The Right's Stealth Campaign

The final USA Today/Gallup poll is out today and Barack Obama holds a national lead of 11 points. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll puts it closer, with an 8-point lead for the Democrat, 51% to 43%. Gallup also gives it to Obama by a pretty wide margin, 55% to 44%. We can pretty safely say that the consensus is that Obama's walking away with this thing tomorrow. In fact, networks will probably call it for Obama before the Mountain Time zone polls close. But, just between you and me, you can write McCain off if he loses Virginia. If that happens, the race is over early for most of the nation -- 8 p.m. Eastern at the latest. And it's looking like that's the way it's going to go.

For Republicans and rightwingers in general, looking for good news will mean looking elsewhere -- the national race is all but officially over. Where might they find these little rays of sunshine? In statewide victories for Republican Jesus. Down ticket races seem to be trending Democrat, so they're prepared for big congressional losses as well as the big one in the electoral college. They can't lose every race, but the wins will be nearly meaningless, given the lopsided nature of the next Congress.

No, the wins for the right will come in ballot initiatives. The stealth campaign for control of the nation comes in the form of control of the states through direct democracy. If they can't rule by elected office, they can rule by referendum. The highest profile referendum is Proposition 8 in California, which would amend the state's Constitution to ban same sex marriage. The good news there is that the proposition looks to be headed for a loss. The bad news is that it exists at all and that the loss looks to be a narrow one.

Los Angeles Times:

The Field Poll of 966 likely voters, conducted between Oct. 18 and 28, shows 49% opposed to the measure, 44% in favor and 7% undecided. The race is narrowing. A September Field poll showed the measure trailing by 14 points, 52% to 38%.

The new poll also found that "significant proportions" of voters on both sides are conflicted about the issue.

Women are more likely to oppose Proposition 8 than men, the poll reports; 51% of women and 47% of men surveyed oppose the measure. It also found that respondents who said they personally knew a gay person were more likely to be opposed than respondents who said they did not.

The problem here is that this ballot initiative, like similar discriminatory referenda, isn't only designed to change California's Constitution -- it's also an organizational tool. All those petitions become mailing lists, all those volunteer canvassers and phone bankers don't go away after they lose. They'll be told they'll keep up the fight and that Jesus will eventually prevail in California's battle with the Homosexual Menace. If they win -- which is still a very real possibility -- then they'll use that energy to move forward with other "pro-family" issues.





But the fact is that a loss is almost better than a win -- at least in terms of organizing. When the battle's over, people on the winning side tend to go home. When the culture war continues, the culture warriors fight on. This is where the Republican base will rebuild -- not around failed candidates, but around wedge issue ballot measures.

Arizona and Florida will both be voting on referenda similar to California's Prop. 8. In Florida, it seems close. Although polling shows the voters approving the ban 56% to 37%, Florida requires a super-majority of voters -- 60% -- to pass such a measure. This one's a nailbiter, but leaning the right way. Organizing after losing this one will be a pretty simple matter, since they can use that majority to claim "mainstream" status and because Florida conservatives tend to be pretty insane anyway (see Katherine Harris).

To give you an idea of how powerful these referenda become as organizing tools, we can look at Arizona. In 2006, Arizona became the first state to defeat an anti-marriage equality measure. The groups opposing marriage kept working, turned their petitions into mailing lists, and now a second attempt looks likely to pass -- 49% to 42%.

In Arkansas, voters will be asked to bar gays from adoption or foster parenthood. Thankfully, this looks like a big loser -- 55% oppose the measure, while 38% support it.

Don't get the idea that the right's stealth campaign is all about hating on the gays. It's just mostly that way. In South Dakota, it's about hating on the women. An initiative there asks voters to make abortion illegal in almost every circumstance. A similar ban lost last time around, but these people aren't taking no for an answer. Where the original ban had almost no exceptions, the current measure would include "limited exceptions for rape, incest and the health of the pregnant woman." That brought it much closer to winning. In fact, it's a tie -- 44% to 44%.

The S. Dakota measure is certainly unconstitutional and is meant only to challenge Roe v. Wade. There's absolutely no guarantee that it'll ever make it all the way to the Supreme Court, but it's all about the PR anyway. They're building the groundwork for a propaganda campaign to energize the crazies.

Want a reason to vote? There you go. And it's important to remember that these don't represent the right going away next year -- so neither should you. That's the danger of a successful presidential campaign, people go away. In a democracy, the fight is never over, by design. Wins must be defended.

