Rand Paul's God Problem

As noted many, many times on this blog, the Republican Party grassroots - where primaries are carried out - has been hijacked by Christofascists and their closely aligned (if not indistinguishable) cousins in the Tea Party.  All of this was allowed by past party elites who saw short term advantage in getting the Bible beaters out to the polls for the GOP.  Now, the problem facing GOP candidates is how to win primaries by attracting the spittle flecked, knuckle dragging GOP base yet not utterly alienating more main stream voters who view the Christofascists with distrust at best and outright revulsion at worse.   The Daily Beast looks at Rand Paul's current tight rope walk as he tries to please the Christofascists yet not cause general election voters running screaming to Democrats.  Here are some story highlights:

What to make of maverick Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s latest speechifying? “I’m not advocating everyone go out and run around with no clothes on and smoke pot,” Paul insisted last Friday while speaking to a group of religious Republicans in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “I’m not a libertarian. I’m a libertarian Republican. I’m a constitutional conservative.” Mindful of evangelical contempt for libertarianism—one attendee told the Washington Post, “Straight libertarianism has nothing Christian about it”—Paul came across as almost desperate to establish that he’s not endorsing state laws legalizing marijuana and allowing for gay marriages.

In a special aired on the Christian Broadcast Network (CBN), Paul talked about his willingness to devolve questions of marriage equality to the states not out of philosophical principle but out of political expediency: “We’re going to lose that battle because the country is going the other way right now,” he said. “If we’re to say each state can decide, I think a good 25 or 30 states still do believe in traditional marriage, and maybe we allow that debate to go on for another couple of decades and see if we can still win back the hearts and minds of people.”

The gap between his remarks to evangelicals and those directed at the party faithful raise the question: Is Rand Paul simply the latest in a long line of Republicans who cultivate libertarian-leaning voters—broadly speaking, people who believe in fiscal conservatism and social liberalism—as they gear up for presidential bids? And then disappoint those same voters almost immediately? 

It’s far more likely that if Paul continues to send significantly different messages to different audiences, he will end up alienating all his possible supporters.

One way or another, we’ll be finding out. Paul is set to talk to libertarian-leaning New Hampshire residents later this month and then will be heading to the evangelical hotbed of South Carolina as he continues to test the waters for 2016.

If he’s serious about scraping the moss off the Republican Party, he needs to boldly defend his most contrarian, libertarian positions rather than temper his comments based on his speaking venue.

If the GOP is losing elections, it’s precisely because, as Paul put it at CPAC, the party “is encumbered by an inconsistent approach to freedom.” Independent voters are generally turned off by a party that seems fixated on yesterday’s social mores. Growing majorities of Americans are totally fine with legal pot and gay marriage; fully 80 percent of us believe that abortion should be legal under some circumstances, with 61 percent saying it should be unrestricted in the first trimester of pregnancy. 

Jon Huntsman Slams the GOP Again

It is interesting to see a conservative like Jon Huntsman repeatedly slam the lunacy of today's GOP.  I personally believe that had Huntsman been the GOP nominee instead of Romney, the election results might have differed..Huntsman is correct that the party has become too extreme and unwilling to accept objective reality not to mention simple math.  The problem is now that the GOP base has become so insane that the GOP nomination process makes it nearly impossible for a non-extremist - or someone unwilling to prostitute them-self to the extremists - to secure the nomination. It is also noteworthy that Huntsman indicated that states should be allowed to enact gay marriage laws - something anathema to the GOP's Christofascist elements.  Here are excerpts from an article in the Daily Telegraph:

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, the former Utah governor and leading Republican moderate said the party must accept "a strong dose of libertarianism" on social issues and allow state governments to move ahead with gay marriage.

Offering his prescription for the party's renewal, Mr Huntsman said the early stages of the Republican presidential primaries rewarded extreme conservatives rather than "long-term competitive candidates" who could effectively take on the Democrats. 

 he scale of Mitt Romney's defeat in November has left the party reeling and may create a fresh opening for the socially-moderate but fiscally-conservative ideas Mr Huntsman espoused in the primary.
"The party right now is a holding company that's devoid of a soul and it will be filled up with ideas over time and leaders will take their proper place," he said.

