On Wednesday after first blogging on the eagerness of the Administration and its MSM allies to attack Rush Limbaugh personally rather than address his criticisms of their policy directly (or just plain ignore him), I realized they reacted to this outspoken entertainer in the same manner as many on the gay left (alas)  react to any opposition to gay marriage.

In both cases, those on the left side of the political aisle demonize their opposition in a manner reminiscent of a political campaign where the goal is to prevent an opponent’s election.  In short, they seem to see politics as a battle of personalities not ideas.  They always need a villain.  Yes, I grant this is true for many on the right, especially certain extreme social conservatives.

Why is it they believe they can best advance their argument not by taking apart their opponent’s case, but by taking that opponent apart (or defining someone as their opponent so as to eviscerate him)?

In the case of gay marriage, the adopt-a-villain strategy is backfiring, in large part, because they lose support from many otherwise sympathetic to the villian du jour.  But, when you make a case for gay marriage, some of those “sympathicoes” who might otherwise be turned off by your rhetoric might end up listening to your argument.

When you receive successive e-mails from readers forwarding the same e-mail, it’s usually something worth blogging about. A lesbian called into Glenn Beck’s show to share her experiences coming out of the closet. Her story will seem mighty familiar to many of those who read this blog:

since I came out of my conservative closet, I’ve lost a lot of my friends.

. . . .

And in listening to you, in saying what you mean and being true to yourself and true to your country, especially with this last election, a lot of my friends realized when they said are you voting for Obama or Hillary and I said, neither, they think I’m crazy. One of them actually said I’m like a Jew supporting Hitler.

Because she voted for McCain. They compared her to a Jew supporting Hitler?  Hmm . . . .  Wow, seems the gay left across the land has the same insults for people like us, you know those free-thinking gay iconoclasts who don’t subscribe to the party, er, homosexual orthodoxy.

It sounds like some of her friends comment on this blog:

I feel so alone some days, and I’m lucky enough that, you know, through listening to you and getting back to what really matters in my eyes, being gay’s a very small part of who I am, and nothing of what I am that I lost my friends because they don’t want to talk to me, because they try to get me –

Emphasis added.  I guess that’s because, as she puts it, they claim it’s “the gay handbook” that you have to be a Democrat if you’re gay.

And I think she’ll find that if she tries to join a conservative organization, a Republican one, if her experiences are anything like mine, she’ll find a welcome, her worries notwithstanding.

Read the whole thing (or listen)!

(H/t Glenn.)

As I tossed and turned each night this week, a thought kept coming back.  What, exactly, constitutes a “right”?

We have passed legislation, called the “Voting Rights Act” which protects Americans’ right to vote from discrimination. 

But is gay marriage a “RIGHT”?  Is marriage a “RIGHT” at all?  And who is to decide?  What gay marriage activists always ignore is that “traditional marriage” is, in fact, a covenant between man, woman & God.  So are gay activists saying only the Government has the power to provide, and therefore takeaway, “RIGHTS”?

The Founding Fathers would strongly disagree:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…

What about healthcare?   Do I have a “RIGHT” to smoke?  Do I have a “RIGHT” to eat bad food?  If, for example, healthcare is a “RIGHT” — then on the face of it, it cannot exist in the free market because “rights” have to be regulated/protected by the Government.

Too many people these days throw around the word “RIGHT” — and have absolutely no clue what they are talking about.  In addition, “RIGHTS” are not free — they come with “RESPONSIBILITY”.   Again, not something the gay marriage activists wish to talk about.

There.  Now you know what rolls around in my brain as the Ambien tries to win each night.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

UPDATE (from Dan): Great minds think alike, but often with different styles.

I just caught this post (via Glenn) and intended to use it as a starting point from a piece on rights. Basically Professor Bainbridge notes how many of the things which contemporary liberals define as “rights” (he calls them “positive rights”) “cannot be achieved without limiting the liberty of individuals.”

In last fall’s campaign, particularly those parts which drew the most public attention, the presidential debates, then-candidate Obama often sounded like Ronald Reagan, promising to cut the waste out of the federal government.  In the third presidential debate, he said, “what I’ve done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut.”

Just after his victory, he repeated that commitment, promising to “scour the federal budget, line by line, and make meaningful cuts.”

Not only has he given us the opposite since his election, but he’s done so on steroids.

