Even though our reader and occasional blogger Sonicfrog doesn’t like former U.S Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa), considering him “an example of an anti-gay Republican“, he wonders at the lengths some of our fellow gays go to smear the man whose political career ended over four years ago.  (If Santorum runs for president, his polling may break into the single digits.)

Put the shoe on the other foot. Would you be cheering if someone associated your name with something you considered vile and extremely improper? I don’t think so. The guy is lame on his own.

When he took one of his “very liberal Facebook friends” to task for “gleefully” posting a link to the story documenting the smear, said liberal responded:

bull***t. santorum deserves much worse than this. a disgusting smug self-righteous religious blowhard like him should never be allowed to achieve any significance in our government and anything done to ‘smear’ his name is acceptable.

Anything done to ‘smear’ his name is acceptable?  And this fellow allies himself politically with the folks decrying the harsher tone of our discourse.

“And you wonder,” Sonic concludes, “why I don’t associate myself with the liberal pro-gay anti-Republican establishment that I’m supposed to belong to simply because I’m gay.”

Methinks some of our readers might share his sentiments.  Read the whole thing.

Just wanted to pop in and say:

Interesting that, given the flight of Wisconsin Democrats, we’ve now come to the point where, by comparison, a Community Organizer voting ‘present’ is actually a sign of boldness and leadership. A sliding scale, to be sure. But heck, at least he showed up!

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HHQ)

UPDATE (from Dan):  wonder if those Washington Democrats so eager to criticize Republicans as obstructionists for trying to block the big-government agenda of the president’s party will use the same label to describe Wisconsin Democrats.

UP-UPDATE (also from Dan):  Here’s some background on Wisconsin’s obstructionist Democrats. They’ve left the state, but it appears Tea Party activists are badgering them back to the Badger State to do their jobs.

So, they were standing for the people of Wisconsin by fleeing to Illinois?

UP-UP-UPDATE (also from Dan):  I’m liking the Badger State’s chief executive, “Walker to Dems: ‘You Can’t Have Conversations If You’re Not at Work’.”

UP-UP-UP-UPDATE (also from Dan): With this walkout, who, the editors of the Wall Street Journal ask, is “really trying to short-circuit democracy?“

Over at Politico, Ben Smith reports that national Democrats are helping organize the angry, untidy protests in Wisconsin:

The Democratic National Committee’s Organizing for America arm — the remnant of the 2008 Obama campaign — is playing an active role in organizing protests against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s attempt to strip most public employees of collective bargaining rights.

OfA, as the campaign group is known, has been criticized at times for staying out of local issues like same-sex marraige, but it’s riding to the aide of the public sector unions who hoping to persuade some Republican legislators to oppose Walker’s plan.

Wonder what HRC has to say about this, with their preferred political party, indeed, the very remnant of the Obama campaign, taking part on behalf of this Democratic constituency when it sat on the sidelines on issues of concern to another of its voting blocks, gay Americans.

Now, that the Democrats are involved in these protests, protests where we’ve seen some very uncivil rhetoric, with the elected Republican governor compared to Hitler, does they then countenance this kind of discourse?

Will Barney Frank call on Democrats to “differentiate themselves” from their national party?

NB:  Tweaked title to make it more pithy.

UPDATE:  Please note that these are not spontaneous protests, ginned up by interest groups favorably to the Democratic Party and that party’s own auxiliaries.

In the aftermath of the shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), even after we learned of the shooter’s mental illness and lack of conservative pedigree, the editors of the New York Times, in the highest of dudgeon, still refused to let go of their narrative, telling us that

. . . it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge. Many on the right have exploited the arguments of division, reaping political power by demonizing immigrants, or welfare recipients, or bureaucrats.

The shooter’s “paranoid Internet ravings about government mind control” may “place him well beyond usual ideological categories”, but heck according to the old gray lady, he’s still “very much a part of a widespread squall of fear, anger and intolerance that has produced violent threats against scores of politicians and infected the political mainstream with violent imagery.”

Well, in the past few days, there have been numerous violent threats issued against politicians setting a state on edge, and, well, this gale of anger, producing violent threats against leading politicians while infecting political discourse with violent imagery, ain’t coming from the right.  Our reader V the K links a video interspersing Democratic calls for civility (and attacks on the supposed angry rhetoric of the right) with some of the language they decry on signs of those protesting Wisconsin Governor Walker’s reforms.

Let’s hope those folks so concerned about the violent rhetoric on the right will rise to condemn the actions of Badger State public employee unions and their allies.

