Koch brothers and Republican Party Go to War With Each Other

Illustration: Tom Cocotos for Yahoo News

Perhaps the so-called Republican Party establishment is belatedly realize that the Koch brothers are power mad and greed driven megalomaniacs.   Add the GOP's foolish previous pacts with the Koch brothers and its creation of the Frankenstein monster known as the Christofascist/Tea Party base of the party and the establishment has done much to destroy the GOP as a sane and respectable political party.  Time and time again the GOP establishment has looked at short term expediency with no though about the adverse impacts down the road.  Now, it is uncertain how these twin monsters can be defeated.  Yahoo News looks at the war with the Koch brothers.  Here are highlights:

The Republican National Committee’s data arm last year called it a “historic” occasion when it struck a deal to share voter information with the Koch brothers’ rapidly expanding political empire. 

It was an uneasy détente between the party committee, which views itself as the rightful standard-bearer for the GOP, and the behemoth funded by Charles and David Koch, which is free of the campaign finance restrictions that bind the RNC and plans to spend almost $900 million in the 2016 election cycle to elect a Republican to the White House. 

Party leaders, including the current chief digital officer for the RNC, hailed the deal as an important step forward in the GOP’s attempt to modernize itself. 

But after the fall midterm elections, the deal was allowed to expire without being renewed. Since then, relations between the two sides have soured, turning into what one Republican operative described as “all-out war.” 

The RNC is now openly arguing, however, that the Kochs’ political operation is trying to control the Republican Party’s master voter file, and to gain influence over — some even say control of — the GOP.

“I think it’s very dangerous and wrong to allow a group of very strong, well-financed individuals who have no accountability to anyone to have control over who gets access to the data when, why and how,” said Katie Walsh, the RNC’s chief of staff. 

The fight between the RNC’s chairman and the political operatives affiliated with Charles and David Koch over who controls the rich treasury of data on likely Republican voters has raised fundamental questions about what role the party’s central committee — even under the best management — can hope to play in the age of super-PACs. And it raises an even more fundamental question of how you define a political party. 

Priebus believes the RNC is the proper custodian of the Republican Party’s master file on the nation’s electorate, which is used as a starting point for campaigns, who then use that information to build lists — called voter universes — of the people in a state or district that they want to target for both turnout and persuasion. Volunteers and donors are also targeted for recruitment using such lists. 

The core issue, from Priebus’ point of view, is one of loyalty and allegiance. The RNC is a permanent entity, committed to the Republican Party without question. The Koch network is too independent from the party to be trusted with possession of the GOP’s most valuable core assets. If the Kochs — whose political history is steeped more in libertarianism than it is in any loyalty to the Republican Party — decided next week to use their database to benefit only their massive multinational corporation, they could do so. 

The RNC, Walsh said, “has one job: to elect Republicans.” 

Some in the Republican Party agree with Priebus’ point of view, believing the issue of allegiance to be fundamental. Others in the GOP, even some in highly consequential positions, think Priebus and the RNC are crying wolf.

And the problem for the RNC is that while it has political data going back roughly two decades, you need more than just data in order to be the data hub for a political party. And that is where the RNC has fallen short.

In 2013 the RNC promised to build a next-level system called Beacon. But so far Beacon is being used by only a small handful of state parties, Walsh said. About 40 state parties are still using the RNC dashboard that Beacon was built to replace, GOP Data Center, which was designed a few years ago by a company called FLS Connect. The most common complaint from those who do not like Data Center is that it is not easy for the average volunteer or field staffer to use. 

The RNC has signed data-sharing agreements with most of the 2016 candidates or likely candidates. And the RNC — as it did in 2014 — is trying to discourage campaigns and state parties from signing up with i360, according to numerous conversations with people who have knowledge of such conversations. This was a tactic that irritated many people in 2014. But Walsh, the new chief of staff, appears to be setting a different tone that admits past shortcomings and focuses on the philosophical argument that the GOP’s data should be housed at a party committee, not at a private business empire.

The RNC is now confronting the Kochs more openly than before, by having Walsh speak on the record for this article and by making other key players available for interviews. Their decision to take their dispute with i360 public shows the level of alarm inside the RNC at the growing clout of the Koch political empire. They have concluded that the Koch political machine wants to replace them and to essentially become a shadow party.  

The GOP establishment just doesn't grasp the fact that when you make a deal with the Devil, the Devil is going to want a very high price in return.  Shortsightedness and cynical beliefs that the monster can be controlled have proven wrong over and over again. 

