A Stitch in Haste

All kinds of reports from the gay rights trenches:

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ITEM: Boo for conservatives --

A U.S. group that spearheaded an unsuccessful push for a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage has reset its sights on state lawmakers, conceding it has little chance to successfully change the U.S. constitution in a Democrat-controlled Congress.

The Washington-based Alliance for Marriage will try to build a nationwide network of state lawmakers who would support such an amendment to the Constitution, the group's leaders said in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday, a day before they planned to unveil their new effort.
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"We believe the day is coming when the Marriage Protection Amendment will be sent to the states," said Bob Adams, vice president of the alliance. "The time to organize for that is now, not 10 years down the road."

MY TAKE: Damn right 10 years down the road is not the time. Ten years from now today's younger politicians will be apologizing for their anti-gay votes.

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ITEM: Boo-hoo for conservatives?

A group of influential Christian conservatives and their allies emerged from a private meeting at a Florida resort this month dissatisfied with the Republican presidential field and uncertain where to turn.

The event was a meeting of the Council for National Policy, a secretive club whose few hundred members include Dr. James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family, the Rev. Jerry Falwell of Liberty University and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform.
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But in a stark shift from the group's influence under President Bush, the group risks relegation to the margins. Many of the conservatives who attended the event, held at the beginning of the month at the Ritz-Carlton on Amelia Island, Fla., said they were dismayed at the absence of a champion to carry their banner in the next election.

MY TAKE: Cry me a river. In actuality, radical social conservatives have at least two candidates they could rally around (Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee). What they don't have is a winning candidate they could rally around. So they're sitting around waiting for a winner to emerge, at which time they're concoct some post facto excuse for supporting him. So much for the "values" voters controlling the GOP anymore.

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ITEM: Yay for liberal politicians?

Wary conservative leaders, as well as gay-rights advocates, share a belief that at least two measures will win approval this year: a hate-crimes bill that would cover offenses motivated by anti-gay bias, and a measure that would outlaw workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Also on the table -- although with more doubtful prospects -- will be a measure to be introduced Wednesday seeking repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that bans openly gay and lesbian Americans from serving in the military.

MY TAKE: Even if these measures pass, President Bush would likely veto them, and neither house of Congress would have the votes to override. So the "progress" is fractured at best. Meanwhile, Pam's House Blend has more details on the push to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, while Outright Libertarians remains unimpressed at best by the Democrats. We report, you decide.

The most un-Christian man in America tries to tut-tut his way out the ever-deepening pit of irrelevancy he and his soulless zombies find themselves in:

Reports have surfaced in the press about a meeting that occurred last Saturday in Salt Lake City involving more than 50 pro-family leaders. The purpose of the gathering was to discuss our response if both the Democratic and Republican Parties nominate standard-bearers who are supportive of abortion.
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The other approach, which I find problematic, is to choose a candidate according to the likelihood of electoral success or failure. Polls don't measure right and wrong; voting according to the possibility of winning or losing can lead directly to the compromise of one's principles. In the present political climate, it could result in the abandonment of cherished beliefs that conservative Christians have promoted and defended for decades. Winning the presidential election is vitally important, but not at the expense of what we hold most dear.

There are two reasons why Dobson's "What, us worry?" posturing is, to be blunt, bullshit:

1. Sam Brownback

2. Mike Huckabee

There is no rational basis (to the extent that these Bible-thumping cretins can ever be "rational") not to support -- unequivocally, unreservedly and unapologetically -- either of these candidates. They are both radically pro-life and radically anti-gay. Neither is a Mormon (i.e., Satan) and neither is a thrice-married cross-dresser. Neither has any appreciable record of flip-flopping. Either would be a radical social conservative's dream candidate.

Just one problem: Neither can win. Neither ever had any hope of winning in the past, and neither has any hope of winning today.

And the Dobsonian zombies have, at every step, refused to even recognize their existence, let alone endorse them.

Coincidence?

So when Dobson insists that to "choose a candidate according to the likelihood of electoral success or failure" is -- his term -- "problematic," he is a liar (and, as a corollary, a sinner).

Dobson would be wiser to preach his "this ship can't sink" gobbledygook to his moron minions and not humiliate himself on the op-ed pages of the New York Times. "Remember your target audience" and all that.

More thoughts at Box Turtle Bulletin, Southern Beale.

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Sam Brownback on abortion.

Mike Huckabee on abortion.

Sam Brownback on gay marriage (See also here).

Mike Huckabee on gay marriage. (See also here).

Much can be said, and has been said, about Pat Robertson's endorsement of Rudy Giuliani and Sam Brownback's coincidentally timed endorsement of John McCain.