Over the National Review, Jay Nordlinger has been all over this story, with Glenn Reynolds linking one of his many posts and quipping, “VIOLENCE: THE TEA PARTY GETS BLAMED, BUT IT’S USUALLY THE UNIONS WHO ACTUALLY DO IT:” (more…)

Just last night when dining with some right-of-center bloggers and allied conservatives, I met a conservative woman who upon learning I was gay asked if I knew a certain gay Republican (I did).  She reported his observation that he found it easier to be gay in Republican circles than to be conservative in gay circles — something your humble bloggers have long experienced as well.

Well, when I returned home, I found in my in-box an e-mail from Bruce alerting me to post on the American Thinker from another gay man who has just learned the same thing.

Discovering posters attacking Sarah Palin on a San Francisco fence, Ray Gross tells that he is gay and living in hiding in San Francisco, “hiding from the Liberal Left”, hiding that he’s a conservative:

Gay people are used to feeling the fear of backlash and intolerance.  It’s been a common theme for me, and I hid being gay for a good part of my life because of that fear.

But here I am, hiding again, hiding from those who have been telling me my whole life that they are the tolerant, loving and accepting ones.  And I believed them, joining them in pinning the labels of hate and intolerance on the political right.

Now I fear them.  They are not tolerant or accepting.  They accuse others of hate and intolerance and yet, by their behavior they show themselves again and again to be the hypocrites they are.  They are incapable of seeing the irony of the situation; that those who preach “tolerance” are intolerant, and those who champion “love” exude hate.

Like Pavlov’s dog they are trained by the left and the liberal media to salivate at the mere mention of the words “conservative” “Republican,” “right,”  “Christian,” and “Bush”.  Now, they have a new favorite victim for their hate and intolerance, Sarah Palin.

Yet again, these folks manifest the very hatred they claim to find in their ideological adversaries.  Why do these people hate so much?

Welcome Ann Althouse readers!!  While you’re here, you might want to check out my latest on the protests in the Badger State.

What’s happening in Wisconsin should be happening in California, with public employee unions upset at anticipated cuts in their benefits and legislation limiting their power.  Both the Badger State and the (once-)Golden State have similar rates of unionization in their workforces, 16 and 17% respectively.  Both face huge budget gaps.

Unlike his California counterpart, however, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is taking on the state’s public employee unions, “walking,” as Michelle Malkin puts it, “the fiscal responsibility walk“:

Under Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal, almost every public employee would have to contribute 5.8 percent toward their pensions, and state workers would pay 12.6 percent of their health insurance premiums. The bill received a legislative hearing on Tuesday amid criticism from public employees across the state, including the Green Bay area.

The Republican governor has put the legislation at the center of a budget repair bill that aims to save the state $30 million in the current budget and an additional $300 million over the next two years.

With the prospect of their gravy train running out, the public employee unions are up in arms, but methinks their juvenile stunts won’t have the desired effect.  Instead, they should cause voters to rally round the Republican proposal.  ”The SEIU,” as Malkin notes, “has declared full-scale war on the Badger State over attempts to rein in bloated public union pay and benefits.”

So important is this protest that “Madison public schools are closed Wednesday because too many teachers are taking the day off to protest Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to limit union bargaining.”  They’re putting their benefits ahead of students’ education.  Maybe Walker should fire ‘em. Well, maybe not.  I mean, as Ann Althouse puts it, the teachers are really teaching their charges a great lesson:

The kids won’t have school, but you can learn a lot of things outside of school. Some of these things are even taught by the teachers who are not there. For example, it’s okay to call in sick when you’re not actually sick, but you just have something that you think is really important. (more…)

I have long somewhat jokingly dubbed the California jurisdiction where I currently reside as the People’s Socialist Politically Correct Police State of West Hollywood.  And in his LA Weekly article on the inaccessibility of the city’s three incumbent city council members up for election this year, Patrick Range McDonald shows just why this appellation, while perhaps a tad extreme, is not far off the mark.

Like political officials in an authoritarian state, John Heilman, Abbe Land and Lindsay Horvath have done their utmost to avoid direct contact with the citizens they serve.  Heilman, McDonald reports,

. . . refused to be interviewed for this article, although he’s an elected official running for public office and is considered the most powerful member of the City Council. Land and fellow incumbent Lindsey Horvath refused to be interviewed on the phone or in person, demanding that e-mail questions be sent to them, allowing them to prepare responses and choose which questions they are willing to entertain.

