Because my post on Yishai Kabaker’s “Nutshell” Case for Gay Marriage attracted such a spirited debate, I asked him if I could post the entire essay he had submitted to the Stanford Review as that conservative paper had to cut it to meet their guidelines.

With his permission, in the interest of furthering the kind of discussion of gay marriagemissing from the debate on California’s Proposition 8, I am posting his untruncated piece below:

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the gay marriage debate is the deaf shouting past both sides without realizing the common goals they share. Tensions have been ratcheted up as gay rights groups and family values groups compete to out fund one another before the November election and the referendum on gay marriage. The proposed Constitutional amendment (Proposition 8 ) seeks to reinforce marriage as an institution between a man and a woman thereby reversing a May decision by the California Supreme Court that extended marriage to gay couples.

As a gay conservative I find myself caught between the two camps. I am strongly in favor of gay marriage yet I understand the concern of conservatives at the perceived attack on marriage.

The gay rights movement was born in the late 60′s early 70′s as a segment of the greater Civil Rights Movement. The early gay movement forged a unique culture emblemized by gay pride parades, drag queens, and the Sexual Revolution. Since the mainstream institutions were vehemently opposed to homosexuality, gays and lesbians felt little desire to conform or emulate those institutions. As mainstream society grew more tolerant of homosexuals, it diminished the need for the extreme in-your-face advocates. While major issues of homophobia and hatred still face the community mainstream American society is moving in the general direction of greater acceptance of homosexuality.

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In 1948, President Harry S Truman reversed his political fortunes and avoided what then-seemed a long certain defeat by running not just against his Republican opponent, Tom Dewey, but also against the first Republican Congress elected since the New Deal.

Tagging the 80th Congress a “do-nothing” legislature (as he did throughout the campaign), Truman told voters in Charleston, West Virginia on October 1 of that year:

The Republicans would like you to forget these fundamental differences between the two parties. But during the past 2 years we have been given a sharp warning that these differences still exist, and these differences are wide and deep.

. . . .

I know, of course, that there are many fine people throughout the United States, who from habit or choice are members of the Republican Party. To them I say that the national leadership of their party has failed them miserably.

With the current Democratic Congress’s approval as historic lows (making George W. Bush seem downright popular by comparison), it would seem John McCain would do well to run a similar campaign against the do-nothing 110th as a reminder of a stark difference between the parties.

It seems the only thing the Democratic Congress has been able to do has to be to increase federal spending at levels even greater than those of the preceding spendthrift Republican Congresses. Having scored his congressional colleagues in the past for spending money “like a drunken sailor,” John McCain should have found a profligate Democratic Congress a natural target.

But, maybe, the presidential election has prevented the incompetence of this Congress from exciting as much interest as it should. No sooner did Democrats take over in 2007 than the 2008 race for the White House began. And that seems to have turned media attention away from the Capitol and to the hustings.

The unending presidential campaign may well have prevented a campaign against Congress from really resonating.

I have to say I’m saddened and kind of surprised to read about the sniping at Sarah Palin within the McCain campaign.  Whichever aides are badmouthing their boss’s running mate are betraying him as much as they’re betraying her.  He picked her.  He stands by her.

It’s clear he really likes her, respects her, is energized by her.  When I see John McCain together with Sarah Palin, I’m reminded of how I feel when I’m around one of my older nieces, those smart girls whose age and intelligence allows you to communicate about more than dolls and stuffed animals and whose bright future you can visualize.

Of course Sarah Palin has at least three decades on my eldest niece, including sixteen years of public service.  But, you can see the same dynamic between him and her as you would see observing a proud uncle grooming his precocious niece to help run the family business.  Not only does the elder man see his relative’s potential, but he has great affection for her as well.  She’s more than just an up-and-coming co-worker.

Having learned of her record in Alaska where she, according to Michael Barone’s Almanac of American Politics, “won election to the governorship as a maverick reformer at arm’s length from her party,”* John McCain surely saw a younger version of himself, trying to do the right thing, even if it meant defying party leadership.

There’s a real chemistry between John McCain and Sarah Palin.  Media stories of the sniping within campaign cannot obscure what we observe when we watch them together on TV.  Or when we see them in person.