I'll just quote myself from last month:

There is no rational basis (to the extent that these Bible-thumping cretins can ever be "rational") not to support -- unequivocally, unreservedly and unapologetically -- either of these candidates [i.e., Brownback or Huckabee]. They are both radically pro-life and radically anti-gay. Neither is a Mormon (i.e., Satan) and neither is a thrice-married cross-dresser. Neither has any appreciable record of flip-flopping. Either would be a radical social conservative's dream candidate.

Just one problem: Neither can win. Neither ever had any hope of winning in the past, and neither has any hope of winning today.

Or how about this, from way back in February:

In actuality, radical social conservatives have at least two candidates they could rally around (Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee). What they don't have is a winning candidate they could rally around. So they're sitting around waiting for a winner to emerge, at which time they're concoct some post facto excuse for supporting him. So much for the "values" voters controlling the GOP anymore.

It is now clear that the Republican nominee will, almost certainly, be either Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney. So now the radical social conservative endorsements, which were always about "deducing the winner" rather than "creating the winner," can commence. Some will go with Giuliani early, some will go with Romney early, some will hold off and continue to engage in this farce of pretending that the radical social conservatives are still in control of the GOP.Something else I said about Giuliani:

[Consider] the silly garbage that Rudy Giuliani is telling these same theocrats about appointing "strict constructionist" judges -- a term that has no coherent meaning except as code for anti-Roe. Giuliani is engaging is naked, uncomplicated Mephistophelian haggling: Give me the White House and I'll give you the Supreme Court. No philosophical underpinnings required.

I have no doubt that this -- not the blathering War on Terror gobbledygook that Robertson insists is behind his endorsement -- is the real reason for embracing Giuliani: a sotto voce pledge to have an anti-Roe litmus test for Supreme Court nominees. That, perhaps coupled with a properly couched pledge to "seriously consider" Huckabee as a running mate, and suddenly the "thrice-married, pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-gun-control cross-dresser" is -- Robertson's words -- "an acceptable candidate."

"Kingmaker" indeed.

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Brownback, meanwhile, is quite understandably giving the theocrats who abandoned him the finger. Just as there is no rational basis for Pat Robertson or James Dobson to endorse anyone other than Brownback or Huckabee, so too is there no basis for Brownback or Huckabee not to endorse each other. But Brownback, like all his fellow moral defectives, is motivated not by principles, but by politics. He still has a career in the Senate, and he is widely thought to be planning to run for governor of Kansas is 2010. He no doubt has concluded that being owed a favor by McCain furthers those two agenda items in a way that a principled, but worthless, IOU from Huckabee cannot.

The least professional of the "professional journalists," OpinionJournal's infant-at-large James Taranto, tries to spin the hypocrisy of certain radical social conservative theocrats as an indictment of his own personal ManBearPig, the "Angry Left" —

One ugly theme has emerged ... cross dresser ... They make Giuliani sound like Boy George. In fact, as we've noted, he's more Monty Python, having donned a dress on a couple of occasions purely for comic effect.

As Andrew Sullivan succinctly noted:

It's a good day when the gay-baiting, pro-torture James Taranto accuses me of being part of the "angry left" and a homophobe!

Indeed.


Of course, the idea that we-who-are-apparently-the-Angry-Left-merely-for-pointing-out-a-historical-fact are trying to convey by referring to Giuliani as a "cross-dresser" is not that we have a problem with cross-dressers. The idea is that radical social conservatives are hypocrites for not admitting that they have a problem with cross-dressers — a problem that they are apparently willing to overlook in order to rationalize their support (such as it is) for Giuliani.

Moreover, Giuliani's cross-dressing episodes (there have been several) are merely a convenient refraction, a pictorial distillation of all the other ways that Giuliani is (to the theocrats) hell-bound, but apparently now only by way of the White House. This one picture is worth a thousand inconsistencies: abortion, gay rights, gun control, twice ran for mayor as the Liberal Party nominee, etc.

We are not mocking Giuliani; we are mocking those who are not mocking Giuliani but who would mock anyone else who had Giuliani's record. These Evangelical "kingmakers," who insist that they "speak for the real America," (i.e., the Christian theocratic America) are betraying their spiritual principles for secular-political gain. They are selling their collective political soul to the devil (or devils). And we of the Angry-Not-Left have earned the privilege to call them out on it.

This is not a difficult concept — at least for anyone other than James Taranto.

Mike Huckabee demonstrates once again that there is no rational basis for any radical social conservative not to support his presidential campaign:

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee rejects letting states decide whether to allow abortions, claiming the right to life is a moral issue not subject to multiple interpretations.

