Raising the Volume: Candidates of both parties want to sit out the culture wars…

The Los Angeles Times ^ | February 29, 2004 | Jonah Goldberg

[quidnunc]

…but that's not possible.

Here's how the Washington Post's Dana Milbank began his Page 1 analysis of the White House's newly announced position on gay marriage: "With President Bush's embrace yesterday of a marriage amendment, the compassionate conservative of 2000 has shown he is willing, if necessary, to rekindle the culture wars in 2004."

This neatly encapsulates everything that's wrong with inside-the-Beltway discussions of the culture war we currently find ourselves in. Presidents do not start culture wars; they react to them. They can fan or soothe passions, but they cannot create divisions that don't already exist.

Indeed, both Bush and the major Democratic presidential candidates, neither of whom supports gay marriage, would have preferred not to have addressed the issue. Why? Because nobody in the moderate, swing-voting center of American life wants to talk about it. This is why Bush and the Democratic front-runners circled each other for more than a year, each side hoping the other would be the first to, literally, make a federal case out of it. Both sides knew that whoever did would be blamed by millions of moderate Americans for inflicting the issue on the rest of "us."

The two parties would still be circling each other like gunslingers afraid to draw their Colts were it not for events in Massachusetts, where a laughably activist court recently asserted that the centuries-old Massachusetts Constitution has always protected the right of any two people to marry, and that any compromise short of actual gay matrimony, including civil unions, would offend the constitution. Across the country in San Francisco, they didn't even bother to rewrite the law; the mayor there just opted to defy it.

-snip-

[Defender2]

demoCommiecRATs trying to not be part of the Freak Show. Too late!!!! they've for a long time now committed themselves to being a strong part of the Freak Show, for example:

http://www.dsausa.org/


demoCommiecRATs = one truly sad, bad Freak Show!!!!:-(

[weegee]

The culture war is being waged by the left whether or not President Bush chooses to fight against it.

Sort of like the war with the Islamofascists.

Words have meaning.

[mabelkitty]

Um, that is a lie.
Bush threw down the gauntlet and chose a side in the culture war.

[weegee]

Real progress in the culture war will only happen when the activist judges who legislate from the bench are impeached.

The Massachusettes Supreme Court reportedly told the Massachusettes Legislature that they had to draft a law sanctioning same sex marriage. That's not the way the Constitution works.