And isn’t that as much of a story as gossip about a campaign’s internecine squabbles?

——–

*Emphasis added

UPDATE:  How’s this for serendipity:  one of my nieces is dressing up as Sarah Palin for Hallowe’en.  That’s sure to scare some angry Democrats.

Just returning from a dinner with college alumni entertainment group and had a political discussion like those I enjoyed as an undergraduate.  Each person had the chance to articulate his point of view.  We listened and responded to opposing perspectives.

As the only Republican there, the only one defending Sarah Palin — and John McCain, well, I loved it.  There are times when it can be fun to the odd man out, provided your interlocutors respect whatever it is that sets you apart from them.  I experienced that tonight.  It reminded me why I so love my alma mater where my favorite Political Science professor was a Marxist who taught the best course I’ve ever taken (and not just at Williams), Conservative Political Thought.

I was delighted to learn that an alumnae while not a fan of Sarah Palin was impressed with the Alaska Governor, aware of her accomplishments, only disagreeing with her on the issues and believing her not yet ready for national office.  Others, surprised at my enthusiasm for my party’s vice presidential nominee, did listen when I listed her accomplishments, of which most were not familiar.

We all expressed ourselves honestly without rancor or ad hominem attacks.  We ended the evening, aware of our political differences, but not holding them against one another.  Our country would be a better place if  all political exchanges could be so civil.

One of the things Obama supporters repeat ad nauseum about their candidate is that his election would restore our image abroad.

Today, ABC News reporter raises that very question, “Could an Obama Win Restore America’s Global Image?“  Her subhead answers the question in the affirmative.  But, over at the Atlantic, a sensible blogger wonders if European leaders are worried about Obama.

A month ago, Victor Davis Hanson found that beneath the popular enthusiasm for Obama lay serious concerns about the Democrat’s policies.

Another reporter, ABC’s indispensable (and adorable) Jake Tapper links a report in Israeli newspaper Haaretz indicating that French President Nicolas Sarkozy “views the Democratic candidate’s stance on Iran as ‘utterly immature’ and comprised of ‘formulations empty of all content’:”

Following their July meeting, Sarkozy repeatedly expressed disappointment with Obama’s positions on Iran, concluding that they were “not crystallized, and therefore many issues remain open,” the Israeli source said. Advisors to the French president who held separate meetings with Obama’s advisors came away with similar impressions and expressed similar disappointment.

Sarkozy’s concerns are consistent with those raised this summer by European officials that Obama’s “campaign pledge to begin direct talks with Iran on its nuclear program without preconditions could potentially rupture U.S. relations with key European allies early in a potential Obama administration.“  Obama’s election might restore our image abroad, but at the cost of our relations with our allies.  Our influence would thus be reduced.

Commenting on Sarkozy’s comments, Ed Morrissey calls Obama an “empty suit” who could “wind up being “more unilateral than George Bush in his foreign policy.”

Another sign that Obama’s change from the last eight years means a change for the worse.

In his recent essay on media bias in the 2008 presidential race, Michael Malone writes:

I’m not one of those people who think the media has been too hard on, say, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin, by rushing reportorial SWAT teams to her home state of Alaska to rifle through her garbage. This is the big leagues, and if she wants to suit up and take the field, then Gov. Palin better be ready to play.

. . . . what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side — or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del.

If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography.

That isn’t Sen. Obama’s fault: His job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media’s fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.

But, gradually, in dribs and drabs, at the end of the campaign, the MSM, well, at least the daily newspapers from our nation’s two largest cities, are reporting something conservative writers have been abuzz about for weeks, if not months: how little we know about Barack Obama and his policies.

In today’s LA Times, Peter Nicholas, a reporter who has covered the Democrat, writes, “those of us who were sent out to take his measure in person can’t offer much help in answering who he is, or if he is ready. The barriers set in place between us and him were just too great.” Read the whole thing to better understand his point, the difference between the charismatic candidate and the humdrum human being.

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In a post this morning, I noted the irony that those voting for Obama as a “change” from the last eight years will really get more (much more) of the same on domestic policy should their man win.  For like the Republican incumbent, the Democratic nominee favors ever higher levels of federal spending.

