Can you imagine the reaction if a Republican candidate had penned the fundraising missive that Julianna Smoot, Deputy Campaign Manager Obama for America wrote. According to Bookworm who has “signed up” for Obama campaign e-mails in order “to see what the opposition is doing“:

Everyone’s got that special conservative in their life.

Maybe it’s your dad, who forwards you every chain email about the President’s birth certificate, or your neighbor, who just put up a Mitt Romney sign.

Dealing with these folks can be … frustrating.

This holiday season, we’re giving you a chance to have a little bit of fun at their expense. Let a Republican in your life know they inspired you to make a donation to the Obama campaign — chip in $3 or more today.

When you give to the campaign, simply enter your Republican friend’s email address and they’ll get a note letting them know that they motivated you to donate — which will surely make their day.

“Sure enough,” writes James Taranto who linked the above,

BarackObama.com has a special Web form for donors who wish to have “fun at the expense of a Republican.” Let’s say you’re a Republican and your 20-something daughter is an Obamabot. (Have you had a DNA test?) She makes a $10 donation to the president’s campaign, which sends her an email tweaking you–and your name and email address are now on a list of dissenters against the most powerful man in the world.

In his roundup, Jim Geraghty quotes Nice Deb who suggests this tack could sow divisiveness:

It’s not cute, and it’s not funny. Family members will fight and friendships will be lost over this. What person in their right mind would do something like this to someone they like? Wouldn’t it have to be someone they don’t like? So the Obama camp is purposefully egging on their followers’ basest instincts to hurt people during the holidays? (more…)

Given her record, we can pretty much guess that this has more to do with politics than sexual harassment:

The AP reports that Democratic activist (though they don’t identify her as such) “Gloria Allred said Monday that another woman is accusing Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain of sexual harassment and will appear at a news conference in New York City later in the day.”

They call this gal a “High-profile discrimination attorney”. High-profile partisan is more like it. Does seem that whenever California Democrats want their dirty work done for them, they call ol’ Gloria.

Now, the lady is going national.

UPDATE: Given the woman who is trotting this accuser forward, we should demand corroboration before taking her seriously.

In linking my post on the president’s demagogic attacks on the Republicans seeking to replace him come January 20, 2013, Glenn Reynolds quoted the paragraph I had intended to paraphrase in a follow-up post:

He didn’t need to attack Republicans. He could have simply highlighted his accomplishments on issues of concern to the gay community, notably repeal of DADT (which even yours truly believes is a feather in his cap). . . . The president’s mean-spirited attack shows his eagerness to repeat the talking points of left-wing pundits. He is attempting to hold Republicans responsible for the actions of perhaps not more than one boorish individual. This demagoguery, having defined the president’s governing style for these past several months, has also begun to define his re-election campaign.

So, why did it attack? Is it that, the president knows, as our reader MV quipped that “‘HRC’ stands for: Hate Republicans Campaign.”  He was just playing to his audience.

Or is there something else to it.  He could have just listed his accomplishments — and not just on DADT repeal — on those issues of concern to gay people.  Instead, he chose to attack Republicans for standing silent when on numerous occasions, he remained silent when others, in his presence, hurled invective at his political adversaries or other groups.

So, why did this self-professed post-partisan politician feel compelled to attack?  This is not the new kind of politics he promised, eschewing the name-calling, buck-passing and divisive rhetoric that seemed to have defined our political discourse for the sixteen years prior (save for a brief respite after 9/11) to his taking office.

The answer to this question might help us better understand the real motivations of the incumbent President of the United States.

When someone on the right behaves boorishly, our friends in the media highlight the incident and pronounce that such behavior defines the GOP, the Tea Party or the conservative movement.  When a liberal behaves in a similar manner, his boorish behavior is just that, boorish behavior, signifying nothing, perhaps just an overzealous individual subject to the passions which, from time to time, overwhelm us all.

It seems that some on the left are just waiting for a conservative to behave badly, so they can use his bad behavior to define the party.  Shortly after an individual booed a gay soldier asking a question at last week’s Republican debate, liberals rushed to make this anonymous lout the face of the Republican Party, with a liberal friend on Facebook posting this dishonest slogan:

Dishonest and perhaps prejudiced as it ascribes to an entire political party the rude actions of one individual. Some Democrats insist that a number of people booed. I watched the clip of the question several times and heard two, possibly three, people booing. Ann Althouse, who did the same, stands by her perception that “only one person audibly” yelled “boo.”