Now, Jen O’Malley Dillon, the new Executive Director of the Democratic National Committee takes issue with Rush Limbaugh for taking Obama, pointing out that “Americans voted in November for the very kind of change the President is bringing to Washington.“  So, I’m wondering, isn’t Rush, in challenging the president on government spending, doing a better job of promoting the kind of change the American people voted for in electing Obama, given that Democrat’s rhetoric on spending?

Even our critics want to end the debate on the president’s policy proposals, contending “Engage in a debate over which policies will lead us? Didn’t we just do that? I think it was called an election.”  But, given the president’s campaign rhetoric, it seems the president has changed the terms of that debate.

He seems to think that his victory in the fall gave him a mandate to do whatever he wants now that he’s in the White House.  Kind of sounds like how George H.W. Bush treated his campaign rhetoric on not raising taxes and staying the Reaganite course.  And look where that got him.

“Seventeen top slots in Treasury have not been filled . . . .”

One great thing about being completely out of touch with popular culture is that, on the off chance I actually have a great idea, I get to enjoy by surprise the excitement of validation when I discover that someone else has already thought of it.

This happened recently when I hit Dan and Bruce up with the following concept:

I already know of a couple friends of mine who voted for Obama and are regretting it. With the abominable “stimulus” bill, the outrageous pork-laden budget, and the way they’re going after private citizens who dare question them (sound familiar, plumbers?), I imagine these won’t be the last who suffer Obama’s Remorse. So, I figure, maybe we should start a support group.

I wasn’t sure what form this group could or should take, so I asked Bruce and Dan what they thought. Bruce suggested I set up a group on Facebook. Instead, I did a search, and lo and behold, there already is a group! I haven’t contacted the originator of this group, but I think the young man from California who started it will soon see an uptick in members. I hope the group is cathartic for the members, and folks can feel free to join without feeling embarrassed.

Pass on the link to your friends who voted for Obama. Have them put it in their favorites if they haven’t yet felt regret for the mistake they’ve made. They’ll be looking for it again, I imagine, before too long.

We’ll keep you updated as to the membership numbers…

-Nick (Colorado Patriot) from TML

If you haven’t seen former President George HW Bush react to the former First Lady’s heart surgery, get the tissues ready:

(forward to about 1:22 if you don’t care to hear the medical details from the surgeon)

So in love is he that he even forgot he’d been the president for a minute.
Prayers for Mrs. Bush and the entire family.

-Nick (Colorado Patriot) from TML

I had planned a post today on the hearing the California Supreme Court this morning on the constitutionality of Prop 8, but realized that I would basically be repeating a point I had made over and over again, with a slight twist to reflect the circumstances. But, some things, I believe, bear repetition.

This return journey along the judicial route shows (yet again) that most (but not all) advocates of state recognition of same-sex marriages would rather make legal arguments to a small pool of judges than social arguments to a large group of citizens. They seek to change society by appealing to a narrow class of people with arguments which, at least on the issue of marriage, don’t resonate with many of the people who currently oppose gay marriage (and even with some who are ambivalent about it).

There are a great variety of reasons why I believe the court should uphold the popular initiative, primarily because I don’t believe the propositions alter the fundamental meaning of the state constitution (as required to overturn a such an initiative).

That said, should the Court uphold Prop 8, I do believe the people should overturn it, with, as I have suggested previously, an initiative amending the constitution to make the elected legislature responsible for defining marriage. The legislature  then vote, as it has, to expand the definition of marriage, conferring legitimacy on the new understanding of this ancient institution.  At that point, we will have effected a fundamental social change and hopefully achieved a social consensus doing so.

I say, “hopefully” because I believe building that social consensus depends entirely on advocates of gay marriage making the case (as Jonathan Rauch long has done) why it’s a good thing to expand the definition of marriage to include same-sex unions.

In the wake of the passage of Proposition 8, we saw anger and name-calling, but also a commitment to do a better job next time. To turn that commitment into effective action, advocates of gay marriage must lose the sense of entitlement which dominated the last debate and refuse to demonize opponents of gay marriage.

Instead, they must understand their arguments and counter them with better ones, attempting through gentle suasion to change their minds. Many, if not most, opponents of same-sex marriage, do not hate gay people. They merely define marriage by gender difference.

Understand they hold that meaning in good will and without malice.  Thus, when we challenge them, we must respond accordingly.