Another irony of this election is the number of people supporting their ideological adversaries.  We read regularly of conservatives backing Obama, perhaps the most liberal Democratic nominee ever.

But, the MSM are less wont to cover the numerous left-of-center feminists backing McCain-Palin.  Shelly Mandell, the president of the LA chapter of the left-wing National Organization for Women (NOW), has endorsed the Republican ticket, largely because of the party’s vice presidential nominee:

Now, we learn that Elaine Lafferty, former editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine, has been advising the McCain campaign.  This feminist dismantles some of the media myths about the Alaska Governor and finds her to be smart and a “quicky study.”

I only fully egistered the meaning of Ms. Lafferty’s defense (which a reader sent me last night) this afternoon when my left-leaning lesbian Palin-loving friend forwarded me an e-mail she got from her Hillary 2012 listserv, a link to Rush Limbaugh’s remarks on the Democratic Party’s threat to private pensions.

A Hillary supporter encouraging us to listen to Rush Limbaugh.  Ah the ironies of the 2008 election!

If you got your news from “old media,” you’d think that the GOP was a party of race-baiting hate-mongers, with Democrats refusing to stoop to their level. Just look at the reaction of certain liberal gay bloggers to the West Hollywood resident is displaying a mannequin of “Sarah Palin hanging by a noose from the roof of [his] home.”

While they rightly condemned this juvenile display, they acted as if such antics were a regular occurrence on the right, but a rare one on the left.  At Towleroad, Andy opined, “As much as I despise the GOP ticket, mimicking the hate and racist imagery that McCain supporters have been flaunting with regard to Obama isn’t funny or original. It’s just stooping to their level.”

Actually, Andy, that’s not stooping to the level of a few isolated McCain supporters, but expressing themselves in the manner of many left-wing bloggers in the Bush era.

As Jamie Kirchick noted in an op-ed in the New York Daily News, while the “sleaze” of the McCain campaign “has become the accepted media narrative over the past several weeks,” conservative smears of Obama “don’t hold a candle to the left’s rhetoric over the past eight years.”

Among his examples:

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann spews over-the-top, hateful rhetoric in his “Special Comments” on a regular basis. He has said that the Bush administration threatens America with a “new type of fascism,” referred to the GOP as the “leading terrorist group in this country” on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, and has said that Fox News is “worse than Al Qaeda” and “as dangerous as the Ku Klux Klan ever was.”

Those pundits who rush to criticize a handful of angry, mean-spirited Republicans are nowhere to be found when their own ideological allies do the exact same thing.

Perhaps, they’ve become immune to left-wing hate speech as it’s become such a defining feature of the Bush era.

At least since August 24, 2003, fewer than six months after American troops began operations in Iraq, John McCain faulted the Bush Administration’s strategy.  While praising our service members, he identified the problem:  “they don’t have enough resources. There’s not enough of them, and we are in a very serious situation, in my view, a race against time.”

For the next three years, McCain pressed the Administration to develop a new strategy to respond to the increasing violence and to prevent Iraq from sliding into civil war.  Finally, after his party suffered badly in the 2006 elections, the president took McCain’s advice and implemented the “surge.”  It succeeded and now the “war is over.”  We’ve won.  (Via Instapundit.)

While McCain deserves a lot of credit for pushing for the type of strategy that succeeded while Bush stood pat, the president did show a remarkable resolve when he realized he needed to shift course.  Charles Krauthammer sums it up:

it is precisely that quality [equanimity] that allowed him to order the surge in Iraq in the face of intense opposition from the political establishment (of both parties), the foreign-policy establishment (led by the feckless Iraq Study Group), the military establishment (as chronicled by Woodward) and public opinion itself. The surge then effected the most dramatic change in the fortunes of an American war since the summer of 1864.

For all the president’s missteps in his second term, at least on national security, particularly Iraq when he finally found his footing, he demonstrated remarkable qualities of leadership.

McCain also demonstrated such qualities. And another, important to a chief executive. He showed foresight. Not just that. He put national security concerns ahead of his political ambition, standing firm on supporting the surge even as advisers warned his stand could hurt him politically.