Despite this likely lone boor, the media, John Hinderaker laments, “won’t let the facts get in the way.” Seems there were more people shushing and/or criticizing the boor:

I was at the debate, in the audience on the right hand side about halfway back (here’s my tweet of the video screen that was right in front of us). The person who booed was just a few rows in front of us. The booing got an immediate and angry reaction from nearly everyone sitting around him, who hissed and shushed at him. Lots of loud gasps, “Shhhh!” “No!” “Shut up, you idiot!” etc.

There were more people in this Republican audience criticizing the lout(s) who booed a soldier than there were louts booing. A more accurate description (than the one provided in the image above) of the Republican crowd would be that even Republicans seek to silence and criticize man who boos a gay soldier.

But that just doesn’t fit the narrative.

Contending that “Republicans need to push back hard against this distraction tactic,” Hinderaker reminds us that

On a near-constant basis, Democratic Congressmen blurt out outrages far worse than those attributed to anonymous citizens who attend GOP debates, yet the newspapers will never try to make those absurdities the dominant narrative of the Democratic Party (more…)

This morning, when I read Nick’s post on how the left just can’t let social issues go, I wondered if this obsession accounted for the media focus on Michele Bachmann.  And not just the liberals in the MSM.  It seems that a day doesn’t go by without a liberal friend posting some damning accusation (usually exaggerated) about this charismatic conservative on Facebook.

Now, I’ll grant that many of her activities should draw scrutiny.  But, she has already been subject to more scrutiny than had Barack Obama at this point, indeed perhaps at any point, in the 2008 campaign.  She has her associations with some fringe social conservatives.  He has had his with some very radical leftists and sat for twenty years in a church helmed by a pastor who regularly spewed hate from the pulpit.

I think Nick’s onto something in suggesting that the media seek to focus on the social issues so as to avoid the Democrats’ failed economic policies — and to paint conservatives as fringe cranks more concerned with what people do in the privacy of their homes than as concerned taxpayers worried about a bloated, inefficient and intrusive federal government.

They want to make Mrs. Bachmann the face of the GOP — and not the Michele Bachmann who has shown a remarkable fluency on fiscal issues, but the ostensible crank who worked with someone who knows someone who praised someone else who once engaged in some truly inflammatory language.

Let me stress.  I do not back Michele Bachmann for the Republican nomination and will not vote for her in the California primary.   Given her past associations, I don’t think she has the capacity to unite the GOP. (more…)

Looks like one of our critics was having a bad day on Friday and decided to vent on our Facebook page:

It is an article of faith among the gay left that Republicans hate gay people.  A paucity of evidence notwithstanding act as if animosity toward homosexuals is a defining principle of the GOP.  Yet, an article in the New York Times indicates that some Republicans are actually the driving financial force behind the effort to achieve state recognition of marriage the right way in the Empire State — through the elected legislature:

As gay rights advocates intensify their campaign to legalize same-sex marriage in New York, the bulk of their money is coming from an unexpected source: a group of conservative financiers and wealthy donors to the Republican Party, most of whom are known for bankrolling right-leaning candidates and causes.

heir behind-the-scenes financial support — about $1 million in donations, delivered in recent weeks to a new coalition of gay rights organizations — could alter the political calculus of Albany lawmakers, especially the Republican state senators in whose hands the fate of gay marriage rests.

Seems a lot of my readers have been alerting me to this article, including one who sent me a link to this Stephen H. Miller post on the Times piece.

Do hope this article will cause some on the gay left to reconsider their prejudice.  Yet, for some reason, I don’t think this bit of news will alter some people’s hardened views.

At least since I was an undergraduate, I have noticed that some of the most intolerant leftists I have come across hold tenured positions on university faculties. Those who should be best equipped to wrestle with ideas at odds with their own often show the greatest outrage when students present such ideas.  The latest example comes from the Hawkeye State:

University of Iowa professor who studies same-sex relationships was so upset by an email from a campus Republican group promoting “Conservative Coming Out Week” that she fired off a vulgarity aimed at all Republicans, according to messages released by the school Wednesday.

“F— you, Republicans” was professor Ellen Lewin’s response Monday to the recruiting pitch from UI College Republicans. She sent the email from her school account, drawing outrage from conservative students and one Republican lawmaker.

UI President Sally Mason responded to the incident Wednesday by condemning intolerant political speech.

The university president may have condemned intolerant political speech in broad terms,* but she did not single out, as she should have, the professor nor even identify her political views, as if such intolerance were not legion on the left.  The university should be questioning why a scholar who reacts as Ms. Lewin did was doing on its faculty.

