Apologies for the slow blogging, but have been quite busy editing the final draft of my dissertation.  Via Hotair, caught something revealing would-be Democratic Senate Leader Charles Schumer said:

Schumer, who handily won re-election this year, acknowledged the anger vented by tea partyers and others during the election but insisted that didn’t extend to upper-income tax cuts.

Voters “did say ‘repeal health care,’ they did say ‘reduce the size of government.’ But not a single one of them from the tea party or anywhere said ‘give tax breaks to the wealthiest,’” Schumer said in a rare moment of candor.

This led Allahpundit to quip:

So the midterms were a referendum on repealing ObamaCare, by the Democrats’ own admission? There’s your tax-cut compromise, then: Republicans will agree to let the cuts lapse for households earning over a quarter mil in return for the left agreeing to torpedo our new health-care boondoggle, per the voters’ wishes according to none other than Charles Schumer himself.

There you have it fellas (& gals), Charles Schumer believes voters want to reduce the size of government and repeal Obamacare.  I trust this Democrat to get the ball rolling on helping them achieve these goals.

From her new berth at the Washington Post, the Hebrew Athena alerts us to a striking new poll:

In November, 36.0% of American Adults identified themselves as Republicans; 34.7% considered themselves Democrats, and 29.3% were not affiliated with either major party. That’s the largest number of Republicans since February 2005 and the first time ever that Rasmussen Reports polling has found more people identifying as Republicans than Democrats.

Interesting trend.  Let’s see if it holds up once Republicans take over in the House.  If they hold true to the Reagan/Tea Party principles of more personal and economic freedom and a less intrusive governments, methinks the trend will hold.

Shortly after last month’s elections when Republicans recaptured Congress, I had planned a post, urging Republicans not to repeat the mistake they made just after the 1994 elections when, in the race for House Majority Whip, they rejected the principled Bob Walker for the opportunistic Tom DeLay.  That one-time Republican leader was back in the news as I prepared to travel to San Francisco to celebrate Thanksgiving with the most important person in the state (my now 2-year-old nephew); the Texan “was convicted [last] Wednesday on charges he illegally funneled corporate money to Texas candidates in 2002“.

While I believe it’s likely the conviction will be overturned on appeal, I did not shed a tear for DeLay.  More than any other Republican leader in the House, he was responsible for abandoning “The Spirit of ’94″ and focusing on building a permanent Republican majority, not on conservative principles, but on lobbyist connections (and financing).  Had he not led the Republicans away from the small-government principles which secured their election in 1994, they may well have had a more lasting majority.

For Tom Delay Republicans, politics was about power not principles.  And in a republic, you can’t hold onto power very long unless you stand for something beyond its maintenance.

Fortunately, the incoming majority party’s slate lacked any Tom DeLays, with its leadership representing a diverse array of conservative opinion.  While incoming Speaker John Boehner supported the TARP bailouts, incoming House Republican Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling,  in the words of former House Majority Leader Dick Armey,  having “the best voice in opposition” to TARP.

There will be no Tom DeLays in the Republican leadership of the 112th Congress.  And that’s a good thing for the GOP.

FROM THE COMMENTS: DaveP reminds us, “The other thing to remember about Tom DeLay is what an abject failure his ‘K-Street’ program actually turned out to be in practice. Never forget that.” Good point.

Since I mentioned Tim Scott in a post I wrote on the high number of racially motivated attacks on black Americans, I wanted to share with you something I read about the election of this fine man to Congress.  Politico reported than the “89-year-old grandfather” of the Congressman-elect  ’was with him [on the] Tuesday night . . .  he won a seat in South Carolina’s 1st District“.  Born in 1921, Scott’s grandfathter would have thus, according to the Second Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution (later amended by the 26th), been eligible vote in 1942 .

Four years later, Strom Thurmond would win election as governor of the Palmetto State.  It’s highly unlikely that Scott’s grandfather voted in that election despite his eligibility, given that Southern states then prevented most black citizens from registering to vote.

Sixty-four years after Scott’s grandfather likely was unable to vote in the contest electing Strom Thurmond to the chief executive officer of South Carolina, that old man would see his grandson defeat Thurmond’s son in the Republican primary for a congressional seat in that very state.

