Day: June 7, 2006

I mean, honestly: How could any conservative with a scintilla of common sense not be?

With Bush’s approval ratings at lethal lows, with the GOP chokehold on government apparently threatened, with civilians and soldiers dying at a stunning rate in Iraq, gas prices through the roof, citizens being spied on, the courts and politicians finally taking a long hard look at Bush’s historic power grabs…NOW Bush et al suddeny haul out a marriage amendment? NOW?

I mean, yes, the ploy worked wonders in energizing the conservative base and getting votes out in 2004 in a dazzling, multi-state display of voting bigotry. But no one’s mentioned it in two years. Suddenly, NOW, they announce that “marriage is under attack” and start talking about adding the first amendment since prohibition (which, y’know, worked out so well) that would restrict freedoms rather than expand them. It could not possibly be a more obvious gambit to try and appeal to the many voters who have had buyers’ remorse ever since they voted for Bush and the GOP in 2004 and slowly came to the realization they’d been hosed. It’s genuinely insulting to conservative voters’ intelligence, that their leaders think they’re THAT easily manipulated. That they’re going to overlook the very real assault that our soldiers are under, needlessly, in Iraq, because of the fake assault that the institution of marriage is allegedly under.

Is it that Bush et al believe that conservatives must be monumentally stupid because the fact that conservatives voted for them proves it?

I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: If politicians are really worried about marriage being undermined, the key is not to prevent people from getting married. It’s to make it difficult-to-impossible to get divorced. But they’ll never do that because Bush and his cronies aren’t REALLY concerned about marriage being under attack. They’re worried their numbers are under attack. But they’re clinging to the notion that conservatives are Just That Stupid that they’ll fall for this crap a second time.

The question is, will they?

PAD