Do Politicans Really Believe Religious Myths and Superstition?

One thing that drives me crazy is the continued undue deference American politicians give to religion - a force for hate, division and discord across the centuries.  True, the phenomenon s the worse among Republicans who strive to out do each other in becoming will whores of the Christofascist, but Democrats likewise genuflect all too often to religious quacks and charlatans.  A piece in Salon looks at the distressing spectacle.  Here are excerpts:

CNN might wish to rename its show “This Week in Politics” as “This Week in God”; it’s getting that bad.  Just in the days between May 1 and May 7, for example, the Seventh-Day Adventist evolution-denier Ben Carson announced his intention to seek the 2016 Republican nomination, as did the Southern Baptist and onetime pastor Mike Huckabee.  The Episcopalian-turned-Roman Catholic Jeb Bush has puzzlingly refrained from following in their footsteps, but that he gave this year’s commencement address at that stronghold of unreason and superstitious darkness, the Jerry Falwell-founded Liberty University . . .

I note the religious affiliations of these potential contenders for the presidency because all are flaunting their faith, rather than keeping it a private matter of conscience, which in any other developed country it would be.  The gist is, unless you profess a piety befitting the mullahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran, things are going to get much, much more unpleasant for you before one or another God-coddler enters the White House in January 2017 to replace President Obama.

But I won’t deal with the faith-imbued cretinism of the Republicans in this essay.  What concerns me now is what President Obama has just wrought to insult that most aggrieved (yet steadfastly growing) American minority, the advocates of reason, those who insist on evidence before accepting the truth of a given proposition, especially grand propositions about the origins of the universe and our species.  On Wednesday, President Obama marked the deeply pathetic traditional outrage to rationalism that is the National Day of Prayer  . . .("NDOP")

The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, and the precepts of the Enlightenment endorse it as fostering comity among nations.  Centuries of faith-fueled warfare and persecution in Europe convinced the Founding Fathers that a batty belief in an invisible “divine” Tyrant (and attendant, equally batty, equally invisible “Sons” and spirits and prophets and so forth) deserved no place in our government; it would be too divisive and subject to exploitation as a tool of repression.  Hence the First Amendment.

But there is a contradiction inherent in Obama’s act of “proclaiming” from the White House on National Day of Prayer; namely, that such a day should not exist, but since it does, the president should not avail himself of it to militate for the cause of faith.

Fresh challenges should be mounted until the NDOP goes the way of Jim Crow.  To do my part in the fight for true secularism, I hereby contest the constitutionality of Obama’s issuance of Lord-positive declarations from his podium as the chief officer of our officially godless republic, if only because such declarations menace the mental health and intellectual development of children.

The Proclamation’s subsequent palaver provides opportunities for parody, head-shaking and outright guffaws that no rationalist in need of levity can pass up.  “For many of us,” Obama declares, prayer is “an essential act of worship and a daily discipline that allows reflection, provides guidance, and offers solace.”  In what sense does murmuring petitions to a fictitious heavenly autocrat in the hope of procuring favorable outcomes constitute a “discipline”?  Science is a discipline, the study of philosophy is a discipline, judo is a discipline, even meditation is a discipline.  Appealing to an inexistent supernatural being is not a discipline, but, rather, an apotropaic ritual worthy of study by anthropologists and mental-health professionals. 

Obama then informs us that prayer “gives us the strength to do God’s work: to feed the hungry, care for the poor, comfort the afflicted, and make peace where there is strife.”  Tell that to secular aid organizations such as Oxfam, USAID and the United Way (for more, see here), where, incidentally, no one spends donor money on proselytizing pamphlets or other venues for indoctrinating vulnerable people in occult dogmas.  No need to drag mysticism into humanitarian work.  Moreover, it is indisputable that religion (and especially Catholicism and Islam) does much to ensure the persistence of poverty and hunger across the globe.  The Catholic Church, in forbidding condom use in AIDS-ravaged Africa, among other places, has helped bring about 11 million orphans.  The Islamist aversion to educating women deprives entire populations of the intellectual potential of half their inhabitants, which hinders their societies’ rise out of poverty through the one proven effective way — the empowerment of women, . . 

There's more, but you get the drift.  Overall, religion is not an uplifting or positive influence.