So, the guy’s been a public official for 26 years and he won’t stoop to talk to an openly gay reporter for the region’s respected alternative weekly?  Indeed, when reporters approach him, he acts like the Wicked Witch of the West when confronted with a bucket of water, shrieking and running away as if her life were in danger::

Heilman, who has now served seven one-year terms as mayor of this city of more than 23,000 registered voters and some 36,000 residents, refuses to respond to e-mailed requests for interviews, and twice shoots down the Weekly’s attempts to speak with him in person. During one tense, face-to-face encounter, Heilman appears to be shaking with anger or fear or both when he is approached inside the West Hollywood Park Auditorium after winning an endorsement from the Stonewall Democratic Club.

“I am not having a conversation with you!” he tells this reporter, then suddenly breaks into a run.

Accessible information about Heilman is hard to come by. In this age of new media, he doesn’t have the obligatory campaign website for reporters and voters to see where he stands on issues or to tout what he considers to be his achievements from 1984 to 2010 — a period of time when Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have all served as presidents of the United States, three of them for two terms.

It’s not just Heilman.  Horvath, appointed last year “to an open seat on the City Council to solidify a three-person voting bloc rather than allowing the democratic process — a special election — so WeHo residents could choose their own representative”, also refuses to talk to the Weekly reporter.  As does Ms. Land.

The three inaccessible incumbents “are running together as a well-financed, politically connected slate and sharing campaign costs.” (more…)

Perhaps current Log Cabin Executive Director R. Clarke Cooper’s background in Republican politics will serve to save the organization.  Before helming the ostensibly Republican organization, he served in the George W. Bush Administration.  Unlike all previous heads of the organization, he had actual experience working with Republicans outside Massachusetts.  He at least has experience working with more mainstream Republicans.

Alas that most heads of gay conservative organizations, particularly Log Cabin, have had little background in the conservative movement.  The Bay State (until recently) was hardly a hotbed of small-government activism (well, at least not in the Twentieth Century).

Well, despite the “pro-equality” rhetoric in its releases and on its web-page, in recent days, Log Cabin has been sounding a lot more Reaganite than it had under its first two executive directors.  In a largely anodyne release on CPAC, the organization did at least celebrate conservatism.  Then, on Monday, Cooper showed his teeth, lambasting the president for his spendthrift budget:

Our nation is at a breaking point and the president’s budget proposal simply isn’t a serious response to the challenges facing our country today. . . . The American people are facing a Federal debt of over $14 trillion dollars, and the President needs to join with Congress to make significant cuts.  His proposal adds $8.7 trillion in new spending over the next decade—that’s not just irresponsible, that’s reckless.  Americans are tightening their belts and making difficult decisions, and it is time that our government does the same by addressing the real problems dragging down our economy – overblown entitlements, wasteful government spending and a tax code that stifles small businesses and innovation. Republicans in the United States House of Representatives, led by Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, have taken the first step at addressing this crisis by cutting $100 billion this year.  Ryan’s proposal is a great first step, but if we are serious about getting our house in order, there’s more we all need to do.

Whoah, sounds a lot like your humble blogger!  Nice to see a Log Cabin leader issuing releases on issues other than gay ones and showing his commitment to core conservative principles.

Perhaps, GOProud’s prominence pushed Cooper to speak out on such issues.  Whatever the case, it’s welcome sign that Log Cabin leaders are becoming more outspoken on issues of concern to all conservatives.

Save for those feeding from the federal trough (and the interest groups who support them), few people are backing the president’s budget, including one of his most enthusiastic cheerleaders, the once- (and perhaps future) insightful Andrew Sullivan.  That left-leaning formerly conservative blogger has taken his one-time golden boy to the woodshed for his spendthrift spending plan.

How times have changed.  Barely two-and-one-half years ago, just after the then-Democratic nominee’s speech to his party’s national convention, Sullivan reminded us of his enthusiasm for the Chicago politician:

I’ve said it before – months and months ago. I should say it again tonight. This is a remarkable man at a vital moment. America would be crazy to throw this opportunity away. America must not throw this opportunity away.

Know hope.

It seems that hope has turned to despair.  At the time of that speech, I wonder what justified the “googly-eyed accolades of such supporters as Sullivan“.  Now, Andrew seems shocked, ***SHOCKED***, at the Democrat’s spendthrift ways:

The crisis is the cost of future entitlements and defense, about which Obama proposes nothing. Yes, there’s some blather. But Obama will not risk in any way any vulnerability on taxes to his right or entitlement spending to his left. He convened a deficit commission in order to throw it in the trash. If I were Alan Simpson or Erskine Bowles, I’d feel duped. And they wereduped. All of us who took Obama’s pitch as fiscally responsible were duped.”

