Posted on 06/04/2006 6:16:18 AM PDT by WayneM
Republicans plan controversial votes on gay marriage, flag burning By James Kuhnhenn Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - When President Bush beat John Kerry in 2004, Republicans said a ballot initiative in Ohio to ban gay marriage sealed the election, drawing legions of conservatives to the polls.
Bush and Republican senators now will seek another dose of conservative magic to embolden their party's base. Call it nostalgia - or election-year jitters.
In Saturday's radio address, Bush will urge support for a national ban on gay marriage. A meeting Monday at the White House with opponents of gay marriage will follow, then a full-blown debate and vote in the Senate on a constitutional amendment to limit marriage to the union of a man and a woman.
Next, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., wants votes on two perennial conservative causes: repealing the estate tax and giving Congress the constitutional authority to ban flag burning.
None of the measures is expected to pass, though the estate tax debate could yield a compromise that applies the tax only to the largest inheritances.
The detour into socially conservative causes comes as Congress is locked in a stalemate over immigration policy, paralyzed over ethics legislation and flummoxed by the Iraq war.
Despite the futility of the gay-marriage and flag-burning votes, some Republican strategists said they were just the jolt that conservative voters - angry over illegal immigration, profligate spending and congressional scandal - needed to overcome their growing antipathy toward the party.
"Every time you have that conversation it reminds (voters) of what team they're on," said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform and a prominent voice in conservative circles.
Some conservatives, such as political direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie, are skeptical about Republican motives. The upcoming votes, he said, aren't enough to compensate for what he considers a pattern of wayward behavior.
"No conservative is going to take this as a change of heart or as a newfound belief in conservative principles," he said.
Other Republican operatives say the strategy is a waste of time when most Republican voters are angry or divided over the Iraq war, high gas prices and immigration.
"Those are the issues that are dominating people's dinner-table talk," said Scott Reed, who managed Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign. Reed dismissed Frist's plan, saying: "If you're a gay who likes to burn flags, it's going to be a long year."
It's an awkward time for Republicans to pick up the gay marriage cause. Vice President Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter, Mary, who's traveling across the country promoting her political memoir, has criticized the amendment as "fundamentally wrong."
First lady Laura Bush, in a recent interview with Fox News, cautioned against politicizing the issue.
"I don't think it should be used as a campaign tool, obviously," she said. "It requires a lot of sensitivity to just talk about the issue - a lot of sensitivity."
That quote probably will get plenty of use from Democratic senators.
How potent an issue gay marriage is remains an open question.
Political insiders concede that having the 2004 referendum on the ballot in Ohio may, at best, have energized social conservative voters or, at least, neutralized any hostility religious voters may have felt toward Bush over the economy or the war.
Voters in seven states will decide gay-marriage initiatives this year. Alabama has it on the ballot Tuesday; the rest will be decided Nov. 6. Two other states want ballot initiatives as well.
But a Senate vote to change the U.S. Constitution is much more removed from voters. Even if the House and Senate managed to get the necessary two-thirds majority, 38 states would have to ratify the change.
"I don't think they're going to have nearly the impact in `06 that they had in `04," said Charlie Cook, a nonpartisan handicapper who publishes the Cook Political Report. "The Iraq war is in a different place and public attention is in a different place. There's not quite the vacuum you saw in 2004."
John Green, an expert on religious voters at the University of Akron in Ohio, said the party's appeal to social conservatives might work, but would satisfy only one slice of potential Republican voters.
"It's not going to bring back swing voters who are angry over Iraq, or fiscal conservatives," he said.
What's more, a national debate over gay marriage could backfire. It might energize liberal Democrats and alienate Republican moderates. A study by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning research center, observed that public opinion has become more accepting of homosexuality. Polls show that while a majority don't support gay marriage, the country is evenly divided over a constitutional ban.
The issue's history is complicated. A constitutional ban has caused rifts before even among conservatives.
Some, such as Sens. John McCain of Arizona and John Sununu of New Hampshire, have opposed an amendment, saying marriage is best governed by states.
For McCain and Frist, the issue has presidential implications.
Both are considered likely contenders for the Republican nomination in 2008. McCain has been reaching out to social conservatives after many of them worked to defeat him in 2000. But his stance on gay marriage and support for a path to citizenship by undocumented immigrants still could keep conservatives away. For Frist, whom many conservatives view with ambivalence, calling for such a vote at least could distinguish him from McCain.
The issue could be complicated for Democrats too. Polls show that many African-American voters don't support gay marriage.
And gay-rights advocates say the amendment could be only one sentence - "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman" - which may appear less threatening to lawmakers who support gay unions but don't want to alienate voters on the question.
"They're hearing an awful lot from the other side, and we've got to make sure that they hear just as much from us," said Joe Solomonese, the president of the Human Rights Campaign. "We're being pretty aggressive to make sure we're reaching out to everybody."
I'm still sitting here trying to figure out if some mental midgets in the GOP machine really think this will work, or if it's another MSM trick.
If the MSM is right, the GOP is treating us like mental midgets. They should stop teasing us with promises and do something... Like actually pass something useful. Something like social security reform, permanent tax breaks, and revoking their pork from their last couple of budgets would be nice gestures to excite the conservative base.
Could I still burn the Mexican flag?
Actually I had not noticed the "congression scandal" wording.
MSM for sure.
Now it's the beltway republicans passing out 'boob bait for the bubbas'.
They do this every election year.
Hmm... taxing boobs...
Nah, too risqué.
But if they need a "boob assessor", I'd be happy to volunteer my time. I'd even volunteer to canvas the seniors at GW and GT.
But knowing how these things work, I'd probably be assigned the old folk's home, while some political flunkie got the primo assignment to the colleges.
;-)
Since there's no chance of passage, this will be a rare bill without hidden pork attached.
The GOP has become a parody of itself. Profligate spending, intentional gridlock on the border, sneering disadain for the rules of law, ad nauseum.
And what is there solution? Shouting out the same old hog calls: "Them danged Hippies are burning the flag your daddy DIED fer!" and "Them Homos wants ta git Married!"
I don;t know what is more pathetic:
1. The GOP believing this blatant pandering will work
or, 2. My sneaking suspicion that it will work.
Like rattling a stick in a bucket if swill.
Hello.
I'll take what I can get - which, come to think of it, is more than the libnuts offer.
It's the brain dead leadership. They trot out these issues every two years at election time for political purposes only. They know they won't pass and they don't care. But now if they think that they can get people to forget about their lack of leadership on immigration but introducing these once again, then they're more clueless than I thought.
Why are only conservative issues billed as "controversial" which actually means "wrong"? Rhetorical question.
It's better to burn the flag to save the constitution, than the other way around.
If gay people want to get married, well, I wish them a happy life together.
I imagine the Founding Fathers would agree with me on these things. They wanted the federal government to be weak and limited.
Taking a stand against homosexual marriage is a good thing but the issue this year is illegal immigration. Support the House and you win, support Bush/Senate and you lose.
NO-- The desecration of ANY flag other than the American
flag is not considered a protected free speech issue. Some
patriots tried burning a U.N. flag recently and caught a lot more trouble than the Hate America first bunch ever has.
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