Prayers for some but not all.

Having been on the ground for a while here in the SC blogdom, Waldo finds the best conservative bloggers around- by at least a country mile- are Wesley Donehue and Earl Capps.

Capps is the exemplar of what blogging ought to be about. He's defined his turf and works it constantly. If Chris Cillizza called Waldo up and asked, who's the best boots on the ground analyst of the SC GOP, it'd be Earl, hands down. When he has a personal or political interest, he tells you up front. How he manages raising a family and holding down a day job and doing the grunt work to, say, handicap potential candidates for SC attorney general, we got no idea. But somehow he does it.

Donehue, technology's evangelist in the SC GOP, is a different kind of brilliant. For one thing, he wears bow ties, which is always the mark of original thinkers and iconoclasts. He shares with Newt Gingrich a constant fecundity of thought. You get the sense a jillion ideas are churning in his head every minute or two and he just has to share them all by Twitter, blog, podcast or news aggregator. If Massa Dawson's Party had sense enough to come in out of the dark they'd elect Donehue chair. His knowledge of technology and its applications puts the "let's fight the last war, only a little better" crap of the current candidates to shame.

The sad part is that Donehue is in the position of a man trying to sell the latest robotic assembly line technology to the last buggy-whip manufacturer in America. Tech developers are relentlessly forward-looking. They hire the best people they canfind around thw world without regard for the things Republicans apply as litmus tests: race, gender, sexual orientation, opinion on an increasingly precise enumeration of hot button issues. The GOP, at every level, is trying to figure out how to sell the age of the Magic Lantern and the Stereopticon to a rising generation whose best and brightest are inventing the new technologies Donehue seeks to apply to spread the message that the Republican Party welcomes everyone except those it doesn't.

Which, as a Republican-in-exile, Waldo keenly felt today reading this entry:

We are facing tough times folks and now more than ever we need to be praying for our elected leaders, from both parties and at all levels of government. Capitol Ministries exists to “make disciples of Jesus Christ in the political arena in America and around the world.” This is a great organization that needs support from South Carolina’s values-based community.

Read in South Carolina-ese, we all know who's welcome at that clambake and who's not. Even though Waldo's a church-goer himself. Nowadays, Christian belief isn't enough. It has to be Christian belief with the right party registration, as if Jesus said all are welcome at the Lord's Table-except non-Republicans. Republicans have the values. All else, the devil take the hindmost.

It's funny how you can harness technologies developed by an industry as notoriously gay-friendly as high tech ( the sort of companies SC needs to attract and bring workers here until that nirvana day when we can produce out own, home-grown, educated workforce, but who, per Richard Florda's Rise of the Creative Class, are highly unlikely to come here because they can't sell the lifestyle of a state that institutionalizes homophobia in public policy) and use it to, among other goals, define us out of the full benefits of the society you expect us to pay the full tax load to support for your benefit but not ours.

SC will fight the rear-guard action better, and longer, the most states, but in the end demographics and changing attitudes will arrive even here. It's unfortunate to see such brainpower being harnessed to resist, rather than advance, the sort of real change that is needed to transform SC's economy.

But you guys knock yourselves out in the meantime, and when you finally realize you've been on the wrong track for a really long time, we promise not to gloat.

As ye sow-

Anonymous Liberal has a thoughtful post on how judicial decisions often have led the way to a later, broad, social consensus on controversial issues. It's not judicial activism, AL argues, but just the first instance of a government entity articulating a different point of view. A Vermont Supreme Court case on marriage equality a decade ago was such a tipping point, and paved the way for today's action by the state legislature to override the governor's veto and make marriage equality legal in that state.

Of course there's a countervailing view:

Franck would rather live in a world where people were never challenged about their prejudices and were therefore never given the opportunity to overcome them. Indeed, he asserts that the people of Vermont's new found acceptable of marriage equality is somehow illegitimate because of the mechanism through which public opinion was changed. That's an incredibly bizarre way to look at the democratic process. Are current attitudes toward racial equality somehow tainted or illegitimate because they've been influenced by Brown v. Board of Educationand Loving v. Virginia? Isn't it possible that opinions changed because people were persuaded by the correctness of those rulings? Isn't it possible that's also the case in Vermont?

The bottom line is that if opponents of gay marriage were "right" on the merits, then they wouldn't have to worry about court decisions somehow illegitimately swaying public opinion. They could be confident in the enduring power of their ideas. But they're not. They see that when people get used to the idea of gay marriage, they don't find it remotely scary or threatening. Indeed it "seems only just." That's why they're worried. They've lost the argument and they know it.

And so we have Southern Baptist honcho Albert Mohler fretting that the culture has become "post-Christian." Columnist Cal Thomas says the battle over marriage equality is on the way to being lost and lays the blame squarely with Christianist leaders:

To those on the political and religious right who are intent on continuing the battle to preserve “traditional marriage” in a nation that is rapidly discarding its traditions, I would ask this question: What poses a greater threat to our remaining moral underpinnings? Is it two homosexuals living together, or is it the number of heterosexuals who are divorcing and the increasing number of children born to unmarried women, now at nearly 40 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention?

Most of those who are disturbed about same-sex marriage are not as exercised about preserving heterosexual marriage. That’s because it doesn’t raise money and won’t get them on TV. Some preachers would rather demonize gays than oppose heterosexuals who violate their vows by divorcing, often causing harm to their children. That’s because so many in their congregations have been divorced and preaching against divorce might cause some to leave and take their contributions with them.