“Yes,” Jim Geraghty quips, “you were duped.”  The real issue here is not just that Sullivan got duped, but also how and why he let himself get duped.  It is one thing for the average American who does not follow politics on a daily basis to take a charismatic candidate at his word that he is offering a “net spending cut,” but quite another for someone who follows politics day in and day out.

The only evidence we had that Obama favored smaller government was rhetorical.  His voting record — and political alliances — showed a man committed to the big-government ways of his political party.

Look at the things you miss on a busy weekend when you take a nephew to Disneyland.

One of former President George W. Bush’s top military advisers joins his friend, the most pro-gay Vice President in U.S. history,in coming out in support of Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (DADT) repeal:

Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who served at the Pentagon under two Republican presidents, says the “time has come” time for gays and lesbians to serve openly in the US military.

Two months after President Obama signed a law that will lead to the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Rumsfeld told ABC News Radio that the nation is ready for open service.

“First of all, we know that gays and lesbians have been serving in the military for decades with honorable service,” Rumsfeld said.  “We know that [repeal of a ban on gays serving openly] is an idea whose time has come.”

Rumsfeld says he has “enormous respect” for the ground commanders and service chiefs who have expressed concerns about the impact of gays serving openly on unit cohesion, and he urged the top brass to implement the new law “with care.”

Pretty much summarizes my view.  Kudos, Mr. Secretary.   Just wish you had pushed repeal when you were in office.  (But, then again, maybe he did and that’ll come out in his book.)

Via the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential, we learn just how House Minority Leader treats those Democrats who didn’t back her in the vote for Speaker in the current Congress:  you lose your seat at the Democratic leadership table.

Rep. Dennis Cardoza suspected that his January vote against fellow California Democrat Nancy Pelosi for Speaker might cost him the informal leadership post he’s held for more than three years. He was right.

. . . .

“I felt that there was no soul-searching about why it happened after the election,” he explained. “I felt like the Speaker — because so many of the moderates had been defeated — that she tacked and the Caucus tacked hard left. It was so unrepresentative of what the message was of the American people and of my district, that I couldn’t — in good conscience and good faith — any longer support her candidacy.”

Emphasis added.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama:

But there is no doubt that we’ve been living beyond our means and we’re going to have to make some adjustments.

Now, what I’ve done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut.

Emphasis added.

President Barack Obama:

SO IS THIS THE HOPE, OR THE CHANGE? White House Expects Deficit to Spike to $1.65 Trillion.

I always thought the term “significant other” was a bit clunky, so I’ve adopted the term schweetie to describe the individual who is the long-term object of our affection, spouse to some, boyfriend or girlfriend to others, husband or wife to the more traditionally inclined or just plain partner to the practical.

So, on this Valentine’s Day, let  me ask those of you who are attached to provided anecdotal advice to those of us who long to be and to tell us in the comments how you met your schweetie.

Last night, I watched the King’s Speech for the second time and despite Timothy Spall‘s appalling (and historically inaccurate) portrayal of Winston Churchill, the film holds up, meriting the many honors bestowed upon it.

While the situation in the United States is not nearly so dire as it was in the United Kingdom in 1939, we need today what our friends across the pond needed then — and what King George VI gave him, a leader who will come before us and spell out the tough path that lies ahead and the choices we have to make.  As our chief of state he delivers his speech on our nation’s growing burden of debt, he needs also conclude on an upbeat note, saying that we will weather this storm and the nation will emerge stronger from it.

The idea for the speech germinated when I saw a poll (linked by Glenn Reynolds) showing how little appetite there is for cutting government spending in specific areas.  People may favor smaller government, but all too many are unwilling to specify where they’d cut.  We need a leader who will come before the American people, tell us that we can no longer afford to live beyond our means and must make cuts even in cherished programs because, simply put, we don’t have the money to pay for them.

Not just that, as the recent negotiations over maintaining the tax rates established by the Bush spending cuts showed, politicians, at least those in Washington (but perhaps not in Springfield, Illinois or Sacramento, California) understand that the Americans don’t want to pay higher taxes, at least not in a recession.

It doesn’t appear, however, the president’s tough words notwithstanding that he will be delivering that speech any time soon.   His budget will fall short of of his own debt commission’s savings plan:

President Obama’s 2012 budget request to be released on Monday will reduce budget deficits over the next decade by only a quarter of the amount proposed by the presidential debt commission in December, a senior administration official confirmed Sunday. (more…)

This should be a no-brainer for Mississippi legislators and the state’s governor, Haley Barbour, particularly given that that Republican is eying a bid for the White House.  As Suzi Parker reports, “The Sons of Confederate Veterans has launched a campaign to issue one of the specialty license plates honoring Confederate Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was once the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.”

