It’s part and parcel of this Administration’s New Kind of Chicago Politics. Law Professor William A. Jacobson elucidates this pattern in reference to Obama’s attitude toward Israel:
Finding demons is the stock-in-trade of this administration. I called them on it at the beginning of the Obama presidency, Barack Got Enemy.
Whether it is the “rich,” the insurance companies, the “lobbyists,” the “extremist” and “dangerous” Tea Parties, or whomever, there always is an enemy against whom a policy is directed.
That’s hope and change for you!
Isn’t it just basic political strategy? You always paint your opponent as a hyperbolic, out of touch, crazy so that no one would vote for them…and thus have to vote for you. Thats been around longer than Chicago has been a city.
So you’ll just basically latch on to whatever political movement there is to promote your agenda, right? You were neo-con until neo-cons were discredited. You were Bush pre-emptives until Bush pre-emptives were discredited, and now your Tea Partiers until the Tea Party gets discredited?
The thought goes that conservatives have ideology rooted in morals and that progressives have ideology rooted in ethics. It’s seems though lately with this Tea Party business, gay conservatives are just simply more like remora fish, happy to latch on to whatever larger movement floats past to get them where they want to go without having to do any of the work, happy to live in the shadow of something larger and protective. A symbiotic relationship that allows them to be gay without having to do any of the work that ensure their lives and lifestyle remain unfettered.