How the GOP Lost the Black Vote

Immediately after the Civil War, almost all black voters flocked to the Republican Party which they viewed as the protector of their liberties and freedom.  One hundred and fifty years latter, the Democratic Party is viewed as the GOP once was and for good reason.  The GOP has sold its soul to thinly veiled white supremacists and the descendants of the past versions of today's Christofascists who used the Bible to justify slavery and then later segregation.  A similar phenomenon has also occurred with the Hispanic vote.  And driving this jettisoning of decency and the principle that all Americans are equal under the law has been short term cynical political expediency.  Now, with the nation's demographics changing rapidly, the GOP may yet be about to have karma come back and bite it in the ass.  An op-ed in the New York Times looks at what happened and the issue of whether or not the GOP can or will change.  Here are excerpts:

The Republican Party is struggling with its future. Will it be a regional, Congressional party fighting a last-gasp battle for a shrinking base in a David and Goliath war against ominously expanding federal government? Or will it become a national, presidential party capable of adapting to a new American reality of diversity and expression in which the government serves an essential function in regulating public safety, providing a safety net and serving as a safeguard against discrimination?

[Senator Rand] Paul ventured across Washington to historically black Howard University and gave a speech aimed at outreach and bridge building.  The man is mulling a presidential run after all. 

The speech was a dud. It was a clipped-tail history lesson praising the civil rights record of the pre-Southern Strategy Republican Party, while slamming the concurrent record of the Democrats.  It completely ignored the past generation of egregious and willful acts of insensitivity by the G.O.P. toward the African-American community. 

During the speech Paul asked, rhetorically and incredulously: .  .  .  . How did we lose that vote?”

You can’t be serious, Senator Paul. In fact, I know that you’re not. No thinking American could be so dim as to genuinely pose such questions.  Let me explain. 

Republicans lost it when Richard Nixon’s strategist Kevin Phillips, who popularized the “Southern Strategy,” told The New York Times Magazine in 1970 that “the more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans.” 

They lost it when Nixon appointed William Rehnquist to the Supreme Court, a man who, while he was a law clerk in Justice Robert Jackson’s office, wrote a memo defending separate-but-equal during Brown v. Board of Education, saying, “I realize that it is an unpopular and unhumanitarian position, for which I have been excoriated by my ‘liberal’ colleagues, but I think Plessy v. Ferguson was right and should be reaffirmed.” 

They lost it in 1976 when Ronald Reagan adopted the racially charged “welfare queens” trope. They lost it when George Bush used Willie Horton as a club against Michael Dukakis. They lost it when George W. Bush imperially flew over New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when people were still being plucked from rooftops and were huddling in a humid Super Dome.

They lost it when the McCain campaign took a dark turn and painted Barack Obama as the other, a man “palling around with terrorists,” a man who didn’t see “America like you and I see America.”

They lost it in 2011 when a Republican presidential candidate, Newt Gingrinch, who was the front-runner for a while, falsely and preposterously claimed that: “Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash’ unless it’s illegal.” 

The Republican Party has a tarnished brand in the eyes of the African-American community, largely because of its own actions and rhetoric. That can’t be glossed over by painting the present party with the laurels of the distant past. 

Will President Obama Deliver on Gay Rights?

Less than 24 hours after his inaugural speech which gave the impression that he supported nationwide marriage rights for same sex couples, Barack Obama was backtracking and reiterating that marriage is a matter which needs to be left to the states.  Of, course, in states like Virginia dominated at the state legislative level by knuckle dragging Christofascists, that means LGBT couples will have zero marriage rights for the foreseeable future.  But then again, Obama had secured the money and LGBT votes needed to carry Virginia on November 6th, so why should he worry about our fate after that?  A column in The Daily Beast looks at the issue of whether or not Obama will actually try to deliver on gay rights, or if the inaugural speech was simply pretty words that in the grander scheme meant nothing.  Here are excerpts:

When Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to the March on Washington in 1963, he used an interesting metaphor. He called “the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence ... a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.” King said he and the hundreds of thousands gathered on the Mall were there “to cash a check.”

In his second inaugural address, on the day we honor Dr. King, President Obama issued a promissory note of his own. “Our journey is not complete,” he declared without equivocation or reservation, “until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law, for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”

But almost before his words had finished resonating across the National Mall, his press secretary was walking them back. The president, he told reporters, personally supports gay marriage. But the legality of gay marriage itself? “That’s something that should be addressed by the states.” Of course, states determined the legality of interracial marriage for decades, and so the marriage of the president’s parents was illegal in 19 states. We rightly look back at that time with horror, just as our children will look back on today, when 30 states have enshrined discrimination against gays into their constitutions.

