democrat, it means they stay home on election day, and that, by itself, could mean defeat for many Republican candidates. Thus, their pandering.