Posted on 11/19/2004 6:51:08 AM PST by johnny7
Ken Mehlman and James Carville may not agree on much, coming from opposite parties, but each is willing to ride our backs to victory.
GEORGE W. BUSH has rewarded his campaign manager Ken Mehlman, who executed the divisive strategy this president rode to re-election, by naming him to head the Republican National Committee. The sexual orientation of Mehlman, who is 38 and unmarried, has long been the subject of speculation, and he refused to answer earlier this year when asked directly by this publication whether he or other top Bush campaign staffers are gay.
The announcement raises mixed emotions for me. I have known Ken since we were both law students and he worked for me at the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, a libertarian/conservative law review. As young Washington attorneys in the early ‘90s, we even joined with others to create an organization called Square One that advocated limited government. There are plenty of reasons for Ken’s success. He is über-bright, extremely personable, and as dedicated as he is ambitious. Tapped to head the majority political party before he even turns 40, Ken has obviously mastered the art of politics, learning at the feet of the master, his mentor Karl Rove. But the real disappointment for me comes at the path Ken has taken to find such success. I have not spoken to Ken in a decade, and I have no personal knowledge about his sexual orientation, but whether or not he is gay, he has ridden to success on the coattails of a candidate who betrayed the core principles that we both stood for as young political activists.
We believed in a government that should stay out of our pocketbooks and out of our bedrooms. George W. Bush has certainly steered clear of our wallets — enacting tax cut after tax cut — but he has failed to curb pork barrel spending and even created giant new entitlements. The combination has converted a record surplus into a record deficit and dug the government’s grubby hands into the pocketbooks of generations to come. Even more fundamentally, the Bush campaign under the strategic direction of Rove and Mehlman used divisive social issues — including gay marriage — to drive deep cultural wedges, just to turn out the evangelical vote. These GOP “values voters” do not believe in a limited government, at least when it comes to taking sides in the culture wars. They expect the government to impose their particular theological views on the country — and in so doing deprive a minority group the basic equality guaranteed by the Constitution and the freedom promised by the Declaration of Independence.
KEN WOULD PROBABLY respond that the president didn’t pick gay marriage as an issue; that “activist judges” imposed their own cultural values on Massachusetts by requiring the state to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. But marriage is a peculiar institution, in which the government has chosen to create a bundle of protections and benefits for the committed adult couples who form the core of the American family. Having created the institution, a limited government that respects the First Amendment prohibition on establishing a state religion cannot listen to one particular theological dogma in deciding which couples will qualify — whether or not that dogma belongs to a vital party constituency or even a majority. Ken Mehlman should understand that, whether or not he is gay.
If he is gay, like a number of other prominent Republican National Committee staffers, then shame on my old friend for betraying himself and his people, along with his youthful values — and all for an entirely different brand of conservatism, one that envisions an invasive government strong-arm at the expense of personal liberty.
THE DEMOCRATS AREN’T much better. They ran fast and furious away from our issues in the 2004 election and somehow still managed to blame us for their defeat. It still confuses me how a party can refuse to defend us before the general public and still claim their loss is our fault. Witness Ken Mehlman and Karl Rove’s counterpart on the Democrat side: the wily James Carville. In a “Meet the Press” appearance that included a piggish crack at the expense of New Jersey’s gay governor (see “On the Record, page 37), Carville sounded almost envious when he described the Republicans’ electoral advantage. “The purpose of a political party in a democracy is to win elections,” Carville said. “We’re not doing that well enough, and … I think we have to confront the problem. “By and large, our message has been, ‘We can manage problems,’ while the Republicans … produce a narrative. We produce a litany. They say, ‘I’m going to protect you from the terrorists in Tehran and the homos in Hollywood.’ We say, ‘We’re for clean air, better schools, more health care.’”
