Be Careful What You Wish For...

David Frum, a well-known conservative who works with the right-wing American Enterprise Institute and is editor of the equally right-wing website, New Majority.com, penned a column recently for Newsweek in which he attempts to lay out the case against Rush Limbaugh from a die-hard Republican point of view.

I agree with Mr. Frum on very few things, but I certainly agree with him on one point: if Rush Limbaugh, with his gargantuan ego, keeps on insisting that he is the Chosen One--the anointed guardian of conservative Republican purity--as well as the party's biggest & loudest mouth, the pusillanimous political pachyderms will more than earn their electoral & historical fate.

The ever-shrinking Elephant Party, who've been actually behaving for so (too) long like bulls in a china shop, have left the shop (i.e., our country) in shambles, and have been properly politically punished for the mess they've left for the next guy. You'd think that the few Republicans that are still left standing might have actually learned something from the past couple of national elections, and that they'd be thankful enough to still have a job that they'd want to who work to help fix what they've so blithely broken, but apparent repeated mass repudiation of their neo-con agenda means nothing at all to a party more beholden to ideology than to anyting resembing the common good. Nope. No, sir. Rush say that's socialist talk, maybe even communinism.

If the minority Republicans buy Rush's line that it's not the message that's defective, it's that the volume at which said message has been broadcast hasn't been cranked up enough & if the "R's" insist on simply standing in President Obama's way complaining about the mess & the smell they have made as he & the other Democrats attempt to sweep out the shards & the elephant droppings, they might as well get used to their well-earned status as the increasingly-irrelevant Party of "No". I have to say, it couldn't happen to a more-deserving group of dittoheads.

I've included some of my favorite parts of Frum's article below, and I've highlighted one sentence in particular that shows that at least SOMEONE in the Republican party has been paying attention.

Enjoy:

Every day, Rush Limbaugh reassures millions of core Republican voters that no change is needed: if people don't appreciate what we are saying, then say it louder. Isn't that what happened in 1994? Certainly this is a good approach for Rush himself. He claims 20 million listeners per week, and that suffices to make him a very wealthy man. And if another 100 million people cannot stand him, what does he care? What can they do to him other than … not listen? It's not as if they can vote against him.

But they can vote against Republican candidates for Congress. They can vote against Republican nominees for president. And if we allow ourselves to be overidentified with somebody who earns his fortune by giving offense, they will vote against us. Two months into 2009, President Obama and the Democratic Congress have already enacted into law the most ambitious liberal program since the mid-1960s. More, much more is to come. Through this burst of activism, the Republican Party has been flat on its back.

We need to modulate our social conservatism (not jettison—modulate). The GOP will remain a predominantly conservative party and a predominantly pro-life party. But especially on gay-rights issues, the under-30 generation has arrived at a new consensus. Our party seems to be running to govern a country that no longer exists. The rule that both our presidential and vice presidential candidates must always be pro-life has become counterproductive: McCain's only hope of winning the presidency in 2008 was to carry Pennsylvania, and yet Pennsylvania's most successful Republican vote winner, former governor Tom Ridge, was barred from the ticket because he's pro-choice.

We need an environmental message. You don't have to accept Al Gore's predictions of imminent gloom to accept that it cannot be healthy to pump gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We are rightly mistrustful of liberal environmentalist disrespect for property rights. But property owners also care about property values, about conservation, and as a party of property owners we should be taking those values more seriously.

Above all, we need to take governing seriously again. Voters have long associated Democrats with corrupt urban machines, Republicans with personal integrity and fiscal responsibility. Even ultraliberal states like Massachusetts would elect Republican governors like Frank Sargent, Leverett Saltonstall, William Weld and Mitt Romney precisely to keep an austere eye on the depredations of Democratic legislators. After Iraq, Katrina and Harriet Miers, Democrats surged to a five-to-three advantage on the competence and ethics questions. And that was before we put Sarah Palin on our national ticket.

In the days since I stumbled into this controversy, I've received a great deal of e-mail. (Most of it on days when Levin or Hannity or Hugh Hewitt or Limbaugh himself has had something especially disobliging to say about me.) Most of these e-mails say some version of the same thing: if you don't agree with Rush, quit calling yourself a conservative and get out of the Republican Party. There's the perfect culmination of the outlook Rush Limbaugh has taught his fans and followers: we want to transform the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan into a party of unanimous dittoheads—and we don't care how much the party has to shrink to do it. That's not the language of politics. It's the language of a cult.

I'm a pretty conservative guy. On most issues, I doubt Limbaugh and I even disagree very much. But the issues on which we do disagree are maybe the most important to the future of the conservative movement and the Republican Party: Should conservatives be trying to provoke or persuade? To narrow our coalition or enlarge it? To enflame or govern? And finally (and above all): to profit—or to serve?

Newsweek: A Gay Marriage Surge???

I was reading an online article for Newsweek titled, A Gay Marriage Surge. It discussed the slow-but-sure acceptance by the American public of same-gender relationships. The report notes what I have long known: the younger you are, the more likely you are to support not just full & equal rights of GLBTQI people, but full marriage equality: nearly 5 out of every 10 of those aged 34 & younger support same-sex marriage, as compared to 4 in 10 for those aged 35 to 64, and 2 in 10 for the 65+ group. Women also tended to be more supportive of gay marriage (44%) than did men (34%).

Apparently, also the way you view marriage affects your support of equal marriage rights: two-thirds of those who see marriage as legal matter support gay marriage, whereas, two-thirds of those who see it as a religious matter oppose gay marriage.

To me, the Newsweek poll shows the American public’s schizophrenia where equal marriage rights are concerned, and some people's hangup on the word "marriage". While only 39% of those polled approve of actual gay marriage, more than half (55%) are OK with same-sex couples forming “civil unions”--the separate-but-unequal version of what heterosexuals have always had the luxury of taking for granted. These numbers both represent gains since a similar poll was taken in 2004 (when 33% approved equal marriage rights & 40% approved of “civil unions”).

When asked about specific rights (like inheritance rights, health insurance & other employee benefits, Social Security benefits, hospital visitation, adoption rights & serving openly in the US military), relatively big majorities of those polled said they approved of such rights for GLBTQI people (the lowest approval was for gay adoption rights with 53% approving; the highest was for hospital visitation rights at 86%).

The poll also showed that support for the so-called “Federal Marriage Amendment” (FMA) has begun to wane with most respondents now against such an amendment (52%). In 2004, a plurality (47%) favored the FMA. As an aside, voters in Colorado’s 4th district mercifully kicked the hateful Marilyn Musgrave, the principal sponsor of the FMA in the U.S. House, to the curb in the Obama landslide this year. In a year when Prop 8 in California & Amendment 2 in Florida were approved by voters, this sliver of good news was particularly satisfying.

One more nugget of information that proves what I’ve always believed: If you personally know a GLBTQI person, you’re more likely to support equal marriage rights for committed same-sex couples. The report shows that, while in 1994, only a little more than half those polled knew a gay person; in 2008, that proportion increased to more than three-quarters!

That just proves to me the importance of smashing down the closets that hold our lives & our hearts captive. I have long believed that the best thing any of us who have had to spend even a moment of our lives in hiding can do to help not just ourselves but the cause of GLBTQI equality is to start living our lives out loud, because if they know you, it’s harder for them to hate you…at least that’s been my experience.

Newsweek also includes a nice slideshow of gay rights fights around the world, A Changing Tide.