And given dissatisfaction on the right with the man who succeeded Thurmond in the U.S. Senate, four years hence, Tim Scott could well be the conservative choice to fill the U.S. Senate seat of the one-time champion of segregation.

Let us hope Tim Scott’s grandfather is around to vote for him in that election.

Seems you can’t open a newspaper or turn on the TV news and not face some story about the rising time of Islamaphobia, with those narrow-minded Americans (outside California and New York of course) blaming terrorist attacks on Muslims in general and lashing out at all members of that faith.

Well, the latest report on hate crimes presents a narrative at odds with that in the MSM:

Blacks and Jews were the most likely victims of hate crimes driven by racial or religious intolerance in the United States last year, the FBI said Monday in an annual report.

Out of 6,604 hate crimes committed in the United States in 2009, some 4,000 were racially motivated and nearly 1,600 were driven by hatred for a particular religion, the FBI said.

Blacks made up around three-quarters of victims of the racially motivated hate crimes and Jews made up the same percentage of victims of anti-religious hate crimes, the report said.

Anti-Muslim crimes were a distant second to crimes against Jews, making up just eight percent of the hate crimes driven by religious intolerance.

Do hope the rising tide of anti-Semitism does get more attention because it is a real problem.  And not just here in the United States.

And the ugly stain of American’s original sin, slavery, still endures, alas, with many black Americans still targeted.  We’ve come a long way since the Civil War and Civil Rights Movement, but still have a ways to go.

That a black man could win the Republican primary for Congress in the heart of the Confederacy shows how far we’ve come.  Tim Scott won his primary — and general election — with mostly white votes in a region once defined by its racial divide.  (More on that election anon.)

What is it about certain members of the chattering classes on our nation’s coasts that whenever conservatives do well at the ballot box, their success must be attributed to something other than their ideas?

Ann Althouse, an Obama voter who teaches law at the University of Wisconsin, comments on something on something a fellow UW professor said.  In Bill Lueders’s Isthmus article subtitled ”The Triumph of Stupidity“, he asks “political science professor Charles Franklin how people could vote the way they did, and when Franklin answers ‘They’re pretty damn stupid,’ he says, ‘Thank you, professor… That’s the answer I was looking for’“:

Frankly, it’s an answer embraced by many people I know. One of my Isthmus colleagues sent me a study showing that Dane County, which bucked the trends on Election Day, is by far the most educated county in the state. “When conservatives cut support for education,” she mused, “they do so to keep people dumb and their own interests in power.”

This prompts this blogress diva to reply:

Welcome to my world: Dane County, Wisconsin, home of people who tell themselves they are the smart people and those who disagree with them must certainly be dumb. They don’t go through the exercise of putting themselves in the place of someone who thinks differently from the way they do . . . . If you short circuit that process and go right to the assumption that people who don’t agree with you are stupid, how do you maintain the belief that you are, in fact, intelligent, informed, and well-meaning?

Read the whole thing.  It is a puzzling thing how so many people who style themselves to be so superior and smart simply assume their ideological adversaries are stupid.

I have been pondering a post putting forward a conviction that is gradually crystallizing that John Boehner may well become a great Speaker of the House, exceeding the accomplishments of his most recent predecessors and securing the reputation as a transformational figure in American politics, a legislator who fulfills the Reagan legacy, a leader who, because of his temperament, completes what Newt Gingrich began (but because of his temperament could not complete).

This piece would focus more on that temperament than his ideology.  The notion first started coming into focus when I read portions of his September 30 AEI speech.  Even a piece by Michael Barone where the sage pundit opined that “Boehner is not likely to become as prominent a figure as Gingrich or Pelosi” helped this idea grow.  Barone contended that the “GOP freshmen will hold Boehner to his big promises”.  Indeed, the incoming Speaker has included two, South Carolina’s Tim Scott and South Dakota’s Kristi Noem in the GOP leadership for the 112th Congress.

That he turns to the incoming freshman suggests he’s aware of the ideas which helped them secure their victories.

The latest news to increase my confidence in my fellow Ohio native comes via the indispensable Jennifer Rubin.  In his “first press conference as the GOP’s officially favored choice for Speaker“, Boehner offered this on Obamacare’s prospects in the 112th Congress:

We think that Obamacare ruined the best healthcare in the country, we believe it will bankrupt our nation, we believe it needs to be repealed and replaced with commonsense reforms to bring down the cost of health insurance and you’ll see us move quickly enough . . . .