No matter what's on your ballot, vote. But remember, democracy doesn't end on November 5. The religious right isn't going away on that day, so neither should you. We've got to win the big one and keep fighting the other ones. Democracy means that the fight never, ever ends.

-Wisco

Played Out

Good news for marriage equality in California. At least one national Democrat isn't joining in on the irrational panic over same sex marriage there.

Associated Press:

Presidential candidate Barack Obama has come out against a ballot measure that seeks to outlaw same-sex marriage.

A club for gay Democrats in San Francisco says it solicited a statement from the Illinois senator's campaign in which he called the proposed constitutional amendment "divisive and discriminatory."

Obama also extended congratulations to gay and lesbian newlyweds who have gotten married in California over the last two weeks.

Wisconsin could've used a Barack Obama in 2006, when we foolishly amended our state constitution to limit marriage to opposite-sex couples. I say "foolishly" for more than one reason, but the primary reason is because it's an amendment that's certain to be repealed in the future. American history doesn't march in the direction of intolerance, but away from it. Repealing these state amendments and laws isn't a matter of if, but when -- will it happen before or after we're all ashamed of them?

Another reason why Wisconsin's ban was foolish was because it was a rush-job, put out to stave off electoral disaster for Republicans. It didn't work. The idea that anyone who would vote to limit marriage was automatically a Republican turned out to be a mistake. Their big plan to get right wingers to the polls by fighting the homosexual menace turned out to be a bad one. As a rush-job, it really wasn't very well thought out.

The Capital Times, "Same-sex Wisconsin couples willing to risk criminal penalties to marry in California":

Every summer, Bob Klebba and David Waugh take a family beach vacation to San Diego. Besides fun and sun, this year's trip will have a little something extra: a wedding.

[...]

"What we might be looking for is outside recognition of our relationship -- recognition from society," Klebba said. "This is a way to ask for that recognition. Happily, California is willing to give us that."

Wisconsin, however, is not. Not only will Klebba's and Waugh's marriage not be recognized here, they could be taking a legal risk by entering into it. Wisconsin is a state that imposes criminal penalties on residents if they enter a marriage outside the state that would be prohibited in the state. The law was created to prohibit underage couples from crossing state lines to marry, but it could be interpreted to apply to same-sex marriages, according to Glenn Carlson of Fair Wisconsin, an advocacy group for gays and lesbians. In Wisconsin, the penalty is a fine of up to $10,000, nine months in prison, or both.

"It would be interesting to be prosecuted," Klebba said. "It would really bring up a reaction in the public sentiment."

Agreed. It would be interesting. As I said, this amendment was poorly thought out. While I have absolutely no problem believing that the religious right morons who jammed this thing down our throat wouldn't have any problem sending gays to prison for just being gay, let alone getting married out of state, I really doubt the voters who passed the amendment would. That's another mistake the marriage-gamers made; they assumed everyone who opposes same sex marriage hates gays as much as they do.

But homophobia is fear, not hatred. I'd bet good money that the average person didn't vote for the amendment because they thought same sex marriage was evil, they did it because they thought same sex marriage was icky. That's not really the most solid reason for a ban. Had the Republican dominated legislature not rushed this thing through, things very well might have turned out differently. Putting someone on trial -- or even prison -- for getting married in California might not prove as popular as the religious extremist had hoped.

I'm not saying it would result in a repeal, but the law regarding marriages out-state would be changed. That's a step in the right direction.

For their part, California's marriage ban looks like it faces trouble. People in states like Wisconsin may be able to be wed there for a good, long time. Polls show that a majority approve of marriage equality there. For John McCain, however, the issue seems like a Godsend. Down in the polls on every issue but fighting terrorism (an issue, by the way, that polls show we're no longer freaked out about), McCain desperately needs something to stand for, some justification for his electoral existence. Unless he can turn things around, McCain's headed toward becoming this cycle's Bob Dole.

Crazy people are his only hope.

TIME:

At a meeting Tuesday in Denver, about 100 conservative Christian leaders from around the country agreed to unite behind the candidacy of John McCain, a politician they have long distrusted, marking the latest in a string of movements that bode well for McCain's general election prospects among the Republican base.

"Collectively we feel that he will support and advance those moral values that we hold much greater than Obama, who in our view will decimate moral values," said Mat Staver, the chairman of Liberty Counsel, a legal advocacy group, who previously supported Mike Huckabee's candidacy.

[...]