Mr Huntsman urged the party to "reflect a little bit on our winning chapters" and face up to a demographic reality where white conservatives represent a shrinking portion of the electorate. "We can't be known as a party that's fear-based and doesn't believe in math," he said. "In the end it will come down to a party that believes in opportunity for all our people, economic competitiveness and a strong dose of libertarianism."

He said he "absolutely" supported individual states being allowed to implement gay marriage, saying that Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, believed that "equality under the law is an American value". 

Mr Huntsman cautioned that the improving economy would put Mr Obama's Democratic successor in a strong position for 2016 but said that eight years of incumbency would take a toll on the President's party. 

Libertarian Republicans May Block Marriage Repeal in New Hampshire

One of the announced goals of far right Republicans in New Hampshire has been to repeal that state's same sex marriage law. But despite majorities in both houses of the legislature, they may not be able to gather the 2/3 vote required to repeal the 2009 law. The stumbling block? Libertarian inclined Republicans who see the repeal as a trampling on individual freedom. I would add religious freedom as another victim of the Christianist element in the GOP's jihad against gay marriage. Not surprisingly, some of the cretins in the pro-repeal faction mouth the myth that gay marriage threatens their religious liberty. To these folks, only anti-gay Christians have religious freedom rights. Everyone else can go f*ck themselves per this mindset. The Concord Monitor looks at the uncertain fate of the repeal effort in New Hampshire. Here are excerpts:

While the fate of a bill repealing same-sex marriage in New Hampshire remains uncertain, two facts are not in dispute: Republicans hold veto-proof majorities in the House and Senate. The state Republican Party platform defines marriage as "the legal union between one man and one woman" and opposes "all other forms of civil unions, regardless of where such unions were formed." So what's so hard about getting it done?

Sen. Fenton Groen, a Rochester Republican who has been vocal in his support of the repeal, said last week. "I think that, in the House particularly, we have a significant libertarian caucus within the Republican Party. . . . And there are some Republicans who differ on that within that caucus."

"I'm for liberty and freedom, leaving people alone so long as they don't harm or defraud other people," said Rep. Steve Winter, a Newbury Republican who opposes the repeal. . . . He considers himself a "fiscal conservative and a social libertarian."

Rep. Seth Cohn, a Canterbury Republican who moved here as part of the Free State project, a libertarian movement to relocate to New Hampshire, is also against repeal. Cohn and others believe the bill may pass the House but does not have the two-thirds majority to override a potential veto by Democratic Gov. John Lynch, who signed the bill three years ago legalizing same-sex marriage. "I know for a fact, based on people I've talked to, that if Gov. Lynch vetoes it, that veto is not override-able," Cohn said.

Cohn said he plans to introduce an amendment on the House floor that would take government entirely out of marriage, instead giving all couples a civil union and leaving marriage up to churches and other religious institutions. That same approach is supported by the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, a libertarian-leaning group that endorsed 107 House members elected in 2010.

[U]nwillingness to take up the mantle in opposition to same-sex marriage has extended to top lawmakers in both chambers. . . . . Gay marriage supporters in New Hampshire say the current of public opinion favors their side. A University of New Hampshire survey in October found 62 percent of residents oppose the repeal and 27 percent support it. The rest were neutral.

Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley also voted against the gay marriage law. But before he could support the repeal bill, he said, language establishing civil unions for same-sex and heterosexual couples must be strengthened so all employers and other entities would be required to recognize them.

Rep. Jennifer Coffey's view has also been colored by life experience. The Andover Republican, a nurse's assistant for 16 years, remembers a terminally ill woman who had been estranged from her family for 20 years because of her relationship with another woman. When the family she hadn't talked to for decades came to visit her in the hospital, they did not allow the woman's partner in the room.

"It really stuck in my mind," she said. "There are certain things you see in health care that break your heart." Still, Coffey - who considers herself a "Goldwater Republican," a "little-'l' libertarian" - voted against the gay marriage law in 2009. Now, she plans to vote against repealing it, but says her position has been consistent all along.

"I voted against government defining marriage," she said. "It doesn't have the right to define marriage in any sense. It is a religious ceremony."

While not addressed in the article, just maybe some in the GOP are waking up to the fact that the GOP's anti-gay positions are driving away both libertarians and the younger generation of voters. Time will tell. Obviously, I hope the repeal effort fails.

