Looks like another shift to the right!

[Donut]

I thought that George Bush jr was to the right of the political spectrum but it would seem there's a lot of space to his right after all and he may be occupying the centre ground.

A conservative president has more problems with one section of his party's right-wing than you might think


GEORGE BUSH's relationship with his business supporters could hardly be more straightforward. Business people give him huge piles of money. In return he cuts their taxes and shreds red tape. But there is nothing straightforward about his dealings with another big part of the Republican Party: its social conservatives.

Mr Bush's relationship with these voters is like a troubled marriage: tantrums and tearful apologies, long sulks and periodic fireworks, trial separations and loving affirmations that they can't live without each other. Think of Richard Burton's relationship with Elizabeth Taylor (without the jewellery) and you get the idea.

Social conservatives have two defining issues: “life” (which has to be protected from abortion) and “marriage” (from homosexuals). They are now terrified that the Republican establishment is preparing to sell them down the river on marriage, all because of Mr Bush's need to lure in moderate voters. Earlier this month, leading social conservatives met the party's chairman, Mark Racicot, to make their unhappiness clear. They extracted a promise from him to meet with a group of “reformed” ex-gays.

The current furore was provoked by Rick Santorum, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate. Last month he linked gay sex to bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery, asserted that sodomy was “antithetical” to a healthy family and declared: “I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts.”

Mr Santorum got a predictable roasting in what conservatives call the liberal media. In fact his remarks merely reflect Republican orthodoxy: the party platform, for example, goes out of its way to define marriage in a way that rules out gay unions. Yet Mr Bush's people hardly rushed to defend their senator. Phyllis Schlafly, who brought down the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s, describes the establishment's defence as “limp”. Paul Weyrich, head of the Free Congress Foundation, characterises it as “tepid”.

For social conservatives this is just the latest in a long series of attempts by Mr Bush's advisers to make his party more “gay-friendly”. At the 2000 convention there was a minor purge of anti-homosexual rhetoric; there will be another in 2004. Mr Bush has appointed several openly gay people to his administration, including an ambassador and two successive heads of the Office of National AIDS Policy. Social conservatives are particularly angry about a secret meeting in March between Mr Racicot and Human Rights Campaign, a gay lobbying group.

Gary Bauer, a one-time presidential candidate, thunders that the “grass-roots will not stand for continued ambivalence on these moral issues.” His successor as head of the Family Research Council, Kenneth Connor, says “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” The Rev Don Wildmon, who owns nearly 200 radio stations, declares that, if the Republicans continue to beam at gays, “we will walk”.

Gay marriage is not the only “betrayal”. Mr Bush has been far more willing to spend his political capital on tax cuts than on faith-based initiatives (which have been allowed to wither on the vine). Many fundamentalists dislike his insistence that Islam is a peaceful religion. Some are even angry that John Ashcroft, their main man in the cabinet, has taken such a draconian line on civil liberties: they worry that a future attorney-general may be able to spy on conservative religious organisations.

Does all this noise matter? Some of the smartest observers of the political scene doubt it. Norm Ornstein, of the American Enterprise Institute, calls it a “toothless bark”. Would social conservatives really be willing to hand the White House over to the pro-abortion, pro-gay Democrats?

Besides, most social conservatives still like Mr Bush. He enjoys approval ratings of more than 95% among Republicans; he also enjoys something that his father never had: trust. Mr Weyrich, the man who invented the “moral majority”, thinks that Mr Bush's record on social issues is even better than the sainted Ronald Reagan's. This trust is there largely because Mr Bush has fought harder on the other big social issue, abortion.

One of Mr Bush's first acts as president was to cut off money for organisations providing abortions overseas. He has supported several measures to restrict abortion rights, ban partial-birth abortion and define human fetuses as children (with attendant government-provided health benefits). He has imposed restrictions on stem-cell research and he used religious language in calling for a ban on cloning (“Life is a creation, not a commodity”). And he has bullied the Department of Health and Human Services into promoting sexual abstinence and marriage.

Mr Bush has done other righteous things. His judicial nominations have included several evangelical Christians, such as Charles Pickering and Claude Allen, a leading advocate of abstinence-education. He has done all he can to accommodate conservative worries about his $15 billion initiative to fight AIDS in the developing world. A third of the money will be spent on abstinence-education. Religious groups that participate in the scheme will not have to promote anything they see as morally objectionable.


The threat of staying at home
Yet there are still three good reasons to think that the barking from the right may not be entirely toothless. To begin with, social conservatives are not as pragmatic as the deal-doing business conservatives are. They are absolutists, who are willing to go to the stake for certain issues.

