Free Republic

It's all about wedge-issues and fundraising. Before we start talking about the left-wing hissy fit unfolding in the House of Representatives, you need to keep something in mind. This is an election year. Democrats need four things: 1. They need to further their 100 year old agenda of banning guns. 2. They need to blame guns for their failure to deal with radical Islam. 3. They need a 2016 wedge issue. 4. They need - desperately - a massive pile of the political cash they claim to hate.

Defection from the anti-cloning ranks by Sen. Jim Talent, until now a rising star in the conservative movement, reflects deep divisions in the Republican Party created by the stem cell research issue. When Talent went on the Senate floor Friday to take his name off a bill to ban human cloning, he showed how those divisions imperil his re-election to a second term in Missouri this year. Talent had been a longtime co-sponsor of Sen. Sam Brownback's anti-cloning bill. But Missouri business interests who finance the Republican Party are backing a state constitutional amendment that explicitly allows human cloning to...

Gay marriage has surpassed other major social issues like abortion and gun control in its influence on voters. Four-in-ten voters say they would not vote for a candidate who disagrees with them on gay marriage, even if they agree with the candidate on most other issues. By comparison, 34% say they would not support a candidate who disagrees with them on abortion and 32% expressed that opinion about a candidate's stance on gun control. Yet while gay marriage has a greater overall impact on voters than either abortion or gun control, the nature of its influence is quite different. For...

quot;Which means the argument over the White House's role in the primary could look very different in November. Today, it's the White House's judgment under fire. But if Simon loses and prompts Bush to bail on California in 2004, the conservatives who rejected Riordan may face the toughest questions.quot;