It’s to be expected that a consultant like Carville sees “winning elections” as the point behind political parties, but in reality it’s that ultra-pragmatism that’s at the heart of the Democrats’ problem. The reason Republicans have “a narrative” and not a “litany,” as Carville puts it, is that they know what they stand for and they consistently fight on those principles. So long as Democrats sacrifice their principled stands — and principled candidates — at the altar of “electability,” they will always fall short in the narrative department. A Democratic Party that throws out principle in favor of electability will always look like what it is: the amalgamated product of focus groups and opinion polls, forever shifting with the winds. That was exactly the rub on John Kerry, and it was richly deserved.
It’s no secret that Carville and others in the party, including Bill Clinton — who earlier this year pressured Kerry to come out more strongly in favor of statewide ballot measures banning gay marriage — will be pushing party leaders to “moderate” and better disguise their support for gay rights. In an appearance Monday on National Public Radio, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a longtime gay rights supporter, went so far as to complain that Kerry’s failure on gay marriage was one of communication, not substance. She argued, incredibly enough, that the Bush and Kerry positions on gay marriage were indistinguishable, since both were opposed to legalizing it. If this is the “New Democrat” answer to the president’s re-election, it will most assuredly fail because the American people will see right through it.
Gay rights groups, which have also sacrificed far too much for electability and failed to articulate the case for our equality, should act now to buck up Democratic voices that are willing to stand up for gay rights, including legal recognition for gay couples. Remember that the same infamous exit polls that supposedly signaled the triumphant rise of “values voters” also indicated that a substantial majority — 61 percent — support gay marriage or civil unions.
If gay rights groups and their allies in both parties would only find their backbone and actually make the case for our equality, we can win this mighty battle. But if we are afraid to try, we are surely doomed to fail.
Don't worry. The lesbian thing is coming. Anything to smear her.
That's kinda my theory, too. Just because a guy is 38 and unmarried doesn't mean he's gay.
And, honestly, if he is, I don't care. So long as he doesn't shove it down my throat.
They'll call Condi worse in the confimation hearings. Funny how it's OK for libs to out queers when it suits them, otherwise "it's no one elses buiness"
Are you sure Condi isn't married?
Sounds like this guy likes sour grapes.
He's also a "whole pie or no pie" kind of guy.
Me...I'd rather have some pie than no pie at all.
This is just great. This idiot speculates that Mehlman "might" be gay, and then proceeds to criticize him based on that strawman.
Frankly, it's none of anyone's freakin' business what Mehlman does or does not do in the bedroom. What an underhanded creep this "buddy" is.
Trying to smear someone with the gay label..........again.
I thought there was nothing wrong with being gay. Hehe.........we all know that even the Dems don't believe that.
The point being, not that he's gay, but that he's a hypocrite (if he really is gay) for working for a campaign that made use of anti-gay themes. [You might argue that protecting marriage isn't anti-gay, and that this didn't really have anything directly to do with the Bush re-election campaign, but that's not how Democrats see it.]
I notice the first
words of your rambling comment
are: "Maybe I'm out . . ."
I have two co-workers, both in their thirties who have never been married. Neither one, to the best of my knowledge, is gay. Of course, I have the class not to bring it up, unlike some people.
The politics of personal distruction of the left didn't take long to manifest against Mehlman now that he's to be the RNC's top dog. Gossipy stuff like this will be right at home on the democrat sites. They are already accusing the president and Dr. Rice of having an affair. Sad.
America doesn't want 'traditional marriage' demeaned anymore than it already is. The act of sodomy does not constitute the consumating of a marriage... at least to anyone playing with a full deck!
A majority of Americans however, would probably acknowledge civil unions through traditional legal channels.
I agree. Why is it if someone is unmarried they are immediately suspected of being gay. There have been plenty of men and women who have gone through life unmarried that were not homosexual. Henry David Thoreau, Sir Isaac Newton, Beethoven, the apostle Paul and . . . . even Jesus! Don't equate not being married to being homosexual!
Well, some have actually, but Condi has dated. In fact, she was engaged a long time ago.
Yes. Never married. Once engaged.
Do they date? I think that's what this guy is talking about. Regardless, I don't care.
Freudian slip! Freudian slip!
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