"It's the logic of the Civil War," Huckabee said Sunday, comparing abortion rights to slavery. "If morality is the point here, and if it's right or wrong, not just a political question, then you can't have 50 different versions of what's right and what's wrong."

That is actually a perfectly viable, logical position — that just happens to be dead wrong. If you believe that a clump of cells with no brain and no nervous system — and therefore no consciousness — can somehow be "an autonomous human being," then of course abortion is immoral and should not be "left to the states. There is nothing intrinsically superior about rights — including purported "fetal rights" — being violated at the state level rather than at the federal level.

Something to keep in mind the next time Huckabee spews any anti-gay bigotry — which he certainly will: "If morality is the point here, and if it's right or wrong, not just a political question, then you can't have 50 different versions of what's right and what's wrong." Indeed.

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It would have been nice if Huckabee — who was speaking in the context of countering Fred Thompson's position on abortion — had also pointed out that overturning Roe v. Wade would not "send it back to the states." As I and a handful of others have tried, repeatedly, to emphasize, overturning Roe would send abortion back to Congress, which the Supreme Court just recently permitted to ban one form of abortion. Thompson's "world without Roe" lie reflects either his own ignorance of basic legal principles, or his reliance on his audience's ignorance of basic legal principles.

Either way, Huckabee claims both the moral and the pragmatic high ground relative to Thompson.

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On a tangent, Huckabee — under attack for an embarrassing "please raise taxes" speech he once gave to the Arkansas legislature — has reportedly embraced the fraudulent spin of the "fair tax" movement's calls for replacing the federal income tax with a federal sales tax. To review:

--The proponents of the fair tax lie, flat out lie, about the tax being "23%." It's 30%, diluted via a deliberately wrong denominator: 0.3/1.3 = 0.23; but the tax is still a 30% tax. All else is willful deception.

--And the tax rate wouldn't even be 30%; it would be at least 53% and perhaps as high as 82% according to one nonpartisan study.

--Income tax today + sales tax tomorrow = both taxes the day after tomorrow. Who seriously doubts this?

The devil you know...

A comment I left on another blog in response to a Jonah Goldberg column suggesting that Mike Huckabee is -- get this -- "too progressive" for "true" conservatives:

It's a bit retarded to suggest that the James Dobsons and Pat Robertsons of the right are fleeing from Huckabee because he supports a national smoking ban or a federal sales tax.

This is pure spin by the radical right to try to rationalize the refusal of social conservative theocrats to choose principles (Huckabee, Brownback) over winning (Giuliani, Romney).

Can you imagine such a scenario in the rear pews of the Evangelical churches:

--Baptist? Check.

--Life begins at conception? Check.

--Rejects evolution? Check.

--Uncompromising anti-gay bigotry? Check.

--School prayer? Check.

--Ban flag burning? Check.

--National sales tax? Egads! We can't support him now!

Preposterous.

More thoughts at Liberty Papers, Publius Endures.

This kind:

"I have not been super-active in politics over the years, and so I am not current with all the issues and position papers," said Pete Kottra, 43, who helps his wife, Jeannie, 40, home-school their four children. "But with Mike Huckabee, I know he's a Christian. So I know he sees the world the way I see it."

Behold the political elites of Iowa:

• Iraq? Dunno...


• National sales tax? Dunno...


• Nanny state? Dunno...


• Christian? Check!

Splendid.

Note also the irony in the term "sees the world the way I see it" -- which for these yokels means not seeing evolution and not seeing gays as human beings and not seeing the difference between a church and a school or a church and a courthouse. For them, it's precisely about a desperate need not to see.

Meanwhile, I was of course not shocked -- not shocked! -- to learn that Christian homeschoolers (who perhaps more than anyone put the "radical" in "radical social conservative") are coming out in droves to support Huckabee:

Conservative Christians are said to represent the vast majority of the parents of the 1.1 million children estimated by the federal Department of Education in 2003 as home-schooled in the United States.

Remember, these theocrats do not homeschool in order to provide a better education. They homeschool in order to provide a redacted education. And in a decade or two, as these home-(un)schooled kids start to move off the farm and into the Twenty-First Century, this nation will find itself having to deal with a multitude of rural conservative-spawned illiterates to complement its multitude of inner-city liberal-spawned illiterates.

But at least the rural conservative-spawned illiterates will know that the Earth is 6,000 years old, that eating shrimp is an abomination, and that Jesus spoke English.

(Previously: What Kind of People Support Mitt Romney?)