The Radical - and Scary - Ron Paul

While Ron Paul continues to attract followers, many do not seem to know all of his baggage and in someways frightening past positions. Once you do a thorough overview, it becomes difficult to figure out what the man currently believes and just how big of a threat he'd be to civil liberties even though he claims to be a libertarian. Paul seems to welcome mob majority rule and if you're black, Hispanic, foreign born, or gay, he seems to believe the government has no business in protection your rights from the worse prejudices and bigotry of the majority. A column in the Washington Post looks at some of Paul's past statements and positions. The only good news in any of it is the knowledge that Paul is not likely to be the GOP nominee. Here are some column highlights:

No other recent candidate hailing from the party of Lincoln has accused Abraham Lincoln of causing a “senseless” war and ruling with an “iron fist.” Or regarded Ronald Reagan’s presidency a “dramatic failure.” Or proposed the legalization of prostitution and heroin use. Or called America the most “aggressive, extended and expansionist” empire in world history. Or promised to abolish the CIA, depart NATO and withdraw military protection from South Korea. Or blamed terrorism on American militarism, since “they’re terrorists because we’re occupiers.” Or accused the American government of a Sept. 11 “coverup” and called for an investigation headed by Dennis Kucinich. Or described the killing of Osama bin Laden as “absolutely not necessary.” Or affirmed that he would not have sent American troops to Europe to end the Holocaust. Or excused Iranian nuclear ambitions as “natural,” while dismissing evidence of those ambitions as “war propaganda.” Or published a newsletter stating that the 1993 World Trade Center attack might have been “a setup by the Israeli Mossad,” and defending former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke and criticizing the “evil of forced integration.”

Each of these is a disqualifying scandal. Taken together, a kind of grandeur creeps in. The ambition of Paul and his supporters is breathtaking. They wish to erase 158 years of Republican Party history in a single political season, substituting a platform that is isolationist, libertarian, conspiratorial and tinged with racism. It won’t happen.

Whatever his personal views, Paul categorically opposes the legal construct that ended state-sanctioned racism. His libertarianism involves not only the abolition of the Department of Education but also a rejection of the federal role in civil rights from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This is the reason Paul is among the most anti-Lincoln public officials since Jefferson Davis resigned from the United States Senate.

A federal role in civil rights is an attack on a “free society.” According to Paul, it is like the federal government dictating that you can’t “smoke a cigar.” The comparison of civil rights to the enjoyment of a cigar is a sad symptom of ideological delirium. It also illustrates confusion at the heart of libertarianism. Government can be an enemy of liberty. But the achievement of a free society can also be the result of government action — the protection of individual liberty against corrupt state governments or corrupt business practices or corrupt local laws.

Paul’s conception of liberty is not the same as Lincoln’s — which is not a condemnation of Lincoln. Paul’s view would have freed African Americans from the statism of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil Rights Act. It would have freed the occupants of concentration camps from their dependency on liberating armies. And it would free the Republican Party from any claim to conscience or power.

