Republicans just say no to Proposition 8

With Barack Obama poised to win “the largest California victory of any presidential candidate since World War II” and high-profile Republicans turning away from their party’s desperately flailing ticket in droves (let’s see, Colin Powell, David Brooks, Christopher Buckley, Kathleen Parker, Peggy Noonan, David Frum, Scott McClellan, Francis Fukuyama and the list goes on), it’s time for me to similarly turn away from the national stage and move to a topic that hits much closer to home: California’s Proposition 8.

Proposition 8 attempts to reverse the May 15 ruling of the Republican-appointed California Supreme Court in favor of equal marriage rights for all Californians -- rights now enjoyed in six Western countries (Canada, Spain, South Africa, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands) and three states (Massachusetts, Connecticut and California).

Most Californians are aware of Prop 8 and have at least the beginnings of an opinion about it. What's less well understood is that Prop 8 has attracted opposition from all across the political spectrum, as both liberals and conservatives have objected to government restrictions on basic individual rights and freedoms.

A leading Republican voice in 2006 stated that the Bush Administration’s proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage "strikes me as antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans.” He added that the decision in Massachusetts to legalize same-sex marriages did "not represent a death knell to marriage." The words of Senator John McCain – or at least, the pre-presidential primary version of John McCain.

McCain may have been willing to shed his principles for the sake of appealing to the far right wing of his party, but traditional conservatives within the Republican Party -- who believe in individual liberty for all, not merely some -- oppose Proposition 8 by the thousands. Their site, www.republicansagainst8.com, identifies its sponsors as “concerned California Republicans who believe in limited government, personal responsibility, the maintenance of Constitutionally-protected rights and freedoms, and in protecting California’s business climate.” In addition to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders and a long list of Republican local officeholders and candidates, the site lists as supporters leading California businesses like Apple, PG&E, AT&T, Levi Strauss and Google.

Republicans Against 8 have also developed three simple, effective ads spotlighting their arguments against Prop 8. This one focuses on the backward-looking nature of the initiative, this one reminds voters that Prop 8 would take away rights from people all around us, and the one included below features three Republicans – a federal prosecutor, a missile defense scientist and a Vietnam Veteran -- speaking out against Prop 8.



Tomorrow, a more personal take on this subject.

Palin's new chorus of critics: conservative pundits

The narrative of the presidential campaign the past two weeks has frankly been rather predictable. There's just one trend that's truly new and noteworthy here -- a developing groundswell of criticism of John McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate from an altogether unexpected source: conservative pundits. George Will, David Brooks, David Frum and perhaps most notably, early Palin supporter Kathleen Parker (see at right) have all expressed serious concerns in recent days about Palin's fitness to serve. Parker, who previously hailed McCain's "keen judgment" on selecting Palin is now actively calling for her to resign from the ticket "for your country." To quote from Parker's column of this morning, "Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League."

Lies, damned lies, and the people who tell them

While the talking heads continue to buzz away in their endless spin cycle of manufactured hype, there appears to be at least one journalist in America -- the often-irascible Paul Krugman, seen at right -- willing to get right to the heart of the matter and tell it like it is. To wit: the McCain-Palin campaign lies. Again, and again, and again.

Of course, so does the management of the San Francisco Giants, which keeps mouthing the words "youth movement" while continuing to sacrifice the rookies' playing time on the altar of should-never-have-been-signed retreads like Dave Roberts. But they're in the entertainment business, not the deciding-the-fate-of-the-world business.

The Sarah Palin pick: Republican women react

Never mind winning over Democratic and Independent women who disagree with Sarah Palin on key issues like choice and the environment and evolution vs. creationism, can the McCain-Palin ticket even hold onto Republican women? Apparently not UPI correspondent and longtime Republican pundit Georgie Anne Geyer, who in her column today describes the Palin pick as "the choice of a vice president whose inexperience is a slap in the face to serious Americans" and bemoans her personal view that "the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan is falling apart before our eyes."

The Sarah Palin pick: adding insult to injury

Well, Republican presidential nominee John McCain certainly reclaimed his "maverick" status with his pick of virtually unknown Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. It's probably one of the kinder things people in the Republican party have been calling him after his selection of a person who almost no one outside of McCain himself seems to believe was his best available choice.

Watching McCain try to defend his pick might be comical -- "Alaska is our largest state" (unless you count the 46 others with a larger population) -- if it wasn't so frightening. Here is a person whose career highlight up until 18 months ago was serving two terms as mayor of an Alaskan town of 7,000 people. The only 3:00 am phone calls she's used to getting are demands for better snowplow coverage.

What's truly stunning -- and so very telling -- about this pick, though, is that McCain actually seems to think it was clever. He actually appears to believe that putting the arch-conservative Palin on the ticket will pull in droves of disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters despite the fact that Palin's record on every significant issue facing our country today -- war, the economy, the environment, civil rights -- is either non-existent or diametrically opposed to that of Hillary Clinton. The underlying assumption here is that the only factor that really mattered to all of those Hillary voters, the only reason they all supported her so passionately for so long, was her gender.

It's hard to imagine a more insulting set of assumptions being made about a group of supposedly intelligent and independent-minded voters. Leave it to Jon Stewart and The Daily Show to distill these assumptions to their rawest essence, i.e. "Sarah Palin may be the ideological opposite of Hillary Clinton, but she's her gynecological twin..." (Warning: link contains the usual irrevent language and razor-sharp humor.)

The end of orthodoxy

It’s been amusing recently watching ideologues in both major parties twist themselves into a rage while invoking the name of Ronald Reagan.

For the Dems, the issue was Barack Obama’s candid assessment of Reagan:

“I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it… he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”

Horrors! You mean Obama didn’t just stick to the Democratic orthodoxy of Reagan as the progenitor of all that is wrong in modern America? No, he didn’t. He spoke a broader truth about Reagan, one which party warhorses may not care to hear, especially coming from the mouth of one of their own, but which is nonetheless true. I might have disagreed with Ronald Reagan on just about every policy issue he ever touched, but there is no denying that he connected with the American people in a way no president has since. His innate optimism inspired people, even people (the so-called “Reagan Democrats”) who really should have been paying closer attention to his views before voting for him.

On the Republican side, John McCain has been raked over the coals -- and compared unfavorably to Reagan -- for his repeated failure over the years to bow to certain orthodoxies of the conservative movement. He believes global warming requires immediate attention and that our campaign financing rules are in dire need of reform. He wouldn't necessarily condemn either gays or illegal immigrants to being second-class citizens of the country in which they live. Et cetera.

What Obama and McCain have in common -- beside momentum in their respective primary contests -- is that they have both declined to bow down to the hardcore ideologues within their own party. In the process, they have each made small but important steps toward breaking free of party orthodoxies and charting a new path that attempts to bridge the bitter divide between the conservative and liberal extremes in America. The fact that these two figures are each ascendant in their respective parties speaks volumes about the voters’ desire for (here comes that word) change – as in, candidates who don’t just parrot the same old rigid party dogma, but actually think independently and speak their minds sincerely about the issues of the day.

Reagan once famously declared it morning in America. If the fall contest turns out to be Obama vs. McCain, it will indeed be a brand new day for American politics – and citizens of all philosophical stripes should welcome that.

Waist deep in the Big Muddy

There is one principal reason that, despite being a Political Science major and dedicated/opinionated follower of current events, I would not recommend politics as an avocation to anyone I care about: it's a dirty, dirty, dirty game. Just ask John McCain and Barack Obama.