Mike Huckabee:

It's that I don't want some government official or some school person becoming responsible for the religious indoctrination of my children. That's my responsibility.

I was not aware that "indoctrination" was either a universally recognized parental responsibility or a proper Christian virtue. I'm glad we have Friar Huck to set the record straight.

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Speaking of straight:

MR. RUSSERT: And, and this is what you wrote in your book, "Kids Who Kill," in 1998: "It is now difficult to keep track of the vast array of publicly endorsed and institutionally supported aberrations — from homosexuality and pedophilia to sadomasochism and necrophilia." Why would you link homosexuality with sadomasochism, pedophilia and necrophilia?

GOV. HUCKABEE: Well, what I was pointing out is all of these are deviations from what has been the traditional concept of sexual behavior and men and women having children, raising those children in the context of a, of a traditional marriage and family. And, again, taken out of the larger context of that book, speaking about how so many of our social institutions have been broken down.
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MR. RUSSERT: But this is what concerns people. This, this is what you did say about homosexuality: "I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle." That's millions of Americans.

GOV. HUCKABEE: Tim, understand, when a Christian speaks of sin, a Christian says all of us are sinners. I'm a sinner, everybody's a sinner. What one's sin is, means it's missing the mark. It's missing the bull's eye, the perfect point. I miss it every day; we all do. The perfection of God is seen in a marriage in which one man, one woman live together as a couple committed to each other as life partners. Now, even married couples don't do that perfectly, so sin is not some act of equating people with being murderers or rapists...

MR. RUSSERT: But when you say aberrant or unnatural, do you believe you're born gay or you choose to be gay?

GOV. HUCKABEE: I don't know whether people are born that way. People who are gay say that they're born that way. But one thing I know, that the behavior one practices is a choice.

There is one unarguable truth in this exchange: Mike Huckabee is certainly a sinner.

As for the rest — what a cruel, dishonest and decrepit little mind this shameless shaman has.

The shameless shaman is at it again:

Mike Huckabee said Monday he wouldn't run a TV ad he'd prepared blistering Republican rival Mitt Romney as dishonest. Then he showed it to a room packed with reporters and cameramen.
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He denounced the "very negative and nasty tone that the campaign has taken" and said he had mistakenly come to the conclusion that the only thing to do "was to respond with a counter-punch." He said the ad was supposed to start running Monday but just an hour before the news conference, he had ordered his staff to stop it.

Someone really needs to pull Friar Huck aside and explain to him that just because his redneck Evangelical supporters are mindless dolts, that does not mean that everyone else is.

Apparently the man simply has spent too much time preaching to his flock of illiterate Southern Baptist jackasses to understand that there can even be such a thing as a non-jackass in America.

It almost makes you want to vote for Ron Paul.*

(*Not really.)

Two hasty stitches on Mike Huckabee:

--First, Huckabee vows to escalate the War on Visas:

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee called Tuesday for suspending immigration from countries that sponsor or harbor terrorists.
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"Every one of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 came here legally. Our government welcomed them in," Huckabee said.

Huckabee didn't mention the proposal at his second stop, a rally of about 250 in Sumter. Afterward, his new senior adviser, Jim Pinkerton, backed away from the proposal, saying that Huckabee really meant that wants a "thorough review" of immigration policies.

Melding War on Terror paranoia and anti-immigrant bigotry? Brilliant! Sorta kinda. I look forward to seeing that wall built along the U.S./Saudi border.

Of course, the 9/11 hijackers were not here on immigrant visas; was Huckabee suggesting (past tense is apparently warranted) that terror-nation tourist visas also be summarily blocked? And what does it say about six years of Bush Administration anti-terror, anti-privacy data mania if the best option is still, not particularized review of specific individuals trying to enter the country, but unsophisticated prophylactic blockades?

Furthermore, might not a good way to defuse anti-American fervor in terror-sponsoring nations be to allow more immigrants here? Immigrants who would hopefully assimilate, lay down roots and spread the good word about America and the West back to the Old Country?

(Incidentally, do you remember which other Republican candidate proposed a targeted terror-nation student visa ban?)

--Second: "preserve, protect and defend" or "proselytize, proscribe and amend"?

I have opponents in the race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the Word of the Living God and that's what we need to do, is to amend the Constitution so its in God's standards rather than try to change God's standard so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.

Who can really claim to be surprised by this latest holy-warmongering by Friar Huck? Recall: "I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ." And: "There's only one explanation for it, and it's not a human one."

The idea that this shameless shaman is a leading major-party candidate and not banished to the single-digit doldrums of the lunatic fringe is stupefying.