A conservative who spoke out as did she would likely be subject to sensitivity training.  Instead of grappling with her prejudice, this academic used her apology to lash out against Republicans.  In an ”email to the leaders of the College Republicans,” Ms. Lewin explained “that she had just finished reading about ‘fresh outrages committed by Republicans in government’ when she received the pitch”:

“I admit the language was inappropriate, and apologize for any affront to anyone’s delicate sensibilities,” Lewin wrote.

But she said the group’s email contained several statements that were “extremely offensive, nearly rising to the level of obscenity.” She said she was upset that Republicans used the “coming out” language to describe the week given what she called their general disdain for gay rights. She said the email also mocked labor protesters in Wisconsin and animal rights.

This woman just can’t let go of her prejudices and even includes a jibe against those critical of her angry riposte — dubbing their sensibilities “delicate”.  Would she consider a gay man’s sensibilities delicate if he were outraged that a professor replied to his invitation to a talk on anti-gay bigotry with, “F*** you f****t”? (more…)

Via Legal Insurrection:

The results have just been posted in the Milwaukee County canvass, and nothing much changed from yesterday. AP reports Prosser picked up 11 more votes and is the winner.

I repeat, JoAnne Kloppenburg lost.  David Prosser won.

The vote margin stands at 7316, a virtually insurmountable lead for a recount.  All the hanging chads in the world will not put Kloppenburg on the Supreme Court.

Awwwwww…. and all that money wasted by the public employee unions, too.  Oh wait — that’s taxpayer money they waste on their liberal political agenda.  *facepalm*

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Those who know — or who are aware of — me primarily through this blog likely think of me as a man consumed by politics. And while, to be sure, politics is one among my many interests, it is only one. For the past seventy-two hours or so, I have not spent much time on the blog, only stopping by briefly to check the spam filter and “rescuing” comments, occasionally and quickly chiming in, wondering (as always) why some people choose to comment without even bothering to understand the post to which they attach their “thoughts.”

It seems they see the space we offer them as a place to vent, projecting their own inner demons (or whatever) onto their ideological adversaries. It never seems to occur to some (but fortunately not all) of them that we might hold our views out of principle, with the conviction that conservative policies are best for all people in this great nation (and around the world), including gay people. Why, I wonder again and again and yet again, do these folks assume we hold these views for sinister means or out of some great need to belong in a community of those who “hate us”?

All that said, I do hope to get back to blogging perhaps even later today — after I run a few errands.

Yet, as these past few days have reminded me that I can full participate in life without blogging regularly about politics, I do hope this post will remind our readers that politics is not all there is to life. And that they may bear in mind (as do most of my left-of-center friends) that just because you disagree about politics doesn’t mean you can’t have other things in common, other passions, other affections, other attitudes toward life.

UPDATE:  Not long after posting this, I found my energy to write about politics again.  Maybe it was the intensity of my cardio workout.

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.

A reader alerts me to an e-mail HRC President Joe Solmonese sent out yesterday (January 6), the day after Republicans took control of the United States House of Representatives.

Entitled “Hateful leaders take over”, the missive warned of dark days ahead:

Remember all those anti-gay candidates who ran for office this year? As of yesterday, dozens of them are now members of Congress and the House of Representatives is under their control. . . .

2011 opens with a new, more conservative, more deeply anti-gay House leadership – helmed by right-wingers John Boehner and Eric Cantor. Together, they tried to stop us from repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”They’ve opposed legislation on hate crimes, employment non-discrimination, responsible HIV/AIDS policy, and relationship recognition. And they just became very powerful.

Emphasis in original.  Guess ol’ Joe has determined that anyone who disagrees with his agenda must needs be anti-gay.  Not really the right way to address the leaders of one part of the legislative branch, especially if you want to lobby them on issues of importance to the gay community.

I agree that we need to change many Republican minds on “relationship recognition.”   Hinting that Republicans are “hateful” and their leaders “anti-gay” is not the way to do that.

With e-mails like this, HRC reveals itself (again) for the partisan organization that it is.  Its business isn’t so much helping gay people as it is trashing the GOP.

What is de rigueur among straight celebrities seems to be especially so among gays striving to increase their time in the limelight and the favor they enjoy in the mainstream media.  They feel they just have to establish their anti-Republican bona fides to show just how broad-minded they are.

Interviewed in Newsweek, sex columnist Dan Savage does just that by using profanity to talk about a conservative he reviles, using a crude term to describe gays and making assumptions about a Supreme Court justice with whose opinions he disagrees:

Scalia isn’t gay?!? I always think the biggest homophobe in the room is clearly a c–ksucker!