Second, social conservatives are now buried deeper inside the Republican establishment than ever before. In the 1990s conservative Christians tended to work through outside organisations such as the Christian Coalition. More recently they have worked from within, taking the battle to precinct meetings and the like. According to a study in Campaigns and Elections, a Washington magazine, Christian conservatives now exercise either “strong” or “moderate” influence in 44 Republican state committees, compared with 31 committees in 1994, the last time the survey was conducted. They are weak in only six states, all in the north-east. Ralph Reed, the Christian Coalition leader until 1997, now runs the Georgia Republican Party.

Anyone who doubts the clout of these Christian conservatives within the party should study the fate of last year's bankruptcy-reform legislation, which the business wing of the party wanted. Social conservatives destroyed the bill because it included a provision designed to crack down on anti-abortion protesters.

A third reason for Mr Bush to worry about social conservatives is that they do have an alternative to voting Republican: they can stay at home. Karl Rove points out that some 4m Christian conservatives who voted in 1994 failed to vote in 2000. The return of many of these voters to the fold in 2002 helped the Republicans pick up vital Senate seats in Georgia and Missouri. If they feel let down in 2004, it could hand a close election to the Democrats.

It will not get any easier. The White House's strategy for the next year is to focus on conservative causes that have overwhelming public support—such as opposition to cloning and late-term abortion. But it will also have to deal with several issues that could drive a wedge between conservative activists and swing voters.

The most important decision will involve the Supreme Court. At least one Supreme Court justice may retire in the next year or so. Conservatives see the selection of a new justice as an issue on which they are prepared to break with the president. “We will not put up with another [David] Souter,” says Ms Schlafly, referring to a judge appointed by George Bush senior who has since voted in a liberal manner. On the other hand, moderate suburban women would be horrified by the idea of another conservative in the court, particularly an anti-abortion one.

Sexual politics will also crop up in two other decisions. The Massachusetts Supreme Court will decide (in the Goodridge case) whether to legalise same-sex marriage. The federal Supreme Court will decide (in the Lawrence case) whether to overturn a Texas law that criminalises sodomy between same-sex couples. Social conservatives and moderates will want to know Mr Bush's opinion.

Mr Bush is better placed than anybody else in his party to manage the religious right. But some spouses are not amenable to even the most enlightened management. The Republican Party currently looks like an extraordinary electoral machine. But it would be foolish to forget that the party is an amalgam of lots of different groups—and that one of the most important of these groups, the social conservatives, has a mind and a will of its own

[ 05-16-2003, 12:21 PM: Message edited by: Donut ]

[Timber Loftis]

I don't see a shift to the right here. I only see prejudiced old viewpoints desperately struggling to maintain their hold whilst the entire nation's viewpoint changes around them -- all to their horror. This issue will die in time. No matter how anti-gay they may or may not have been at first, I know no one who has become MORE stringent in their views over time. As a nation, we are simply caring less and less when we see gay couples, just as when we see mixed race couples.

I've mentioned it before, but I got the chance to work as an intern for VT's legislative counsel in drafting the VT civil union law. I really like this topic a lot and have tons to say ------ but little time. Suffice to say the nugget I mention above is what I see dominating in years to come.

[pritchke]

They extracted a promise from him to meet with a group of “reformed” ex-gays.

Donut what is the source? It smells like onion to me.

Umm there doesnt appear to be a by by line or source for this article...is this something you wrote Donut? or are you quoting someone else?

Edit: Whoever wrote this seems to be a bit narrow in his focus and dislike for Bush...it seems to blame a lot on one person and creates a "demon" for all to hate.

[ 05-16-2003, 12:55 PM: Message edited by: MagiK ]

[Timber Loftis]

One of Mr Bush's first acts as president was to cut off money for organisations providing abortions overseas.

While I would be okay with gov't funding abortions for poor women in the states (cheaper that child birth and would be her right if she had money), I think it is abject stoopidity to pay for something abroad with tax dollars when you don't spend them that way at home. Clinton felt that if he could only get the people to go along with spending to support abortion abroad, a partial victory was better than none at all. Either way has its points.

He has supported several measures to restrict abortion rights, ban partial-birth abortion and define human fetuses as children (with attendant government-provided health benefits).

1. Partial-birth abortions are aborhent to most people. I think you should kill the thing before it's actually sucking in air.
2. Fetuses ARE children under the law. If you shoot a pregnant woman and she dies, you get tried for TWO murders - even if she is only 5 weeks pregnant. The law simply makes an exception to this rule, allowing women to have abortions up until the second trimester.

He has imposed restrictions on stem-cell research and he used religious language in calling for a ban on cloning (“Life is a creation, not a commodity”).