Could there be a more succinct formulation of the problems of Republican opposition to the Democrats’ legislative overhaul?   Boehner coupled this articulation of opposition with a promise of action.  This is not exactly what he needs to say on the issue at this time.  Once he becomes Speaker, we’ll need to see more specifics.

He does seem to be aware of the task ahead of him.

Remember what a crybaby the unhappy Barney Frank was in victory, unable to graciously acknowledge his opponent’s spirited, but, alas, unsuccessful campaign?  Well, as crass as the mean-spirited man from Massachusetts was in victory, his similarly septuagenarian party leader, outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is graceless in defeat.

Via JammieWearingFool, comes her commentary on her successor’s tears.

Incoming Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said incoming Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is “known to cry.”

“You know what? He is known to cry. He cries sometimes when we’re having a debate on bills. If I cry, it’s about the personal loss of a friend or something like that. But when it comes to politics — no, I don’t cry. I would never think of crying about any loss of an office, because that’s always a possibility, and if you’re professional, then you deal with it professionally,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) told the New York Times magazine.

She noted: ”I have deep emotions about the American people. If I were to cry for anything, I would cry for them and the policies that they’re about to face.”

How rich is this comment.  Couldn’t she just acknowledge the humanity of the man and many of us cry at emotionally challenging — or uplifting — moments?  Why does she have to use the occasion to try to lecture her partisan adversary on her superior temperament.  Well, if she she really believes what she says, she doesn’t lead by example.  Later in the post, JWF asks, “As to her claim she never cries over politics, how does she explain this performance?”  Yep, he’s got video of Pelosi crying over politics.

And her nastiness is on full display in her comment on the tears she claims she would shed.

Yup, he’s got the San Francisco Democrat demonstrating, by her own standard, some very unprofessional behavior.

As the Pelosi Democrats prepare to yield power in the House to the Boehner Republicans, I wonder whether in the various meeting rooms of the gay groups in our nation’s capital, they are developing strategies to reach out to people whose language many of the groups’ leaders are loath to understand:  Republicans.

I wonder as well what kind of meetings these groups had two years ago, as Democrats cemented their control of Congress and were about to take control of the executive branch.  Did they just exult in the electoral successes of their preferred political party, believing that because the then-incoming majority was filled with well-meaning liberals who loved the gays that they were sure to act swiftly on their policy priorities?  Or did they develop a strategy to ensure that the Democrats kept their promises on a whole range of issues from repeal of DADT and DOMA to passage of ENDA as well as legislation recognizing same-sex civil unions.

It would seem that the smart strategy would have been to prioritize those issues so as to work on them one at a time, starting with the proverbial lowest hanging fruit, the most popular legislation.  Then, with priorities in place, they would be better prepared to reach out to their allies on the Hill and in the Administration to develop a time-frame for each.  Perhaps, they did develop such a strategy and from my perspective here on the West Coast, I was not privy to it.

But, from the various releases I received from these groups — not to mention the knowledge I gained reading their web-sites — it seemed they had adopted a scattershot approach, reminding us of the imperative of each of these issues instead of choosing to prioritize these issues and push them one at a time. (more…)

Catch the editorializing in the first line of this AP piece on the new crop of Republican governors:

Incoming Republican governors from Pennsylvania to New Mexico are vowing to keep campaign promises to slice already cut-to-the-bone budgets and balance them without raising taxes.

In doing so, GOP leaders intent on conservative governance signaled a desire to try to fundamentally change state government, shrinking it significantly. And they acknowledged that could mean more job losses and service cuts to already recession-hammered states anticipating more budget trouble ahead.

The article as a whole is pretty even-handed, showing that these incoming governors understand the fiscal challenges ahead of them.

That said, for AP National Political Writer Liz Sidoti to suggest that state government budgets are already “cut-to-the-bone” ignores the profligate record of many state legislatures in recent yeas, a profligacy hidden by the payments in the Democrats’ “stimulus” to fund various state services.

It would be nice if Ms. SIdoti could acknowledge that many of these incoming chief executives face the problems they do because of the profligacy of their predecessors, many of the Democrats.