As I long have said, gay marriage advocates need to make better arguments to promote their cause.  This, I believe, is the path which will lead to the social change they seek. And should they show respect for their adversaries (on the issue) and challenge with ideas not insults, they could see that change as soon as the next election.

**UPDATED**  Bloomberg News calls this the “Obama Bear Market“. GayPatriot, again ahead of the crowd….

It’s okay folks… don’t worry about these “gyrations”.   The White House wants you to blame Rush Limbaugh for Obama’s horrible economy and tax & spend proposals.  Look the other way…. nothing to see here.

Except your retirement and hard-earned money going up in smoke.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

When Rush Limbaugh offers a well-received speech detailing the conservative opposition to the President of the United States, offering facts and arguments, the White House coordinates with its allies (Clinton Administration veterans) in the MSM to attack Rush personally.

Former Clinton White House aide Paul Begala called the talk show host “the bloated face and drug-addled voice of the Republican Party.”  Talk about ad hominems.

Instead of responding on that level, Rush replies, offering to talk about the issues, man to man without notes or TelePrompter:

Let’s talk about the New Deal versus Reaganomics. Let’s talk about closing Guantanamo Bay, and let’s talk about sending $900 million to Hamas. Let’s talk about illegal immigration and the lawlessness on the borders. Let’s talk about massive deficits and the destroying of opportunities of future generations. Let’s talk about ACORN, community agitators, and the unions that represent the government employees which pour millions of dollars into your campaign, President Obama. Let’s talk about your elimination of school choice for minority students in the District of Columbia. Let’s talk about your efforts to further reduce domestic drilling and refining of oil. Let’s talk about your stock market.

Rush contends that Rahm “Emanuel is the leader of all of this.”  So, we’ve got the White House Chief of Staff coordinating an effort not to challenge the ideas of an adversary, but to discredit him.

Clintonism redux.  Attack the messenger, ignore his message.

It appears the talk show host’s response has thwarted the attack before it has even begun to see success Dan Riehl succinctly summarizes the situation:

How does Rahm justify claims that Limbaugh is the defacto head of the opposition with a decision to not engage? He can’t. That lets the air completely out of the Democrat’s latest anti-Rush campaign pretty much before it got started in the eyes of the general public.

So, there you have it.  Democratic veterans of the Clinton Administration attack the man they label the head of the opposition, but refuse to engage while that leader is spoiling for a debate.

Which side prefers, to borrow a phrase from the Executive Director of the Democratic National Commitee, “the failed partisan attack politics of the past“?

Running with the mantra that Rush Limbaugh wants President Obama to fail, Democrats have been misrepresenting and demonizing the talk show host in an attempt to prevent people from actually considering Rush’s argument, the how and the why of his wanting the President to fail.

Simply put, he wants Obama to fail to implement his statist agenda, believing it would mire us in cultural malaise and economic stagnation.

Jonah Goldberg unpacks it for us:

Well, given what Obama wants to do, I hope he fails too. Of course I want the financial crisis to end — who doesn’t? But Obama’s agenda is much more audacious. Pretty much every major news outlet in the country has said as a matter of objective analysis that Obama wants to repeal the legacy of Ronald Reagan and remake the country as a European welfare state. And yet people are shocked that conservatives, Limbaugh included, want Obama to fail in this effort?

As Rush himself puts it:

We’re talking about my country, the United States of America, my nieces, my nephews, your kids, your grandkids.  Why in the world do we want to saddle them with more liberalism and socialism?  Why would I want to do that?  So I can answer it, four words, “I hope he fails.”

Rush, like most people who have studied history, knows that liberal and socialistic programs similar to those Obama has propsed, failed to accomplish their intended economic ends.

And Democrats continue to peddle the notion the Rush wants Obama to fail without explaining what he means.  Michelle reports that Jen O’Malley Dillon, the new Executive Director of the Democratic National Committee, is trying to turn the latest Democratic mantra into an ad campaign.

Ms. Dillon claims “Americans voted in November for the very kind of change the President is bringing to Washington.” Did they? Will she please provide evidence that Obama campaigned on increasing federal spending to the heights he has proposed? His remarks in the presidential debates suggest otherwise.

Perhaps the most amusing line in Dillon’s e-mail soliciting funds to trash an Administration critic is this: “To get America back on a path to prosperity, we’ll need to leave behind the failed partisan attack politics of the past.”

Yup, at the same moment she is participating in a White House-coordinated attack on an Administration critic, she decries those very attacks.