But gay-rights activists are looking for quick movement on many fronts, for there is much our president must do to honor his new promissory note:

Join the lawsuit against Proposition 8. The voters of California amended their constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage. A remarkable and brave young gay activist, Chad Griffin, who now leads the Human Rights Campaign, has spearheaded an effort to overturn the action as a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of “equal protection of the laws.” Longtime gay-rights activist and former Clinton White House official Richard Socarides is optimistic that the Obama administration will join the lawsuit. “My own view,” he says, “is that the Justice Department and the White House press office are just catching up with the rhetoric of the speech and that the government will in the end enter the Proposition 8 case on the side of gay-rights advocates. They certainly should.”

Use his power to order federal contractors not to discriminate against their gay employees. In 1941 FDR signed an executive order prohibiting any defense contractor from discriminating based on race, creed, color, or national origin. It took 23 years for Congress to enshrine this principle in the Civil Rights Act. President Obama supports the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, but instead of waiting for Congress to act he should use his constitutional power to end taxpayer-subsidized discrimination against gays.

Make sure gay military spouses have the same rights and privileges as straight military spouses. This president and our remarkable first lady have done admirable work shining a light on the service and sacrifice of our nation’s true top 1 percent—the 1 percent of Americans who serve in the military—and their families. Being a military spouse is tough enough; gay spouses should not be denied benefits earned by their loved one’s service.

This president has evolved significantly on gay rights, but he has a distance to go still. If he does not move quickly and decisively, the White House mailroom may soon be filled with stones, to remind him of the promise of Stonewall.

I for one will not be holding my breath.  Every time Obama manages to make me feel like he truly cares about gay Americans,  he then quickly does something to show me that he's actually a cynical politician.  It would be nice to be proven wrong on this assessment this time around.

Obama’s Marriage Maneuvers

No doubt yesterday's disaster in North Carolina will make Barack Obama try even harder to obfuscate whatever his true thoughts on same sex marriage may be.  Assuming he sees the issue in any context other than political maneuvering analyzing polls versus what voters actually do once inside the voting booth.  Meanwhile, of course, real LGBT lives are damaged and children of LGBT parents face increased financial instability and the denial of benefits that the children of straight couples take for granted. And that's not even addressing the corrosive emotional effects of bigotry written into state constitutions and federal laws.  A lengthy op-ed in the New York Times looks at Obama's bizarre dance around the issue of same sex marriage and offers up explanations of Obama's cowardice while looking at the reality that sometimes doing the right thing doesn't fit cleanly with political gamesmanship.  Here are some excerpts:

In the latest Gallup poll, 50 percent of Americans support redefining marriage to include same-sex couples – which is more than the percentage of Americans that supported the Affordable Care Act, think favorably of the controversial 2009 stimulus package, or approve of Barack Obama’s job performance in general. Among independent voters, meanwhile, support for same-sex marriage is up to 57 percent, meaning that more independents support same-sex marriage today than voted for Obama during his easy victory in 2008.

Given these numbers, it seems a little strange that the president is so unwilling to acknowledge what every non-delusional Washington observer believes to be the case – that like his voluble vice-president, he is part of the emerging pro-same-sex-marriage majority, rather than the opponent that he still officially pretends to be. Why does a president who declined to defend the Defense of Marriage Act persist in the ridiculous pretense of an “evolving” position, one might reasonably ask (an evolution that will be complete, one assumes, the day he wins re-election), when same-sex marriage might actually be a political winner, and his wink-and-a-nod approach to the issue looks so transparently calculated?

Journalists looking for an answer to this question have largely focused on the possibility that a presidential shift on same-sex marriage might depress Democratic turnout among blacks and Hispanics, two crucial constituencies in which support for same-sex unions is lower than in the country as a whole.

But there are two deeper reasons why the president might be leery of being honest about what we can reasonably assume are his actual convictions on the issue.

The first reason is that while the increase in public support for same-sex marriage over the last two decades has been astonishingly swift, it has not been irreversible. Instead, sudden bursts of legal momentum – mostly driven by judicial rulings, from Massachusetts to Iowa – have often prompted temporary backlashes.