Of all the Confederate leaders who should not be honored, Forrest tops the list.  He may well have had sound military sense, but he was also responsible for the Massacre at Fort Pillow in April 1864 and, even after the Civil War, continued to treat African Americans as less than human.  Given the brouhaha over Governor Barbour’s comments about desegregation in Yazoo City, he would be wise to nix any honors for a man so associated with such a nefarious institution as the Klan.

It seems that whenever conservatives raise the problems of California as an example of the failures of the big-government pro-public employee union policies of Democrats, they will instantly chime in and remind us of Texas’s budget woes.  Paul Krugman did it in a recent column.  When I posted recently on California’s problems, one of our critics quickly brought up Texas (which I had not mentioned in the post).  Friday night, when I confronted an area state Assemblyman who spoke at my synagogue, reminding her of the problems of public employee unions and the unfavorable business climate, one of her defenders quickly chimed in to remind us of the Lone Star State’s budget woes.

In his eagerness to repeat what appears to be the latest Democratic talking point — that Texas has budget problems too — he missed the second point I raised.  While Texas does indeed have some budget problems, that state is booming economically while California busts.  At present, as I reminded the politician’s defender, the Lone Star State has an employment rate one point lower than the national average while the (once-)Golden State has a rate three points higher.

As Mark Hemingway informs us:

In 2008, 70 percent of all the jobs in the country were created in Texas. In 2009, all of America’s top five job-creating cities were in Texas.

More recently, “Texas created 129,000 new jobs in the last year — over one-half of all the new jobs in the U.S. In contrast, California lost 112,000 jobs during the same period,” according to “Texas vs. California: Economic growth prospects for the 21st Century,” a new report by the Texas Public Policy Foundation released in October.

Texas is home to 64 Fortune 500 companies — more than any other state in the union. (California has 51 and New York has 56.) For five years in a row, Texas has topped Chief Executive magazine’s poll of the best state to do business.

But, this latest talking point of Lone Star State’s critics addresses just one issue.  This focus also helps show just how California politicians (and their defenders) are missing the second of the state’s big problems, the business climate.  It’s as if they see the state’s fiscal mess as the only big problem California politicians face. (more…)

As they say… here’s the video.  (From the Blogger’s Lounge a few minutes ago)

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

From CBS News:

 Conservative commentator Ann Coulter brought today’s audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington to its feet in applause after urging the Republican party to include gays – perhaps getting the last word on the place gays have in the conservative movement after a tussle that pitted social conservatives against libertarians at this year’s conference.

 ”The left is trying to co-opt gays,” she said. “They should be on our side.”

 The fight over the Republican party’s acceptance of gay conservatives and gay rights came to a head at CPAC, after organizers invited the gay conservative group GOProud to be an official participant. Some social conservative groups protested the convention as a result, but gay conservatives and their allies this week declared victory, observing that they were well-received at the event.

More to follow, I’m sure….

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

I want to sincerely apologize for my horrible coverage of CPAC.  I’ve had serious technical issues with my computer and camera equipment (NOT Marley’s fault, though!).  The Internet connection has beenvery bad.  The radio show got the plug pulled while we were live.  And I was helping to manage the behind-the-scenes drama involving GOProud this week.  All in all, not what I was expecting.

There is a lot more I’m hoping to report on  (with video & photos!) over the next couple of days.  I have what I think is exclusive coverage of the guy who yelled “WAR CRIMINAL” at former VP Dick Cheney.  I’m hoping to get that up soon.

Again, I’m hoping that you follow me on Twitter as I’ve been able to get out easier that way since I’ve been here.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

The Blogger Free For All finished up about an hour ago here at CPAC. I was honored to be on the panel with Tony Katz from the Tony Katz Radio Spectacular, Tania Gail from Midnight Blue Says, Joy – aka – Little Miss Attila, Alexander McCobin from Students for Liberty, and Doug Welch from Stixblog. The whole affair was sponsored byKevin McKeever from Bank of Kev Productions.

Our discussion truly was a free-for-all.  We ranged from topics like our 2012 Presidential outlook (Mine –> grim.); how to become a well-read blog; and what the definition of “conservative” is all about.  These are great conservative bloggers and I always love to be in their company. 

Here’s are some photos from the discussion.

(more…)