The NY Times covers the Senate shenanigans on the Federal Marriage Amendment, and skewers Paul Weyrich by quoting him extensively. Unfair! Grover Norquist, in this Party for taxes and not social issues, counters Weyrich by offering a variation on Godwin's Law.
Here we go:
The president has bet the farm on Iraq," Paul Weyrich, a veteran Christian conservative organizer, warned in a recent e-mail newsletter. "Given what the continued killing has done to the president's standing in the polls this far, it is a lead-pipe cinch that as we lead up to the first days of November 2004, violence is going to be horrific."
Mr. Weyrich's solution said his solution was to "change the subject" to the Federal Marriage Amendment.
"Ninety-nine percent of the president's base will unite behind him if he pushed the amendment,'' he said. "It will cause Mr. Kerry no end of problems."
As for the gay Republicans whose votes Mr. Bush might then lose, Mr. Weyrich wrote, "Good riddance."
Groan. What base is he one, the Republican free-base? (Nooo, that would be Free Congress...) Here is Mr. Norquist, in the last paragraph:
...not all conservatives are sure that the issue is a proven winner.
"There is a group of people who don't care one way or the other but if they hear you talking too much about either side of certain issues - guns, abortion, same-sex marriage - they think you are a little obsessive," said Grover G. Norquist, a strategist close to the White House. "The first person to say 'gay' in the debate loses. Because you brought it up."
OK, fun's fun. A couple of interesting points emerge about the politics of this - John Thune is talking it up in South Dakota, where Tom Daschle has become a neo-Federalist - marriage is a states rights issue, the current law is untested, etc.
And "Other conservatives argue that, despite the likely fate of the federal amendment, the attention to the issue has jump-started efforts to put measures opposing same-sex marriage on ballots in nine states where the proposals will have the added benefit of helping motivate social conservatives to vote.
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