Mariner
Active Member
strategy for the November elections--and 2008--then I think they're going to be sadly disappointed.
Over the past five years, opposition to gay marriage has fallen from 63% to 51%, according to a Pew poll in March.
It's a nice hot-button issue to try to bring out the base--but the base alone won't win elections. Moderates and independents have deserted Bush wholesale--witness the fact that in only two states in the entire country (Utah and Wyoming) do more than half the voters still approve of the job he's doing. Even at Clinton's nadir, he never fell that low.
Focusing on hot-button base issues is likely to make independents and moderates thing you're out of touch--and that's the risk the Republicans take with this 100% politically maneuver in Congress--everyone knows the votes aren't there to amend the constitution on gay marriage.
In any case, who's doing more harm to family values--a gay couple that marries for life in Massachusetts and raises two adopted children from China, or Rush Limbaugh, who fulminates against drug users, saying they belong in jail--and then plea bargains his way out of drug charges--and who has been divorced 3 times... ?
Mariner.
P.S. Along the lines of Jillian's comment--a nice study by two legal scholars reported in an Op Ed piece in the New York Times a few months ago showed that conservative judges have actually overturned more settled precedents in recent decades than liberal ones. So the true "activist judges" are conservatives, not liberals. The "activist liberal" judge is a conservative bogey-person similar to the flag-burner.
P.P.S. So when is the dissolution of Massachusetts society going to hit us? Most recently, we were found to be so prosperous that 1 in 20 of us are millionaires. How come low tax, traditional-value states aren't kicking our asses? Could it be that investing in people and education, maintaining a high level of public services, and supporting diversity are actually good for a state's economy?? And we still have the lowest divorce rate in the country...
Over the past five years, opposition to gay marriage has fallen from 63% to 51%, according to a Pew poll in March.
It's a nice hot-button issue to try to bring out the base--but the base alone won't win elections. Moderates and independents have deserted Bush wholesale--witness the fact that in only two states in the entire country (Utah and Wyoming) do more than half the voters still approve of the job he's doing. Even at Clinton's nadir, he never fell that low.
Focusing on hot-button base issues is likely to make independents and moderates thing you're out of touch--and that's the risk the Republicans take with this 100% politically maneuver in Congress--everyone knows the votes aren't there to amend the constitution on gay marriage.
In any case, who's doing more harm to family values--a gay couple that marries for life in Massachusetts and raises two adopted children from China, or Rush Limbaugh, who fulminates against drug users, saying they belong in jail--and then plea bargains his way out of drug charges--and who has been divorced 3 times... ?
Mariner.
P.S. Along the lines of Jillian's comment--a nice study by two legal scholars reported in an Op Ed piece in the New York Times a few months ago showed that conservative judges have actually overturned more settled precedents in recent decades than liberal ones. So the true "activist judges" are conservatives, not liberals. The "activist liberal" judge is a conservative bogey-person similar to the flag-burner.
P.P.S. So when is the dissolution of Massachusetts society going to hit us? Most recently, we were found to be so prosperous that 1 in 20 of us are millionaires. How come low tax, traditional-value states aren't kicking our asses? Could it be that investing in people and education, maintaining a high level of public services, and supporting diversity are actually good for a state's economy?? And we still have the lowest divorce rate in the country...