Well, maybe she’s not such a hypocrite.  Perhaps, the operative clause in her sentence above is “of the past.” Obama’s Democrats want to leave behind the partisan attack politics of the past by adopting a new approach to partisan warfare. I guess that’s the change they were hoping for.

Let’s hope that strategy fails too.

In a comment to my post, On Rush, the Media, Arianna & the Myth of Deregulation, I wished that every time a liberal pundit or leading Democrat claimed that Bush-era deregulation was responsible for the financial meltdown, someone would ask them

to specify the particular programs Republicans deregulated in the past eight years. They repeat the mantra of Republican deregulation over and over again, as if the repetition guarantees its veracity, yet it has little basis in reality.

Instead of specifying such deregulation, one of critics asked rhetorically, “If not rampant greed, brought about in large part by de-regulation during the Bush years, then what exactly was the cause of the massive economic meltdown in this country?”

We have addressed the causes here, here and here, just to link a three of our posts on the matter.  Even Obama-supporting columnist Sebastian Mallaby wrote, during last fall’s campaign, that the “claim that the financial crisis reflects Bush-McCain deregulation is not only nonsense. It is the sort of nonsense that could matter.”

Kevin (our critic), by contrast, has joined a chorus of left-wing voices attributing the meltdown to alleged Bush-era deregulation.  I have, in a number of posts, frequently linking those better equipped to explain economic matters than I, addressed why, I believe, we experienced the recent meltdown.

I’m far from the only blogger (not to mention pundits and economists as well) to offer a conservative/libertarian view of the meltdown.  We have pointed to laws which facilitated the crisis and legislation which might have forestalled it (had Democrats not blocked it).

So, in that spirit, I’m asking Kevin and others who buy into the “deregulation theory” of the meltdown to identify the specific legislation Bush signed deregulating the financial industry and the specific policies he and his Administration enacted (that caused the meltdown).

Barack Hussein Hoover is morphing this week into Richard Milhouse Obama.  The focused, surround-sound attack on Rush Limbaugh seems awfully familiar. 

So, now we know.  President Obama’s mentions of Rush Limbaugh are no accident.  Democratic strategists have discovered that Rush has low approval ratings with the general public.  So they have devised a strategy to paint Republicans with the Rush brush in order to marginalize conservatism and the Republican party.  In the Nineties, they demonized Newt.  Now, they’re after Rush.  And the media is happily going along, as it so often does.

Wasn’t this the same kind of ”aggressive” personal attack that drew wails and beating of chests by the American Left when allegedly-covert CIA agent Valerie Plame was “outed” by Richard Armitage?

So every day, Obama looks more and more like the media’s characture of President George W. Bush.  Ironic, no?

But to me, there seems to be another every-building analogy that fits better:  Enemies Lists.  Political skullduggery from inside the White House.  Tax Cheats evading the law.  How very 1972.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

I’m sure Dan will have lots to say as today unfolds, so this is more of a place holder for further discussion.

From Pam’s House Blend: 

The California Supreme Court will hear three hours of arguments today regarding the constitutionality of Prop 8. It will have 90 days to issue an opinion, but it’s been pretty clear that we’ll likely know something before then.

Watch the Court proceedings on The California Channel website.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Remember how, during (to borrow the president’s favorite expression) “the past eight years,” Democrats and the media constantly carped about then-President Bush’s “divisive’ tactics.  Despite the constant repetition of this mantra, they’d be hard pressed to come up with any Bush Administration official who in that Republican’s two terms, so regularly and publicly trashed critics as current White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has gone after Obama Administration critics in the past two weeks.

Earlier this week, Gibbs used a line more appropriate for a partisan blogger or talk show host than for a White House Press Secretary:  “I was a little surprised [at] the speed with which Mr. Steele, the head of the RNC, apologized to the head of the Republican Party.”

I thought the job of the President’s Press Secretary was to promote Administration policies rather than atempt to define the leadership of the opposing party, particularly when that definition serves as a means of discrediting the opposition.  Isn’t his job to counter the arguments made by the opposition rather than attack the messenger articulating them?

It’s one thing to take issue with your critics’ arguments, it’s quite another to attack those critics personally.  It’s unbecoming of a Chief Executive and his Press Secretary.   These are more the tactics of a campaign aide going after a political rival than an Administrative Spokesman promoting his boss’s agenda.

No wonder some wise pundits are wondering whether or not the President The Great Divider.