Bravo! Cloning is irresponsible and will change our definition of what "human" is. Yes, people are doing it (or trying) outside the country. Go there if you want to have a mini-me made of yourself. Stem cell research has similar problems, and the "prohibition" for buying fetus stem cells is quite simple: we don't want to develop a market for abortion babies.

And he has bullied the Department of Health and Human Services into promoting sexual abstinence and marriage.

*gasp* [img]graemlins/wow.gif[/img] These are obviously the best ways to avoid STD's, teen pregnancy, and kids growing up in broken homes.

It does smell like Onion. But, I've checked and if it is Onion it ain't recent.

[Attalus]

*Shrugs* Anyone who reads NRO or the Weekly Standard has been hearing it all. Sounds like some leftie recoiling in horror that Republicans are (*gasp*) Conservative! Yep, we are, we are against homsexual marriage, etc., and many of us are Christian. Deal with it

[sageridder]

I don't mean to derail the subject, but as an interesting side note on stem cells they are now saying they can get them from the pulp in teeth.

http://www.nidr.nih.gov/news/04212003.asp

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: quote: He has imposed restrictions on stem-cell research and he used religious language in calling for a ban on cloning (“Life is a creation, not a commodity”).

Bravo! Cloning is irresponsible and will change our definition of what "human" is. Yes, people are doing it (or trying) outside the country. Go there if you want to have a mini-me made of yourself. Stem cell research has similar problems, and the "prohibition" for buying fetus stem cells is quite simple: we don't want to develop a market for abortion babies.

Correct me if Im wrong here..but I do believe that there is "religious language" throughout the constitution, bill of rights and many many of the supporting documents for those two particular pieces...not to mention the "religious language" on our currency.

And he has bullied the Department of Health and Human Services into promoting sexual abstinence and marriage.

*gasp* [img]graemlins/wow.gif[/img] These are obviously the best ways to avoid STD's, teen pregnancy, and kids growing up in broken homes.

The term bullied appears to be there strictly for its emmotional impact and not to add to the information....in this way, any time your boss asked you to do something..he would be guilty of "bullying" you.

It does smell like Onion. But, I've checked and if it is Onion it ain't recent. [/QUOTE]Forgivemy use of your post TL but it was easier to pick out what I wantd than from the original [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Timber Loftis]

Originally posted by Attalus: *Shrugs* Anyone who reads NRO or the Weekly Standard has been hearing it all. Sounds like some leftie recoiling in horror that Republicans are (*gasp*) Conservative! Yep, we are, we are against homsexual marriage, etc., and many of us are Christian. Deal with it

This is a bone I must pick with you someday, Atty. Being against homosexuality and homosexual marriage is (almost) the same as being against black folk and interracial marriages. And, and to refer back to an article I posted the other day that you liked, this is truly where my libertarian stance sends me to a different conclusion than the conservatives. And it is truly where any conservative assertion that they stand for less government intrusion and the free enjoyment of liberty breaks down completely. I refuse to tell you what to do in your bedroom, no matter how crazy it is (well, unless you're forcing another -- e.g. rape).

And, if the argument is that being gay is fine but allowing gays to marry isn't, then that too has HUGE flaws. Gay marriages are allowed, they just aren't recognized under the law. So, it's not the symbolic act of marrying that's prohibited, it is the HUGE amount of legal benefits that come with marriage that gays are cut off from. Things like co-parent rights, medical benefits, inheritence rights, hospital rights.

I have met a lesbian who adopted a child with her life partner -- actually, since they could not adopt together, the life partner was the name on the paperwork. Life partner died. Life partner's parents, estranged for decades and had never met the child, came along and took the child from its rightful, and loving, parent. I also met a lesbian who's life partner had to die alone in the hospital. The prejudiced staff would not let her in to visit. The life partner had no family. The only one who loved her was barred from asserting the rights a spouse would assert to be at her bedside. These are truly horrible events.

These "accompanying benefits" to being partners for life is not only applicable to "gay marriage." In Vermont, the civil union can be used by two widowed sisters who move back in together to live out their last years. Or two brothers who had the misfortune of never being wed and still live together on the family farm. The notion is not so much one of homosexuality, but one of being realistic about what sort of life-long or long-term pairings humans undertake.

[ 05-16-2003, 02:39 PM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]

[Attalus]

Sorry, TL, but that is where I part company from the libertarians. I, and those that believe with me, regard marriage as a religious and sacred covenant, whatever the beliefs of the people involved. According the name of marriage to the union of a pair of people of the same sex is anathema to me. If this be conservatism, let us make the best of it. [img]tongue.gif[/img]