In recent weeks, the McCain campaign has been trying to spell out clear policy differences on social issues with the Obama campaign. Last week, McCain came out in favor of a constitutional amendment in California to outlaw gay marriage, which was legalized this spring by the state Supreme Court. Though McCain opposes an amendment to the federal constitution to ban gay marriage, he has previously supported similar state constitutional amendments.

"None of these people want to meet their maker knowing that they didn't do everything they could to keep Barack Obama from being president," said an unnamed attendee. "You've got these two people running for president. One of them is going to become president. That's the perspective. That that's the whole discussion"

Whether this is going to pan out for John McCain isn't really much of an open question. It won't. At least, not unless the Evangelical movement gets their act together in a matter of months. These leaders of the religious right have begun leading where no one is following. Tired of being freaked out over gays and abortion and evolution, Evangelicals have been moving toward issues that actually matter, like environmentalism, social justice, and poverty. The movement has lurched left, away from former leaders like Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell, and toward -- there's no other way to put it -- Jesus. It seems some have decided to read the Sermon on the Mount and decided that Jesus didn't spend a lot of time telling people who to hate. These so-called "Christian leaders" are losing their flock as all their followers convert to bona fide Christianity. Fetus worship is giving way to Jesus worship.

The religious right's version of Christianity never made any damned sense anyway. According to Christian tenets, it's faith, not actions, that lead to redemption -- making perceived "sins" illegal wouldn't save a single soul. It just doesn't work that way. Forcing people to adhere to your religious beliefs isn't the same thing as converting them to your religion. A right-living heathen is still a heathen and off to Hell they go -- and even that's not a consensus position among the faithful. The reasoning of the religious right is in conflict with their own stated religion.

However, former presidential candidate and current right wing nut job Gary Bauer believes the marriage issue can "save the GOP again."

"The marriage amendments had a buoying effect for President Bush and other conservative candidates, pushing to the polls many voters who otherwise might not have voted," Bauer wrote Monday. "In Ohio, for instance, a huge marriage amendment campaign registered 54,500 new voters, and thousands more Ohioans who were registered but rarely voted cast their votes for the marriage amendment. On the strength of the marriage initiative, Bush won in the battleground state, as did 13 of the 17 Republican candidates running for Congress there."

See, Gary, as counter-intuitive as it may seem, that's the problem. You guys used this to show voters exactly what a government made up of the Evangelical right would look like. And it was ugly. What they didn't get was anything the right promised. You guys promised "Christian values," but your idea of "values" included mass death, division, lies, torture, and runaway corruption. People have seen who you guys really are and have come to the conclusion that you're a bunch of phonies.

If this is John McCain's new "base," he's welcome to it. Fat lot of good it'll do him.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; elections; 2008; Republican; Democrat; Obama; California; Wisconsin; law; If John McCain thinks the religious right can lead him to the presidency, he's sadly mistaken

Bye Bye, Religious Right

For the first time in 20 years, the homosexual lobby proudly endorses a Kentucky candidate for governor: Steve Beshear. Beshear is receiving major support from out-of-state gay activists and has publicly committed to same-gender relationships, employment of more homosexuals in state government including teachers, and support for homosexual adoption of children.

If you believe these rights are fair please vote for Steve Beshear for governor. Visit Fairness.org.

That's the text of a robocall Kentuckians received prior to yesterday's elections -- the audio is here. No one will take credit for it -- mostly because it's probably illegal -- although it tries damned hard to seem like it came from Fairness.org, a Kentucky gay rights group.

It may try hard, but it fails miserably. The references to the "homosexual lobby," "out-of-state gay activists," and "homosexual adoption of children" ensure that only those with room temperature IQs would fall for it. Not surprisingly, despite this brilliant political maneuver, Steve Beshear won his election, easily beating the hopelessly corrupt and indicted Republican Ernie Fletcher.

Fletcher tried pretty much every trick in the book to get the religious nuts to the polls. He played up the fact that he was once a preacher. In an incredibly transparent move, he ordered that the Ten Commandments be displayed in the Capitol on the day before the election.

For some voters, the 2004 theme of "God, gays, and guns" worked. "I think his problems have been mostly politics," one voter said. "I think he's done a fine job. I think he's got high morals, and that's what the state needs." It's hard to figure how someone has "high morals" when just about everyone who's been paying attention knows that Fletcher's hiring scandal will likely put him behind bars. In response to the initial wave of indictments, Fletcher issued his own wave of pardons -- there's corrupt and then there's shamelessly corrupt.