As Michael Gerson observed on Friday, his leadership on Iraq may not help him in the current campaign. Another irony of this campaign is that the success of the strategy McCain long proposed could well help his opponent who was so spectacularly wrong about the surge.

At least, since 2003, conservatives have been criticizing President Bush for failing to hold the line on domestic spending.  He didn’t a veto a single bill until 2006, never challenging the spendthrift budgets Congress passed.

With Obama proposing trillions in new spending, those who are voting against the “last eight years” will be getting more, much more (much, much more) of the same in an Obama Administration.  One of the great ironies of this campaign.

In his post on Obama’s lead in Pennsylvania, Michael Barone considers another intereseting irony of this campaign.  Barone attribues that lead to the Democrat’s strength in the Philadelphia suburbs where affluent voters are turning away from the GOP because of the “recent decline in household wealth” due to tumbling house prices.  ”The irony here is that voters motivated by anger at the decline in their wealth seem about to elect a president who has promised to embark on wealth-destroying policies.”

Pennsylvanians are voting their anger not their economic interests.

As we enter the last week of this campaign, we’ll find whether voters come to understand Obama’s economic agenda.  That’s why I still have hope that McCain can win.  While Americans aren’t happy with the fiscal record of the past eight years, they don’t want it amplified.

We don’t want an ever larger, federal government and a more tightly regulated economy (as Obama has promised).  We prefer free markets.  And the Democrat, in Jennifer Rubin’s words, “certainly exhibits no affection for or understanding of the benefits of market capitalism.”

Will voters comes to understand that by November 4 or have they decided they want change, without realizing what that change entails?

The publication of Obama’s 2001 discussion of how to bring about redistributive change confirms that his comment to “Joe the Plumber” about spreading the wealth reflects his general economic philosophy. His proposed tax “cut” to 95% of households when 44% don’t pay any federal income tax is a manifestation of this philosophy.

Such policies are a surefire way to stifle economic growth.

In many ways, given that both Bush and Obama favor ever higher levels of domestic spending, the primary difference between the Democrat candidate’s economic policies and those of the much maligned Republican incumbent is that the Democrat plans to increase taxes on the most productive members of our society.

So we’d get Bush’s spending policies minus the incentives he provided for productivity.  Kind of like providing a recipe for repeating the last eight years, but without the economic growth.

In a recent defense of Sarah Palin, I quoted an Obama supporter who, like many with whom I’ve spoken, couldn’t identify any of his candidate’s accomplishments (nor define any of his policy positions).  He supported the Democrat because of his abilities to inspire and unite.  In the comments section, a reader wrote “So, you’re using one ignorant supporter’s lack of knowledge about his candidate to support the view that there is no reason to actually support the candidate.”

While I am amazed at the number of Obama supporters who have no clue what their man stands for beyond “hope” and “change,” I do know that many have solid reasons for backing the Illinois Senator.  Indeed, I’ve been having a regular e-mail exchange with one such woman, a smart and well-read Democrat from my synagogue.

While she and I both have great respect for our rabbi and our faith, we have little in common politically.  She believes the market meltdown was caused by an absence of oversight.  I, by too much government involvement the mortgage industry.  She favors a larger role for the federal government.  I, a smaller one.

In the end, we’ve agreed to disagree because, as she put it, “I think that Obama’s policies and coalition are better for the broad range of Americans than are McCain’s.  You believe the opposite.  The rest is just cant.”  The cant being each of our particular criticisms of the opposing team.

I can respect her vote for Obama because she is aware of his man’s stands on a number of issues.  As I’m sure are a great number of Obama supporters.

There are two primary reasons I frequently mention the myriad of other Obamaphiles I meet who, when pressed to identify something their man accomplished, fall silent.

First, to note the hypocrisy of Palin critics (and those who say they can’t vote for John McCain because he tapped her as his running mate.)  Some of those very oblivious Obama supporters fault Sarah Palin for her lack of experience.  If experience matters for the vice president, shouldn’t it also matter for the president?

Second, to show how Obama’s success has less to do with “ideology” than persona.  Most of his supporters don’t realize they’re backing a man who favors a bigger government, much bigger.

