Rudy Giuliani, my guy for 2008, reminds Republicans where our focus should be:

“I think the Republican Party would be well advised to get the heck out of people’s bedrooms and let these things [e.g., gay marriage] get decided by states,” Giuliani said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We’d be a much more successful political party if we stuck to our economic, conservative roots.”

It does seem that the one upside of Obama’s big-government ways is that it has kept the GOP, by and large, centered on the small-government ideas that have defined the American conservative movement at least since the ascendancy of Barry Goldwater in 1964.

The Tea Party has certainly helped out*.

My only quibble with the former NYC Mayor’s comment is his use of the conditional, “We’d be,” he said, “a much more successful political party if we stuck to our economic, conservative roots.” (Emphasis added.)  I’d use either the present or past tense her, to note how the GOP has been more successful when it sticks to those roots, as many Republicans were in the 2010 elections.

*RELATED: Gay marriage not priority to NH Tea Party Protesters

Yesterday, while doing cardio at my gym, I received yet another lesson in the bias of CNN.  When I looked up from my book, I found Wolf Blitzer breathlessly reporting on the latest controversy swirling around Michelle Bachmann’s campaign.

Now, let me make clear (yet again) that I have some serious concerns about Mrs. Bachmann and do not back her bid for the Republican presidential nomination. I do, to be sure, appreciate her commitment to small government ideals and her ability to articulate her convictions.

Yet, as I watched Blitzer detail the allegations against her husband’s “Christian counseling business”, that, as per my previous post, allegedly  ”uses a controversial therapy that encourages homosexual patients to change their sexual orientation“, I wondered at the media obsession with this charismatic politician.  At this point in the 2008 election cycle, indeed at any point in that cycle, did Mr. Blitzer — or anyone at CNN for that matter — engage in such critical scrutiny of then-Senator Barack Obama, then a candidate for the Democratic nomination?

The CNN report was not about Mrs. Bachmann’s activities, but her husband’s.

Now, as I recall, Mr. Obama did succeed in securing an earmark (i.e., money from the federal government) for the hospital where his wife worked and subsequently received a substantial raise.  There appeared to be a pretty clear connection between his wife’s professional advancement and his official duties.

This is not to say that this information about Mr. Bachmann is irrelevant.  It is indeed relevant.  And it relates to one (of the many) concerns I have about his wife’s bid for the White House.  But, this is simply to point out the bias of CNN, more interested in allegations against the husband of a Republican presidential candidate than in evidence of a Democratic presidential candidate using federal money to help his wife. (more…)

Before I post on the accusations leveled against the “Christian counseling business” of Michelle Bachmann’s husband Marcus, an outfit that (allegedly) uses “a controversial therapy that encourages homosexual patients to change their sexual orientation,” let me reiterate my views on such outfits.

First, Christian groups have every right to set up such companies, provided they do not coerce anyone to enter treatment.

Second, critics of such outfits continue to have the freedom to question the methods of said companies and should continue to exercise that freedom.

While many programs do claim some success in “converting” their charges, they are dealing with a self-selected group; those who have “succeeded” in changing their orientation may have already been disposed to such change, that is, their sexuality is more fluid that it is for most of us.  Whereas in their youth, they found themselves drawn to their own sex, as they age, they find themselves drawn to the other sex.

Could it be that they didn’t so much convert them as they helped them accept the change that has already taken place? (more…)