Fletcher's humiliating loss may reflect the future of the religious right nationally. Hounded by high profile scandals and hypocrisy, split in support for candidates, and facing an electorate much more concerned about the economy and Iraq than what people do in bed, the religious right may find themselves not much of a player in 2008.

What a difference four years makes. In February of 2004, a Pew poll showed that 63% of respondents opposed same sex marriage. By August, that number had dropped dramatically to 56% and has continued to fall until it became a bare majority of 51% by 2006. Scaring people with gays may not work with many, since fewer and fewer people are afraid of them.

So other fear-based arguments are being used. A photo is making the rounds and nuts are freaking out.



Terrifyin', ain't it? According to brainshrub.com, "The photo [show's] Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama neglecting to place his hand over his heart during the national anthem at Senator Tom Harkin's Steak Fry event on September 16 in Indianola, Iowa."

Nuts see this as evidence that Barack Obama hates America -- which wouldn't really explain this whole "running for president" thing he's doing. Brainshrub.com puts up a few emails about the photo, of which this is entirely representative.

I am not pushing my political views on anyone but I am asking you to OPEN YOUR EYES TO WHAT IS GOING ON IN OUR COUNTRY TODAY.

This guy obviously has no loyalty to anything, but possibly "ISLAM", and he wants to to the president of the United States and refuses to say the pledge of Allegiance to the country he wants to be the leader. I say ABSOLUTELY NO. How do you feel??? These butchers have already told the citizens of the world that they are spreading ISLAM all over the world, by force if needed.

Every citizen in the US needs to read this. The word MUST get out on this @%&*A^)%@#, could not think of anything worst than what my current vocabulary is, so you just fill in what you wish.

Send to all your contacts and request they do the same.

May God Bless America.

I had heard about this but a picture is definitely worth 1000 words! God save us!!!

Needless to say, Barack Obama isn't Muslim. And how you could come to that conclusion from this photo is beyond me. But any excuse for a good ol' fashioned bigotted freak out is good enough for some people. I suppose there's some progress here -- forty years ago, that rant would've referred to Obama's race. Now, it just takes a wild stab at what his religion might be. Can't hate jews anymore and no one's afraid of gays, so Muslims will have to do.

This is the religious right and this has always been the religious right. Since Jerry Falwell got this whole thing rolling over segregation until today, it's always been about hate and which Americans are really American and which are to be shunned and hated. It's never been about anything other than fear and hate and a carefully chosen and protected ignorance of the world.

And, finally, the whole damned thing seems to be falling apart. In an article in the New York Times Magazine last month, David D. Kirkpatrick described the situation for "God warriors" on the ground:

The hundred-foot white cross atop the Immanuel Baptist Church in downtown Wichita, Kan., casts a shadow over a neighborhood of payday lenders, pawnbrokers and pornographic video stores. To its parishioners, this has long been the front line of the culture war. Immanuel has stood for Southern Baptist traditionalism for more than half a century. Until recently, its pastor, Terry Fox, was the Jerry Falwell of the Sunflower State -- the public face of the conservative Christian political movement in a place where that made him a very big deal.

[...]

So when Fox announced to his flock one Sunday in August last year that it was his final appearance in the pulpit, the news startled evangelical activists from Atlanta to Grand Rapids. Fox told the congregation that he was quitting so he could work full time on "cultural issues." Within days, The Wichita Eagle reported that Fox left under pressure. The board of deacons had told him that his activism was getting in the way of the Gospel. "It just wasn't pertinent," Associate Pastor Gayle Tenbrook later told me.

Fox, who is 47, said he saw some impatient shuffling in the pews, but he was stunned that the church's lay leaders had turned on him. "They said they were tired of hearing about abortion 52 weeks a year, hearing about all this political stuff!" he told me on a recent Sunday afternoon. "And these were deacons of the church!"

People seem to be coming to the wild conclusion that Christianity is about this fella named Jesus, not abortion and gays and Islam and evolution in schools. And the leaders of the religious right seem to be having a hard time correcting this misconception. I've written before that candidates make a lot of promises about abortion and "moral values" when they campaign, but deliver top-heavy tax cuts and corporate handouts when they're elected. Sooner or later, I've argued, these guys are going to wise up.

And that seems to be happening, helped along by four-flushing phonies like Ernie Fletcher, David Vitter, Larry Craig, Ted Haggard, Mark Foley, on and on and on. Clearly, these people don't practice what they preach, never had any intention of delivering on their promises, and may not even believe what they say. The fact that Super-Christian George W. Bush has turned out to be a really lousy president can't be helping things much, either.

