God, Gays and Guns

Well, Rove said he was going to find 4 million more Evangelicals to vote and he did, which interestingly is also Bush's national margin of victory. (Remember, he was down 500,000 votes in 2000 and up 3.5 million in 2004). And Rove was able to get them out with gay marriage referenda on the ballot in many important states. (And an abortion referendum on the ballot in Florida).

Now we know why the Republicans reacted so harshly when John Kerry noted that Dick Cheney's daughter is a lesbian. That could have thrown a wrench in their whole strategy. And why their response was that Kerry was "a bad man," blurring the issue as to whether or not Kerry's statement was correct or just a untruthful vicious and hurtful attack, as they clearly wanted to imply. Dick and Lynn sold their daughter out to win. And that sounds pretty bad to me.

And let's not forget Gwen Ifill's question to John Edwards in the VP debate:

IFILL: New question, but same subject. As the vice president mentioned,
John Kerry comes from the state of Massachusetts, which has taken as big a step
as any state in the union to legalize gay marriage. Yet both you and Senator
Kerry say you oppose it. Are you trying to have it both ways?

Trying to have it both ways? Is John Kerry the Supreme Court of Massachusetts? If Gwen Ifill isn't able to grasp the difference, then a voter in a rural area of the South or Ohio probably isn't going to either.

Maybe the Kerry campaign should have made a bigger deal of when Karl Rove openly questioned the veracity of Pat Roberston's statement that Bush told him that there weren't going to be any casualties in Iraq. Or maybe we should have pushed a little bit more on the rumor that Bush paid for a girlfriend's abortion in Texas in the days before Roe. (Hey, sometimes you gotta play tough -- remember, they won by advocating writing discrimination into the Constitution.)

It's being reported now that Bill Clinton, recognizing the problem, even privately advocated to Kerry that he take a triangulated position on gay marriage by supporting state bans. But Kerry said he wouldn't ever do that. History will ultimately prove him right. It just didn't help him on November 2, 2004.

- posted by Joshua @ 10:50 AM