The second reason for the White House’s caution is that opinion polling has consistently understated opposition to same-sex marriage since the issue rose to national prominence. Voters who say they support it when Gallup and other pollsters come calling can behave very differently in the privacy of the voting booth.
In a 2010 paper, for instance, the New York University political scientist Patrick J. Egan compared polling in advance of state same-sex marriage referendums to the actual results, and found that

the share of voters in pre-election surveys saying that they will vote to ban same-sex marriage is typically seven percentage points lower than the actual vote on election day.

That seven-point gap between appearances and reality may help explain why same-sex marriage supporters lost referendums they expected to win in liberal states like Maine and California.
 
But to say that the president’s approach is understandable does not mean that it’s necessarily defensible. Supporters of same-sex marriage have worked very hard to frame their issue, not as an ordinary political conflict, but as an all-or-nothing question that pits enlightenment and progress against reaction, bigotry and hate. I don’t accept that framing, but I accept that its architects genuinely believe in it, and see the conflict over same-sex unions as a clear-cut struggle between good and evil, with no possibility of middle ground.

If same-sex marriage isn’t an issue where people can disagree in good faith, though, then the president’s evasions and obfuscations can’t be treated as ordinary political maneuverings, and excused as just so much politics-as-usual. If the debate is as black and white as many supporters of same-sex marriage argue, then they should be much harder on political leaders who pretend that it’s a gray area.

Indeed, if you accept the framing of the debate that many liberals (and many journalists) embrace, then you have to acknowledge that President Obama has spent the last four years lying to the American people about his convictions on one of the defining civil rights issues of our time, and giving aid and comfort to pure bigotry in the service of his other political priorities.

This is a harsh indictment, but it’s one that follows inexorably from premises that many of the president’s own supporters have wholeheartedly embraced. If they hold true to these premises — and the press holds true to its obligations — then the kind of uncomfortable questions the White House spent this week dodging will be asked again and again of the president over the course of the campaign to come.

Bloomberg.com Chides Obama on Gay Marriage Cowardice

While I can understand Barack Obama's reluctance - might cowardice be a better term? - on endorsing same sex marriage rights, the reality is that those who would be offended by such a move to a point that they'd vote Republican aren't going to vote for Obama or any Democrat anyways.  These anti-gay zealots are the Kool-Aid drinkers and Christianist members of the GOP base.  Even a significant majority of the Catholic laity (as opposed to the child rapist protecting bishops) support legal recognition of same sex relationships.  The editors at Bloomberg.com get this reality even if Obama does not.  In an opinion piece today, they took Obama to task for his cowardice on same sex marriage and suggested that he needs to get on board with Joe Biden.  In the process, they also get in a slap at Mitt Romney.  Here are highlights: 

“I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties,” Vice President Joe Biden told NBC’s David Gregory on “Meet the Press.” “And quite frankly, I don’t see much of a distinction beyond that.” 

Others do, most notably his boss, President Barack Obama. The president, surveying an election landscape in which victory may require threading a few political needles, has been disappointingly reticent on the issue -- even as Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Monday joined the chorus endorsing gay marriage.

The discomfort the president has professed to feel about gay marriage -- at least since entering national politics; he seemed remarkably more at ease in the 1990s -- has always seemed more political than personal.

We hope that the president’s reluctance to engage on gay marriage is a similar matter of strategy. But as he surely knows, at some point moral questions break the bounds of calculation and come down to something more elemental: courage and commitment.  These qualities were notably absent last week with the departure of foreign policy spokesman Richard Grenell from Mitt Romney’s campaign.

This battle will ultimately end, and anyone with a passing familiarity with the American story knows how. We have entered the final stage, where opponents theatrically vow to maintain segregation, or its marital approximation, now and forever. 

Marriage, like every successful social institution, changes with the times. When President Obama was born, interracial marriage was prohibited in much of the nation, and public support for it registered in the low single digits. Today, in roughly one-quarter of American marriages, wives earn more than their husbands, some of whom stay home to care for children. Such arrangements -- including the 10 percent of marriages that are interracial -- are no more “traditional” than gay marriages. So what?

The advance of gay rights has been driven largely by culture, with each decade bringing new levels of empowerment. As the latest ballot measure in North Carolina suggests, the political arena has generally been a lagging indicator. President Obama can help change that dynamic by putting his moral authority squarely behind the right to marry.