When the smoke clears next November, it may just turn out that the leaders of the religious right have few followers. You can only string people along so far, then they just give up and stay home.

Here's hoping, anyway.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; elections; 2004; 2008; Barack Obama; hate; gays; abortion; evolution; Islam; The religious right looks pretty much done right now

Ron Paul is not the Second Coming

Every time I write about Republican candidate Ron Paul, someone comes along and pastes some article into the comments on my blog. Generally, these are breathless spams gushing about how Ron Paul is going to save America. But the truth is that Paul has some pretty wacky ideas, to say the least. He's a very special, very unique kind of libertarian who seems to believe that the only thing that government should do is make abortion illegal.

And he's not even very consistent on that point. NARAL Pro-Choice America shows that his voting record on reproductive rights varies wildly from "good, but could improve" (75% in 2005) to "Jerry Falwell would be jealous" (0% in 2003). Currently, he scores 65%. NARAL calls his record "anti-choice." According to Paul, "Pro-life libertarians have a vital task to perform: to persuade the many abortion-supporting libertarians of the contradiction between abortion and individual liberty... A libertarian's support for abortion is not merely a minor misapplication of principle, as if one held an incorrect belief about the Austrian theory of the business cycle. The issue of abortion is fundamental, and therefore an incorrect view of the issue strikes at the very foundations of all beliefs..."

The individual liberty of the woman isn't an issue, I guess. In fact, when it comes to issues of individual liberty, Ron Paul isn't really a fan. He argues that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided because nothing in the Constitution, as he sees it, applies to abortion. But he votes against same sex marriage -- when nothing in the Constitution would go against it.

His stand on health care is similar to Bush's -- if you're not insured, don't get sick. He's supported health savings accounts, but with most people having trouble putting money aside as it is, these accounts are pretty much nothing. He voted to sustain Bush's veto of stem cell legislation.

As I said, Paul -- like most libertarians -- believes that the federal government should do pretty much nothing. His answer to almost every problem is to hand it off to the states. As a result, he scores poorly on environmental issues. The League of Conservation Voters gives him only a 25% voting record. The problem with this "let the states do everything" attitude is that every state doesn't have its own evironment. Pollution generated in one state winds up in the air and water of another. A federal response to environmental issues is the only effective way to handle these problems. Paul lets his ideology take precedence over reality -- a problem our current president has.

I'm not the only concerned with his environmental record. Environmentally, Ron Paul is a nightmare.

Daily Kos:

Ron Paul may be a Republican, but he's certainly not a Republican for Environmental Protection. That fine organization gave Paul a shameful 17 percent rating on its most recent Congressional Scorecard (warning: PDF). He doesn't fare much better in the eyes of the American Wilderness Coalition or the League of Conservation Voters. Paul's abysmal record on the environment is driven in large measure by his love of sweet, sweet oil: in the 109th Congress alone, he voted to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to shield oil companies from MTBE contamination lawsuits, against increasing gas mileage standards, to allow new offshore drilling, and to stop making oil companies pay royalties to the government for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Par for the course for a man who called the Kyoto accords "bad science, bad economics and bad domestic policy" and "anti-Americanism masquerading as environmentalism."

Yes, he is against the war and the BS "War on Terror," but to be honest with you, that's pretty much the only thing he's got going for him in my book. We're facing what might be the greatest environmental challenge we've ever faced and Ron Paul is not the guy for the job.

I suppose if you were absolutely, positively determined to vote GOP, you could do worse than Ron Paul. But it's an indictment of the current Republican party that you probably couldn't do any better. They all suck and Ron Paul only sucks slightly less than the rest of the field.

What bothers me is that a lot of people on both sides of the aisle are treating him as if he were the second coming. He's not. He's just your average paleoconservative of the Pat Buchanan type. In a field of neocons, this makes him stand out. Other than his stand on the war, his views are virtually identical to any other conservative's. The hero worship for this new saviour of the Republican party is completely unwarranted.

As I said, every time I write about Ron Paul, someone comes along and spams my blog. Knock yourself out. Tell me that I've blasphemed St. Ron. But nothing I've written here is untrue and my opinions on this candidate are unlikely to change. He's lousy on the environment, he's lousy on women's rights, he's lousy on health care, he's lousy on gay rights.

The only issue he isn't lousy on is the war and terrorism. That's not good enough.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; elections; 2008; republican; abortion; environment; gay rights; Ron Paul doesn't walk on water