If you believe in a stronger federal government at home and a less bold American stance abroad, you have good reason to support Barack Obama for president.  And I respect your choice (while disagreeing with you decision.)  That said, it’s troubling that so many Americans have became so enthusiastic for a candidate about whom they know so little.

Among the many great fears I have of an Obama victory is that once he takes office, his supporters, including those in the media, will try to describe certain criticism of his actions as racist.  Just in the past few weeks, we’ve heard someone accuse those who call Obama’s policies socialist of being racist while others contend that raising his association with William Ayers similarly reeks of racism.

It seems those who level such accusations have their own prejudices against Republicans, believing we’re all racist and our criticisms are merely code words concealing our racial animus.  As we have detailed on this blog, there are many, many reasons to vote against Barack Obama.  None of them involve his race.

What does it say about the readiness of so many on the left to invoke racism when there is no evidence of racial animus?  It is just that they harbor a prejudice against Republicans or is there something else at play?

It wasn’t just Biden’s whining about his rough treatment by Barbara West that struck me in the video I linked earlier today. It was also that he lashed out at John McCain for running a negative campaign, as if the only nastiness this cycle came from the Republican side.

His comments remind me of some of the e-mails I get from Obama supporters. They bemoan the mean-spiritedness, even the racist tone of the Republican campaign. But, when they provide examples, they either reference a strange comment from some insignificant party hack or include a long anti-Republican screed from a left-wing blog. The tone of the post, its very language is as vicious as they accuse us of being.

They seem oblivious to the vitriol in their own e-mails.  And on their own side.

Yes, there has been some hateful rhetoric on the right, but it pales in comparison to that we have seen on the left. Just take a gander at the high-traffic conservative web-sites and compare them to the high-traffic sites on the left.

If Biden and his running mate want to unite this nation should they win next week, they’ll have to take stock of the venom coming from a good number of their supporters. If, as my recent interlocutor claimed, Obama can bring us together, he’ll have to stand up to the most hateful of his supporters and tell them to show more respect for their ideological adversaries.

To be sure, as John Hinderaker puts it, “Barack Obama can’t be blamed for all of his followers’ vile actions, but, like it or not, he trails in his wake a howling mob of barbarians.”  While Obama can’t be blamed for their actions or rhetoric, he can at least express his displeasure at such conduct.  And if he truly seeks to lead this nation, he will.

Drive around my neighborhood and you see abundant signs of rancor directed against the GOP, bumper stickers deriding Bush, signs mocking McCain.  This morning, I learned that a West Hollywood resident is displaying a mannequin of “Sarah Palin hanging by a noose from the roof of [his] home.”  Imagine the outrage if a Republican in Orange County had displayed a mannequin of Barack Obama hanging by a noose.

i am delighted to note that some gay left bloggers, instead of countenancing this distasteful display are condemning it.  Andy at towleroad faults it for being neither funny nor original. He’s got that right.  Joe joins him in slamming this mean-spirited decoration, saying we should leave such b.s. “to the wingnuts.”

Should we take that to mean he faults all such nastiness on his side, including Andrew Sullivan’s regular rants against the Alaska Governor?  This is just a visual expression of the rage we see on left-wing sites and at Obama rallies directed against the Alaska Governor. At one such rally, “the mention of Palin’s name drew shouts of ‘stone her.’”

I grant that there’s been some pretty ugly stuff come from some fringe activists on the right. And mainstream conservative bloggers and pundits have been quick to condemn it. It’s nice to see some gay leftists just as quick to denounce the hate on their own side.

Let’s hope this is part of a trend.

It seems his thirty-six years in Washington have inured Joe Biden to the kid-glove treatment Democrats get from the national press corps.

When a reporter asks Republicans tough questions, they see it as par for the course and (usually) don’t complain.  But, when the news media challenge Democrats, they start whining and call their questioners “combative” as the Obama team labeled WFTV’s Barbara West for pressing the Delaware Democrat on his running mate’s rhetoric of redistribution.

The campaign retaliated by refusing to grant interviews to the station for the duration of the campaign.

And now Biden is whining about the treatment he got:

If a man can’t take the heat from a local reporter, how can he stand up to our nation’s adversaries?