Welcome Instapundit Readers!!

Just two days after watching The Godfather for the umpteenth time, I read “RUSH MAKES OBAMA an offer he can’t accept.“Â The talk show host has invited the president onto his “program without staffers, without a TelePrompTer, without note cards  to debate [him] on the issues.”

It looks like Limbaugh has taken the bait the White House offered him in attacking him for his stirring speech at CPAC and bitten it off without getting caught on the hook.  And he swims away with a smile, the Democrats still hold the hook — and an empty line.

It’s almost been amusing these past few days watching the Emanuel/Carville/Begala White House/MSM axis go overboard to potray Rush as the head of the GOP because the talk show host’s unpopularity “with many Americans, especially younger voters.”  Tying him to the GOP will help sink the GOP.

Their strategy may have some short-term success, turning attention from his eloquent criticism of the Administration’s agenda to his middling popularity outside consevative circles.  But, over time, people will start wondering about a White House mounting an offense more akin to attacking its adversaries through a series of personal vendettas than to promoting legislative proposals through articulation of its policy goals.

Offering to debate Obama mano a mano, so to speak, Rush puts his attackers on the spot.  He shows himself as willing to a engage discussion of ideas.  By refusing his offer, the expose their strategy as ad hominem political hardball where you personalize the contest.

That’s not a new kind of politics.  It’s just reintroducing the type of politics played in the Administration where Rahm Emanuel, James Carville, Paul Begala and George Stephanopoulos cut their political teeth, that of Bill Clinton.

RELATED:  Susan Estrich “believes that the current coordinated Democrat strategy of attacking Rush Limbaugh is completely counterproductive.”

*With this title, I was trying to suggest that Rush caught Emanuel et al. with the hook with which they intended to catch him (& the GOP).  But, maybe I should have elected simplicity as the Anchoress did in linking this post: Limbaugh took the White House bait without getting hooked. She offers her own thoughts and links a number of conservative bloggers covering this story, so check her post out!

Over the past decade, while the state of Florida has often been hit hard with hurricanes, few complaints were heard about the quality and speed of government relief efforts.  Many have credited the immediate past governor of the Sunshine State, Jeb Bush, for his hurricane response program.

Part of that good man’s administrative expertise was putting the right men and women into the right jobs, a quality which oftentimes distinguished him from his elder brother.  In 2001, the younger Bush tapped Craig Fugate to head Florida’s Division of Emergency Management.  Bush’s successor Charlie Crist, to his credit, kept Fugate on.

Now, President Obama is bringing that Bush appointee to Washington, nominating him to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).  Smart move.  Given that state officials are the first responders to any catastrophe, it helps to have a man who has been on the front lines of relief efforts.

He’ll be well suited to coordinate a national effort and help whip the various state agencies into shape so they’re better prepared to face the next disaster than was Louisiana in 2005.

Kudos, Mr. President.  Fugate’s a good pick.  We can been pretty confident he’ll serve the nation as well as he served the Sunshine State.

Today we celebrate the 57th anniversary of the nuptials of Ronald Reagan and his beloved Nancy. Her strength and affection helped him become the great man that he was. And his appreciation of this strong woman helped define his quality as a man.

Few presidents were as devoted to their wives as was the Gipper to his Nancy. So, in celebration of their romance, I post this touching tribute I found on youtube:

Should the California Supreme Court uphold Proposition 8, as I believe it should, and before the citizens of the Golden State vote to overturn it, as I believe we will, I find a man who wishes to marry me, then the state constitution notwithstanding, I will do so.  The state may not recognize our relationship as a marriage (but it will as a domestic partnership), but it won’t punish us for defining it as we see fit.

We won’t need the state to call my relationship a marriage for us to be married.  All I need do is find the right guy and commit with him to a monogamous relationship of mutual affection and support.

For others, however, that “need,” to paraphrase Michael Barone, to achieve validation through government drives the argument of so many who opposed Proposition 8 at the ballot box and who now seek to overturn the popular initiative at the courthouse.  They would be better served, as I have long said, to make a better case for state recognition of gay marriage, one akin to that Jonathan Rauch makes in his book, Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America.

There are many good reasons for the state to recognize monogamous same-sex unions as marriage, but making people feel validated is not one of them.  It is not the government’s role to make us feel good about ourselves.  And some who have opined in favor of gay marriage should know better, particularly when they flaunt a media-bestowed mantle of conservatism.