Looks like Chris Christie’s got some company coming in the new crop of governors-elect.

About two months before the fall elections, I received a review copy of Rochelle Schweizer’s biography of the outgoing House Speaker, She’s the Boss: The Disturbing Truth About Nancy Pelosi.  I tried to finish it before those elections as I thought it would likely be remaindered soon after, but other obligations got in the way.  One thing which came clear as I read about the rise of the San Francisco Democrat was just how ruthless she can be, how determined she was as she climbed the political ladder and how much control she exercised over her caucus.

She did manage to push some pretty controversial votes through the House when she wielded the gavel.  But, with her party’s loss of over 60 seats earlier that month, her power is waning.  She will never again rule her caucus with the iron fist she exercised for the better part of the current Congress.

Yesterday, she did not receive the unanimous vote of that caucus in its leadership elections.  As Jonathan Allen and John Bresnaham wrote in Politico:

But the 43 votes against her reveal that a divided caucus — still reeling from the loss of at least 61 seats — will not be as pliable for the California Democrat as it once was.

There will be more votes in coming days on limiting Pelosi’s control of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Rules and Steering committees, but she is expected to win those fights, too. And there may be tough policy votes ahead in the new Congress, as House Republicans try to lure the anti-Pelosi forces to their side on key issues.

I daresay Minority Leader Pelosi won’t be able to hold her caucus together in the 112th Congress as she did in the 111th.  Those moderates who survived, but just barely, will want to avoid the fate of their colleagues who, through no choice of their own, won’t be returning to Capitol Hill next January.

Writing in Politico, Jessica Taylor reminds us that when you look beyond Republican gains in Congress to the party’s victories in various state legislatures, “the bloody picture for Democrats nationwide becomes even more gruesome. Several state legislatures made historic transitions to Republican hands — some for the first time since the 19th century — and nearly an entire generation of state Democrats saw its ranks obliterated.”

Yet another story in Politico causes us to wonder if that picture would have been even bloodier had the Republicans had a more effective leader at the helm of the Republican National Committee (RNC).  In resigning yesterday from his post, Republican National Committee political director Gentry Collins delivered “a stinging indictment of Chairman Michael Steele’s two-year tenure at the committee“:

In a four-page letter to Steele and the RNC’s executive committee obtained by POLITICO, Collins lays out inside details, previously only whispered, about the disorganization that plagues the party. He asserts that the RNC’s financial shortcomings limited GOP gains this year and reveals that the committee is deeply in debt entering the 2012 presidential election cycle.

“In the previous two non-presidential cycles, the RNC carried over $4.8 million and $3.1 million respectively in cash reserve balances into the presidential cycles,” Collins writes, underlining his words for emphasis. “In stark contrast, we enter the 2012 presidential cycle with 100% of the RNC’s $15 million in lines of credit tapped out, and unpaid bills likely to add millions to that debt.”

The short version of the RNC’s 2010 troubles as described by Collins: The committee couldn’t afford to run an independent expenditure ad campaign on behalf of their candidates, didn’t fund a paid voter turnout operation for Senate and gubernatorial races, left its vaunted 72-Hour turnout program effectively unfunded, offered only a fraction of the direct-to-candidate financial contributions they made four years ago and dramatically scaled back its support of state parties. . . . (more…)

BREAKING: Ethics committee finds Rangel guilty

The Hill has more:

A House ethics panel has convicted Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) on 11 of 13 counts of violating House ethics rules.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the adjudicatory subcommittee and the full House ethics committee, announced the decision late Tuesday morning following an abbreviated public trial of the 20-term lawmaker and nearly six hours of deliberations.

The next step is to debate sanctions. Do wonder if the current Democratic majority will proceed with all deliberate speed so they can sanction their fellow partisan before the Republicans take over come January.

Today, we learned that the Tea Party doesn’t need to elect its candidates to advance its agenda.  When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, in the words of Politico’s Manu Raju, “stunned official Washington on Monday by saying he would support a two-year ban on the pet projects“, it was the statement heard round the blogosphere, resounding across the Beltway.  This shrewd politician could read the tea leaves.