The Moral and Constitutional Case for Gay Marriage

There perhaps are some that believe I am beating a dead horse in my frequent posts about gay marriage. However, I do believe that a fair, non-religiously biased reading of the U. S. Constitution requires equal marriage rights now that legitimate medical and mental health experts view sexual orientation as unchangeable. The arguments of Christianist that gays have the same rights as straights to marry individuals of the opposite sex ignores the immutability of one's sexual orientation. Their argument is just as specious as it would be for gays to insist that straights marry individuals of the same sex. We know it and they know it. They simply don't give a damn about gays - or for that matter, the straights that gays marry in an effort to conform only to have the marriage fail and misery be spread around to all involved (including the children born to these doomed marriages). In my view, the Christianists' attitude is one of utter selfishness. They truly do not care what harm or misery they inflict on LGBT individuals. Anything that challenges their simplistic world view or requires serious thought and analysis is to be forbidden. A column Robert A. Levy, chairman of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, New York Daily News recently made the moral AND constitutional case for same sex marriage. Here are some highlights:
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Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty put it this way: "Marriage inequality is a civil rights, political, social, moral and religious issue." He covered all the bases, except one: It's a constitutional issue as well.
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Thomas Jefferson set the stage in the Declaration of Independence: "[T]o secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men." The primary purpose of government is to safeguard individual rights and prevent some persons from harming others. Heterosexuals should not be treated preferentially when the state carries out that role. And no one is harmed by the union of two consenting gay people.
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For most of Western history, marriage was a matter of private contract between the betrothed parties and perhaps their families. Following that tradition, marriage today should be a private arrangement, requiring minimal or no state intervention. Some religious or secular institutions would recognize gay marriages; others would not; still others would call them domestic partnerships or assign another label. Join whichever group you wish. The rights and responsibilities of partners would be governed by personally tailored contracts - consensual bargains like those that control most other interactions in a free society.
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Whenever government imposes obligations or dispenses benefits, it may not "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." That provision is explicit in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, applicable to the states, and implicit in the Fifth Amendment, applicable to the federal government.
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Of course, government discriminates among its citizens all the time. By the 1920s, 38 states prohibited whites from marrying blacks and certain Asians. Until 1954, all states were allowed to operate segregated schools. Thankfully, the Supreme Court invalidated both interracial marital restrictions and school segregation. The court applied the plain text of the Equal Protection Clause despite contrary practices by the states for many years even after the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868.
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No compelling reason has been proffered for sanctioning heterosexual but not homosexual marriages. Nor is a ban on gay marriage a close fit for attaining the goals cited by proponents of such bans. If the goal, for example, is to strengthen the institution of marriage, a more effective step might be to bar no-fault divorce and premarital cohabitation. If the goal is to ensure procreation, then infertile and aged couples should be precluded from marriage.
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Instead, most states have implemented an irrational and unjust system that provides significant benefits to just-married heterosexuals while denying benefits to a male or female couple who have enjoyed a loving, committed, faithful and mutually reinforcing relationship over several decades. That's not the way it has to be.
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According to the federal Office of Personnel Management, nearly 60% of Fortune 500 companies confer employment benefits on domestic partners. Yet our politicians, unwilling to privatize marriage, seem congenitally unable to extricate themselves from our most intimate relationships. One would hope, in the coming months and years, that more enlightened federal and state legislators will have the courage and decency to resist morally abhorrent and constitutionally suspect restrictions based on sexual orientation. Gay couples are entitled to the same legal rights and the same respect and dignity accorded to all Americans.

Palin Is Ready? Oh Please, Get Real.

UPDATED 9/29/08: This from the Washigton Post:

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While some journalists say privately they are censoring their comments about Palin to avoid looking like they're piling on, pundits on the right are jumping ship. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough says Palin "just seems out of her league." National Review Editor Rich Lowry called her performance "dreadful." Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher described the interview as a "train wreck." Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker urged Palin to quit the race, saying: "If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself."

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Several people have disagreed with Katleen Parker's call for Sarah Palin to leave the GOP ticket and tried to depict Palin as a libertarian. This analysis is flawed because it ignores the facts that (1) Libertarians do not support intermixing religion and politics (the Cato Institute filed an amicus brief in Lawrence v. Texas in support of striking down the sodomy statutes, and (2) believe in getting government out of the lives of citizens. McCain/Palin in effect subscribe to four (4) more years of the Chimperator's regime and Palin is a far right religious zealot from what information is available about her past church affiliations and statements. Now, Fareed Zakaria, hardly an ultra liberal is likewise calling for Palin to go away. Perhaps the scariest thing is that Palin doesn't seem to know she's out of her league in true dogmatic Christianist fashion. Here are highlights from Newsweek:

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Will someone please put Sarah Palin out of her agony? Is it too much to ask that she come to realize that she wants, in that wonderful phrase in American politics, "to spend more time with her family"? Having stayed in purdah for weeks, she finally agreed to a third interview. CBS's Katie Couric questioned her in her trademark sympathetic style. It didn't help.

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But the more Palin talks, the more we see that it may not be sexism but common sense that's causing the McCain campaign to treat her like a time bomb. Can we now admit the obvious? Sarah Palin is utterly unqualified to be vice president. She is a feisty, charismatic politician who has done some good things in Alaska. But she has never spent a day thinking about any important national or international issue, and this is a hell of a time to start.

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In these times, for John McCain to have chosen this person to be his running mate is fundamentally irresponsible. McCain says that he always puts country first. In this important case, it is simply not true.