Then, he goes on to plea for unity while savaging his political adversaries! Um, Joe, how can you bring people together when you keep accusing the other side of dividing us while ignoring the divisive politics on your own side?  And when you define as “mean” tough questions from an inquisitive reporter?

How charming.  In this day and age I cannot believe this type of hate speech is now considered mainstream. (h/t – Campaign Spot at NRO)

As a lifelong Caucasian, I am beginning to think the time has finally come to take the right to vote away from white people, at least until we come to our senses. Seriously, I just don’t think we can be trusted to exercise it responsibly anymore.

I give you Exhibit A: The last eight years.

In 2000, Bush-Cheney stole the election, got us attacked, and then got us into two no-exit wars. Four years later, white people reelected them. Is not the repetition of the same behavior over and over again with the expectation of a different outcome the very definition of insanity? (It is, I looked it up.)

Exhibit B is any given Sarah Palin rally.

Exhibit C would be Ed Rendell and John Murtha, who in separate moments of on-the-record candor they would come to regret, pointing out that there are plenty of people in Pennsylvania who just cannot bring themselves to pull the lever for a black man – no matter what they tell pollsters.

So, understand that I am saying all this for the good of the country and, in fact, for the good of those hard-working white people that Hillary used to pander to.

I know those people, I come from them. They are not some shameful abstract demographic to be brushed under the rug of euphemism by Wolf Blitzer and his ilk.

I have broken kielbasa with those people. I went to school with their children. I have gone to Sunday Mass with a deer-hunter hangover with those people. They are bitter with good reason, and they are armed because they are scared. They mean well, but they are easily spooked.

I fear for what is to become of them after the campaigns leave town for the last time, and Scranton and Allentown and Carlisle go back to being the long dark chicken dance of the national soul they were before the media showed up.

This is as racist and stereotypical of any hate speech I have ever seen.

Could you imagine the riots that would breakout at the New York Times and Hollyweird if a columnist in, say Atlanta, wrote “Black People Shouldn’t Be Allowed To Vote.” ???

Again, this columnist is one of the footsoldiers of the Obama Thugocracy.  He is willing to subjugate his own rights and freedom on behalf of The One.  Last I checked that was called socialism at the least, fascism at the worst.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Since we can’t count on the heads of gay organizations, including those dedicated to promoting gay marriage, to consider the merits of the institution, we have to go elsewhere.  It seems the conservative press of late has done a better job of discussing gay marriage than the gay press, even on college campuses.

This morning, a reader forwarded me a piece from the Stanford Review, that university’s conservative paper where a gay conservative student, Yishai Kabaker, make a good “nutshell” case for gay marriage, writing, “the desire for gay marriage is not merely a fight for the legal and social benefits, but also a desire for the serious commitments that marriage entails.”

I would daresay that the average gay couple getting married in the Golden State understand what marriage entails and are ready to make those commitments when they take their vows.  At least those married gay couples I know do “get” the obligations the institution entails.

Kabaker also recognizes the significance of the gay marriage debate in our culture, pointing out quite accurately that it “is a relatively recent phenomenon,” reflecting “a shift in the LGBT community away from sexual revolution toward the American mainstream.”

His essay is short, so is easy to read, and merits your attention.  It is interesting that a college student can better summarize the case for gay marriage than can those who do so professionally.  Just as this debate is a sign of a shift in gay culture, that a conservative student paper would publish this piece is a sign of changes on the right, a greater welcoming of gay individuals and a consideration of ideas of concern to us.

I had wanted to take some time off from commenting on The Campaign That Will Never End, but your latest screed criticizing retired General Colin Powell demands a response. While I share your disappointment in General Powell’s endorsement of Senator Barack Obama for President, your remarks in expressing such are truly beyond the pale:

If General Powell is not concerned about the consequences of repealing the law, he cannot be described as a conservative or even the credible leader of the military that he used to be. If Powell does not favor all of these consequences, why has he announced his intent to vote for Senator Obama, who has promised to push for repeal of the 1993 law? Either way, General Powell is letting down the men and women of our military.

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While the American people may have soured on the Republican Party because of the “last eight years,” the last eight weeks have helped reaffirm my commitment to the GOP.  Perhaps, had the president adhered to his party’s principles and held the line on federal spending, people would better appreciate the philosophical differences between the parties.