This former champion of earmarks was deft in explaining his change of heart (some have called it a flip-flop or “about-face“).  He claims to “know the good that has come from the projects I have helped support throughout my state” and refuses to apologize for them:

But there is simply no doubt that the abuse of this practice has caused Americans to view it as a symbol of the waste and the out-of-control spending that every Republican in Washington is determined to fight. And unless people like me show the American people that we’re willing to follow through on small or even symbolic things, we risk losing them on our broader efforts to cut spending and rein in government.

That’s why today I am announcing that I will join the Republican Leadership in the House in support of a moratorium on earmarks in the 112th Congress.

“Behind this principled sounding explanation,” Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff writes

. . . lie solid pragmatic considerations. For one thing, McConnell presumably does not wish to face, or see members of caucus face, strong Tea Party opposition in primaries over the next few cycles.

More fundamentally, McConnell presumably does not want a schism develop between the leadership and the Tea Party faction of his caucus over an issue that is mostly symbolic. Indeed, if McConnell can navigate his way through this issue, there may be no schism.

Read the whole thing.  What is significant is that McConnell recognizes that what political benefit might once have come from earmarks has long since evaporated with the growing public concern about spendthrift politicians in our nation’s capital.  A small government consensus continues to emerge.

The Tea Party has helped make it good politics to oppose the pork-barrel politicians which incumbents once thought essential to survival.

During the course of the 2010 campaign, I was working on a blog post/op-ed with the title I use for this post.  But, as I followed the messages of Republican candidates across the country, I realized that, well, they had already gotten the message.  It didn’t seem necessary.  And since it wasn’t a winning issue in the campaign, it shouldn’t be a defining agenda when the 112th Congress convenes in January.

Thanks in part to the unpopular, big-government initiatives of the Obama Democrats and the concomitant (given popular opinion) growth of the Tea Parties, most Republicans campaigned on fiscal issues.  Those who made an issue of gays (or appeared to do as much) didn’t do as well on Election Day as polls forecast.

Now, our good friends at GOProud “and some Tea Party leaders” are pressing Republicans to stay true to their campaign rhetoric and “to keep social issues off” the agenda:

“On behalf of limited-government conservatives everywhere, we write to urge you and your colleagues in Washington to put forward a legislative agenda in the next Congress that reflects the principles of the Tea Party movement,” they write to presumptive House Speaker John Boehner and Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell in an advance copy provided to POLITICO. “This election was not a mandate for the Republican Party, nor was it a mandate to act on any social issue.”

When Chris Barron of GOProud contacted Bruce and me about the project, each of us eagerly signed on.  His letter is exactly in the spirit of the ideas this blog has been promoting for six year — and that I have been promoting for at last fifteen.  Social conservative Tea Party folk are also signing up:

“When they were out in the Boston Harbor, they weren’t arguing about who was gay or who was having an abortion,” said Ralph King, a letter signatory who is a Tea Party Patriots national leadership council member, as well as an Ohio co-coordinator.

King said he signed onto the letter because GOProud seemed to be genuine in pushing for fiscal conservatism and limited government.

“Am I going to be the best man at a same sex-marriage wedding? That’s not something I necessarily believe in,” said King. “I look at myself as pretty socially conservative. But that’s not what we push through the Tea Party Patriots.”

Nice to see a gay conservative group actually working within the framework of conservative groups to keep the focus on the issues which have defined our party at least since the rise of Reagan — and have helped Republicans win elections in 1980, 1984, 1988, 1994 and now 2010.

Even the Advocate has picked up on this.  Guess the message is that a gay Republicans can get media attention without attacking their own party.

From the Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire:

“We didn’t lose the election because of me,” Ms. Pelosi told National Public Radio in an interview that aired Friday morning. “Our members do not accept that.”

Instead, the California Democrat attributes the loss of at least 60 seats to high unemployment and “$100 million of outside, unidentified funding.”

Always looking for someone else to blame, are we, Nancy?  Well, it does seem par for the course for your party.  Does seem that you guys are always looking for excuses when the answer should be obvious to anyone to who can read election returns and exits polls.  To paraphrase an expression from one of your party’s political operatives:

It’s the big-government policies, stupid.

Why is it that Democrats are always trying to find excuses for their losses?   Why do they never consider that their policies may be to blame?

RELATED:  ”Yeah, when the right-thinking folks get it wrong,” Glenn Reynolds quips, “it’s never their fault.”