Amazing the juvenile level of this guy’s discourse.  And the media has styled him as a kind of role model for gay adolescents struggling with their sexuality!

Fascinating that the folks who label opponents of their agenda as haters often do so in the most hateful terms.

(Via Newsbusters via Viking the Kitten.)

Howard Towt seems to think so. In a thoughtful post on the “What I’ve Learned” interviews in the January, 2011 issue of Esquire magazine, entitled “Establishing Credentials,” he notes that one theme that seems to unite the reflections of the various celebrities interviewed:

Each of these individuals establishes his anti-Republican credentials as a way of validating his remarks with the reader and letting us know that he is a part of our popular culture. It is a reflexive action and is endorsed by Esquire.

Dems to voters: You may hate us, but GOP is worse

Amidst all the hullabaloo over health care, we can’t lose sight of the other outrages of this Administration.  Remember how Democrats and their allies in the MSM just couldn’t stop telling us how horrible, no good and very bad it was that Karl Rove and the Bush White House “outed” a cover CIA operative, only to find out that Rove hadn’t done the “outing” and that the operative wasn’t covert?

Well, now, “Attorney General Eric Holder is dragging his feet in investigating how CIA officials were recently outed by the defense attorneys of terrorists“:

In August 2009, senior Al Qaeda enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay were shown photographs taken of CIA officials leaving their homes, by their defense attorneys.  In addition, Bill Gertz recently reported in theWashington Times that more photographs were shown to the detainees.

So, where’s the outrage?

Elise Cooper, who alerted me to the story writes, “Former CIA agents and intelligence specialists cannot understand why there are no outcries from Congress.”  Well, why would there be an outcry?   This can’t be used to embarrass a Republican Administration.

In his tribute to the Gipper today on the Corner, Paul Kengor reminds us that W wasn’t the first Republican president the left demonized.  Demonization of prominent Republicans, it’s what the left does:

Reagan was just plain likable. Of all the subjects I’ve studied, few were as universally liked. Sure, Reagan, as president, was demonized by the Left, but that’s what the Left does: indecent, ugly rage. Still, even most liberals muster nice words about Reagan personally.

Central to that likability was Reagan’s humility. The word “I” didn’t dominate his conversation, unless he was poking fun at himself. He was no narcissist. Ronald Reagan was not full of pride; he was thoroughly unpossessed of self-love.

And the Gipper was a plain ol’ nice guy.  He didn’t let the barbs of the media–and there were many–get to him.  I speculate that it was his lady’s love that made him so strong.  The leftists’ barbs bounced right off him because he was confident in his beliefs and strengthened by Nancy’s affection. 

He didn’t need love himself; he got all the validation he needed just from one look in his wife’s eyes.

Kengor concludes with an anecdote about the Gipper’s common touch which shows why our Ron was such a great man.

Just look at the level to which the opposition is taking the campaign to demonize the Republican candidate for the Senate seat once held by Ted Kennedy (and Daniel Webster):

(H/t: Jim Geraghty.)

In his campaign for the special election in California’s Tenth Congressional District, to fill the seat vacated when its then-representative Ellen Tauscher became Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs, the Democratic candidate, California lieutenant governor John Garamendi accused his Republican opponent David Harmer of supporting “off shoring jobs,” citing a story from Utah’s Deseret News from April 23, 2004.

Problem was “that story wasn’t about the David Harmer running for Congress; it was about Utah’s executive director of the State Department of Community and Economic Development David Harmer.”

So, what does the Democrat do when alerted to this error?

Well, he takes a page from the playbook of the Democratic National Committee. He attacks his Republican opponent, you know the one whose campaign alerted him to the error:

The important point is that David Harmer opposes President Obama’s efforts to create jobs in the 10th congressional district, provide for our schools and children, repair our roads and highways, deliver much needed medical services, and fund research programs. The bottom line is that David Harmer’s positions are just out of touch with the people of the 10th congressional district.

Note the clever wordsmithing–he says opponent opposes President Obama’s efforts to create jobs.  And well, those efforts don’t seem to have amounted to much at least not in the Golden State.  If the number of new jobs in the state’s Tenth Congressional District is anything like the number of new jobs in the state at large, more jobs (many more) have been lost than have been “saved or created.” (more…)

Jus’ wonderin’ as a “former Communist” in the Obama White House described Republicans as such back in February.

RELATED:  Obama’s Team Crosses the Rhetorical Line.