Top Obama Donors Witholding Money Over Executive Order Punt

I noted this morning my cynicism over the Joe Biden/Barack Obama song and dance over gay marriage and my feeling that it was a planned ruse to try to get the GayATM running at top speed once more.  Pam Spaulding reached a similar conclusion here.  And now a column in the Washington Post gives ammunition to my categorization of Obama as a slick, principle challenged politician who plays with peoples' lives with no consideration beyond securing votes and money.  It seems a number of heavy donors are none too happy with Obama's punting of the entry of an executive order that would bar federal contractors from discriminating based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity.  And these would be donors are demonstrating their wrath in a way that Obama (like the morally bankrupt Catholic hierarchy) understands: they've stopped handing over money.  Some of us can figure out when we're being played.   Here are some column excerpts:

Some leading gay and progressive donors are so angry over President Obama’s refusal to sign an executive order barring same sex discrimination by federal contractors that they are refusing to give any more money to the pro-Obama super PAC, a top gay fundraiser’s office tells me. In some cases, I’m told, big donations are being withheld.

Jonathan Lewis, the gay philanthropist and leading Democratic fundraiser, is one of many gay advocates who has been working behind the scenes to pressure Obama to change his mind. When Obama decided against the executive order last month, arguing that he would pursue a legislative solution instead, advocates were furious — such a solution will never pass Congress, the executive order has been a priority for advocates for years, and the move smacked of a political cave to conservatives who will not support Obama no matter what he does.

Now these and other donors are beginning to withhold money from Priorities USA, the main pro-Obama super PAC, out of dismay over the president’s decision.

Paul Yandura, a political adviser to Lewis, emails me a statement:

A number of gay and progressive donors, unsolicited, have indicated to us that they aren’t considering requests to donate to the Obama SuperPac because of the president’s refusal to the sign the order. And those are high-dollar asks, some in the seven digits. We have heard from at least half a dozen major gay and progressive donors that they stand united with us. There is still time for the President to do the right thing and sign this executive order, our great hope is that he does so immediately.

He declined to name names.

This comes as the White House is on defense on gay rights today, after it furiously clarified Joe Biden’s vague but supportive comments about gay marriage. The walkback is mystifying to donors and advocates who are already miffed about the executive order, and could stiffen their resolve to keep their wallets closed.

The Disingenuous Obama/Biden Same Sex Marriage Dance

Many have jumped on Vice President Joe Biden's following statement yesterday morning to David Gregory on same sex marriage as evidence the Obama administration is moving toward a pro-same sex marriage stance.  Here's the statement:

“I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties,” .  .  .  .  .”And frankly, I don't see much of a distinction beyond that.” .  .  . “who do you love? And will you be loyal to the person you love?"

It sounds nice, but in my view it's just more of the Obama game of playing the LGBT community for monetary support and votes.  As blogger friend Pam Spaulding noted, Obama wants the GayATM turned back on full throttle.   It's the type of disingenuous political game playing that makes it difficult for me to trust Obama.  It's also a reason why I have a difficult time getting enthusiastic in my support for Obama.  Time and time again, I find myself motivated only by a belief that he's not as bad as the GOP alternative on LGBT issues.  I'm not the only one who sees the cynicism in the statements made by Biden who, may actual believe what he saideven while know that the issue is going nowhere with Obama.  Here are highlights from a piece in The Daily Beast:

The veep added the political caveat: “the president sets the policy” and he did not know whether the administration would back same-sex marriage if they win a second term.

There is absolutely no question that Biden’s response was cleared by the White House. Vice presidents are not allowed to freelance on talk shows, especially on such a sensitive issue. So Obama was sending out Biden to further mollify the gay community without having to actually take a stand himself. It all seems a bit calculating to me.
 

As the culture has shifted—faster than almost anyone would have imagined possible—most national Republicans have abandoned marriage as a wedge issue. You don’t see Mitt Romney bringing it up. The reality of gay and lesbian couples getting hitched in numerous states has proven less threatening than the anticipatory rhetoric.

But polls, including a Pew survey last November, show the public is pretty evenly divided on the issue. With the Catholic Church taking a firm stand against gay marriage, some of the opposition is rooted in religious views. And many states are a long way from blessing such unions. North Carolina votes Tuesday on an amendment to ban gay marriage. (Bill Clinton, who signed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, has made robo-calls opposing it.)

In such a climate, the president would be asking for a headache—and possibly reignite the culture wars—if he openly embraced gay marriage. So he had Joe Biden do it on Sunday morning television instead, hoping to reap the benefits without the political pain.

Obama plays with LGBT lives while seemingly not really giving a damn about what actually happens to us.  It's all about political maneuvering and nothing more.