I wonder how much attention the American people are paying to the Democrats’ talk of increasing federal spending should Barack Obama win next week.  Or are they just focused on voting against the party in power?

Do people know that Obama’a party favors a spending package (they call it stimulus) of $150 or $300 billion depending on which report you read?  And this with a budget way out of balance.  Do they know that the Chair of the House Financial Services Committee favors “a 25 percent cut in military spending.”  And this at a time when we face threats abroad and are fighting two wars (though one does seem to be in the mopping up stages).

Are they aware that when Obama proposes reducing taxes on 95% of households, as many as 44 percent don’t pay any federal income tax.  That’s not a reduction in taxes, but a redistribution of wealth.  And Obama has long favored such redistribution, spreading the wealth around in the vernacular of the 2008 campaign.

Just take a listen to what he said in 2001:

As Michelle Malkin, who alerted to the video put it, summarized, he’s not asking whether to redistribute wealth, but how.

Listening to Barack Obama, I become more of a Republican because my party, in principle at least, favors a less intrusive federal government and more freedom. We don’t believe in economic policies which redistribute the wealth, but which increase the size of the pie so all benefit.

With the Democratic Party breaking from the Clintonian ideal of “reinventing government” (by which the Administration would focus on making existing federal programs work better) and replacing it with a commitment to expanding government, the GOP stands as a bulwark against the encroaching power of the state.

In rhetoric at least over the past few weeks, we’ve heard a renewed Republican commitment to free enterprise and opportunity. We know the state cannot solve our problems.

It’s too bad that for the last eight years, George W. Bush did little to contain the size of the federal government and did not build on the good work Ronald Reagan had begun. If people do vote against Bush’s party next month, they’ll be voting to accelerate his spendthrift ways.  And to delay even further the vision the Gipper had and the fulfillment of our party’s ideals.

[Please note that I tweaked this post a bit since first publishing it.]

One of my great disappointments in the campaign on California’s Proposition 8* ( has been the absence of serious discussion on the merits of gay marriage.  The closest we came was the first ad against the initiative and one line in the the third.  Basically we’ve just seen each side focusing on winning the battle rather than engaging the electorate.

Given that it should be the very purpose of a campaign to focus on victory at the ballot box, these strategies make sense.  A conversation which advanced the argument for gay marriage may well have backfired politically.

Noting the absence of gay couples in the ads against Prop 8, Jonathan Rauch wrote today in the LA Times, “Whatever the tactical considerations, the absence of gay couples and gay marriages from California’s gay-marriage debate makes for an oddly hollow discussion.“  He’s right.

Let us hope that should Prop 8 fail–and even if it succeeds–we can have that conversation.  Unfortunately, those in a position to lead that discussion have little understanding of the real meaning of marriage.  They seem to feel that all opponents of gay marriage merely hate gay people.  They refuse address the point Rick Warren made in endorsing the initiative, “For 5,000 years, every culture and every religion – not just Christianity – has defined marriage as a contract between men and women.”

Yet, most leading advocates of gay marriage (save Jonathan Rauch and the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA)) don’t even want to engage social conservative defenders of this ancient institution, as if they’re oblivious to the instiution’s merits, aware only of marriage as another “right” to which we somehow deserve equal access.

It seems that the leaders of the movement for gay marriage including Evan Wolfson, Executive Director of Freedom to Marry (with whom I’ve corresponded) base their understanding of the institution not on studies of its long history, but on reading Hallmark cards and quoting the Loving decision.

Maybe I’m wrong and we don’t need a serious conversation on gay marriage.  Maybe our society will just come to accept an expanded definition of this ancient institution.

But, it would be nice if we could do as GLMA did in its recent report and highlight the benefits of the institution.  To do that, just like them, we’d do well to cite social conservative defenses of traditional marriage.  If we believe gay marriage is equal to heterosexual marriage, then a defense of traditional marriage would apply to our unions as well.

Alas that the current debate has not allowed us to consider the merits of marriage.

—-

*Which would amend the state’s constitution to include the traditional definition of marriage, thus nullifying the state Supreme Court decision mandating gay marriage.