At its August 1998 national “convention” in Dallas, Texas, the leadership of Log Cabin was preparing to announce a new strategy in preparation for the 200 elections. Eager to participate in that discussion, I wrote the first (of what would become three) “Virginia Plans” where the club I then led, the Log Cabin Republican Club of Northern Virginia, would present our views of the direction, we believed, the organization should take.

Alas that there was no forum at that conclave where clubs could present their views, but my club, in voting to ratify the document, had also voted the resources to photocopy it, so I distributed it and received much positive feedback. In the following months, I would write the two remaining plans.

Thinking about those plans in the wake of an election where the victorious GOP largely ignored gay issues, I re-read them and found that much of what our club had recommended back then, GOProud was promoting in the current cycle, notably this (from the first plan):

Many of us have joined the party of Abraham Lincoln, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan because we believe that government is growing out of control. We favor a smaller government which, we believe, would better protect our freedom. It is the Republican Party which has long championed individual rights. It is our party which champions economic freedom and the free enterprise system. And it is our party which favors a sensible foreign policy and a defense strong enough to protect our legitimate national interests and so better guarantee freedom within our borders.

As soon as I figure out how to post .pdfs, I will do so, making these plans accessible to all.

The Golden State used to be the state not just of the latest fads, but also the newest ideas.  Well, tomorrow its junior Senator, Ma’am Barbara Boxer, turns 70 while the Governor-elect reached that milestone two-and-one-half years ago.  He was old news when he ran for president eighteen years ago.

And neither, like some leaders who reach their political prime in their eighth decade, has, at least not in their recent campaigns done much to challenge the current way of thinking.  They just want to return to the same old/same old.  It is no wonder then that outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, clinging onto power as House Democratic Leader, is also from California.  She’s even older than Mrs. Boxer.

Guess if the Democratic Party in the Golden State can’t come up with younger voices to helm the state or represent it in the Senate, then, well, Mrs. Pelosi thinks the septuagenarians should hold onto power in the House, even at the expense of pushing aside young blood.  Glenn reminds us that in Mrs. Pelosi’s caucus there’s no room at the top for young Democrats“:

A younger generation of Democrats is chafing at being asked to stand aside and let a triumvirate of elders keep their leadership positions in the wake of a catastrophic midterm election result.

Barring an unexpected shake-up, House Democrats next year will be led by a combination of Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), Steny Hoyer (Md.) and James Clyburn (S.C.) — lawmakers who are 70 or older and have served in Congress for decades.

Hey, Democrats, nothing personal.  Ol’ Nancy still thinks trends begin in California.  And if her state elects old politicians with old ideas, then, gosh darn it, she’s going to make sure that old politicians with old ideas lead her caucus well.

(1) A vote to repeal Obamacare.

(2) A vote to defund Corporate for Public Broadcasting (parent agency of NPR)

In the wake of the 2010 elections, the various gay groups in our nation’s capital, in particular the largest, HRC, can choose to continue as they have and serve as gay versions of the various left-wing advocacy groups or, to shift course and act as non-partisan advocates on behalf of the diverse community of gay and lesbian individuals.  Their current strategy made sense in a Washington where Democrats dominated (as does the partisan strategy of their California counterpart, “Equality California”).

And, to be sure, if you believe big-government to be the means to “solve” the problems facing the gay community, it is entirely honorable to set up shop as a left-wing advocacy group.  The important thing is to be upfront about it.

That said, it’s hard to see how a man of Joe Solmonese’s political pedigree can have any influence in a Washington where John Boehner is now the most powerful legislator.  An ability in the current climate to appeal to Democrats will not help move legislation repealing Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (DADT) or recognizing, for the purposes of federal law, same-sex unions.

This is why I’m so gung-ho about GOProud.  They are familiar with the arguments we need make in order to influence a more conservative Congress.

All that said, the 2010 elections should be a wake-up call to the gay groups inside the Beltway that their strategic alliance with the Democratic Party has failed.  It is hard to tell what the future is.  Some Republicans may be willing to move forward on gay issues.  Others may find that by avoiding such issues, they can toss a bone to social conservatives.

Whatever the case, gay groups will have to adopt a new strategy or become gay cheerleaders for the Democratic agenda.  Steadfast, to be sure, in pursuit of their principles, but ineffective in achieving legislative success.