Professional Christianist Tony Perkins- one of the sort Thomas calls out for never missing a chance to raise cash and get on TV by gay-bashing- reacted to the Vermont votes in typically hyperventillating style:

"Same-sex 'marriage' is a movement driven by wealthy homosexual activists and a liberal elite determined to destroy not only the institution of marriage, but democracy as well.

Can anyone explain who these people are, and why they'd want to destroy marriage first, and, second, why they'd want to destroy a democracy that has allowed them to flourish in their louche depravity? We'd really love to know. It's like The Homosexual Agenda: only conservatives seem to have a copy and they only quote it selectively.

The meme on the right is that everywhere voters have had a chance to say no to marriage equality, they've said no. So here we've got people nattering on alternate days about how American is being led into dictatorship by the president (which presumes a rigorous devotion to democracy and its institutions), then arguing that courts ruling on marriage equality are arrogant judicial activists, and then, when legislatures reach the same result, their deliberations are illegitimate.

Essentially, American conservatives have backed themselves into arguing the only acceptable form of democracy is a plebescitary one, in which all the great questions of the day a resolved by the direct vote of a suitably inflamed populace- the plebians, as the Romans had it.

Which, if you stop to think about it, is consistent with the Republican world view these days. The Palin/Joe The Plumber Craze- Uncle Grumpy's baleful legacy- lionizes sheer ignorance. They are Gollum, obsessing about a lost ring and a lost time, consumed with jealousy and anger at a world that has, increasingly, passed them by, never so annoyingly as on the issue of marriage equality.

Could be scary, could be a natural voting constituency-

Ronald Bailey wonders what legal rights Neanderthals would enjoy if efforts to recreate their full genetic sequence are carried to the results stage. One not mentioned: women, colored people and gays would all move up a notch in the estimation of the Old Confederacy & Buffalo Commons Party.

Unless, of course, the Republicans find they have more in common with the newcomers than they thought.

Bless his heart, he just can't help thinking the way he does

A little brown-face humor from Adam Fogle: who's the actor turned White House aide,a nd who's the TV doctor nominated to be surgeon general? And how did Boy Fogle make the leap from one to the other?

Predictability, thy name is Palmetto Scoop.

Boy Fogle is jeering the appointment of Kal Penn, an actor who gave up a role on the Fox series House to work as a White House aide:

I think this is a great hire by Obama. Penn has extensive experience as a doctor, a terrorist, a stoner, and a sexually-challenged college student.

Granted, all of those things were in movies and on television, but I think that’s more than enough qualification to be serve as an aide to the President of the United States. Hey, this the Obama Administration, baby… anything goes.

In fact, I’m kind of surprised Obama didn’t pick Penn to be the surgeon general.

Which begs the question of what qualifications these people brought to their government posts:

Shirley Temple Black, child actress: candidate for Congress, 1966; UN delegate, 1969: ambassador to Ghana, 1974-76 (must've been the movies she did with Bojangles Robinson); US chief of protocol, 1976; ambassador to Czechoslovakia (1989-92).

John Gavin, actor, ambassador to Mexixo, 1981-86.

Ronald Reagan, actor, governor of California, 1967-75; US president, 1981-89.

Fred Grandy, actor ("mezzanine or Lido Deck, Congressman?" the House elevator operator asked him on his first day as a congressman (1986-94); candidate for Iowa governor, 1994.

Ron Silver, actor; addressed the 2004 Republican National Convention.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, actor, governor of California.

Fred Thompson, actor, Tennessee senator, 1994-2003; presidential candidate (has played presidents in movies).

George Murphy, actor, California senator 1964-70.

Sonny Bono, actor/singer, mayor of Palm Springs, CA; congressman 1995-98.

Clint Eastwood, actor, mayor, Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA.

Alan Autry, actor, Mayor of Fresno, 2001-2009.

Yep...all Republicans.

Alarm bells clanging as the trains pass them by

The Hinge of Fate, Churchill called it in his war memoirs- the worst year of World War II, with plenty of defeats to come, and yet with the sure confidence that victory would be inevitable.

H/t Andrew Sullivan for this bit of video (below) from the Iowa state senate this week. It's more evidence that, further to our earlier post, the hinge has, indisputably, begin to close, even, however belatedly, in South Carolina.

The political consultant/bloggers of SC- who, as Chris Cillizza recently noted, already contribute so little to political blogging in the Palmetto State, need to ask themselves if they want to make real their pretensions to seeing and making real a new future for South Carolina by getting on the right- and inevitable- side of history, or whether they want to be the blogdom's equivalent to John W. Davis, the congressman, solicitor general, presidential nominee and diplomat whose last of 140 appearances before the US Supreme Court was in the defense of segregation.

As if.

"Guns don't kill people; people who read conservative hate books kill people."

An especially impressive op piece by George Packer in The New Yorker (we cited it, below, in another direction).

Here he cites the chilling indifference with which Republican ideologues are ignoring the credo of conservative thinker Richard Weaver- that Ideas Have Consequences:

“This is a defining moment, and there is overwhelming empathy with folks who are scared to death about the direction this country is going,” Senator Saxby Chambliss, of Georgia, told Politico. Not to be outdone, Representative Michele Bachmann, of Minnesota, told an approving Sean Hannity, on his radio show, “Where freedom is tried, the people rejoice. But where tyranny is enforced upon the people, as Barack Obama is doing, the people suffer and mourn.” And Fox News’s Glenn Beck, who had earlier equated Obamaism with socialism and Communism, revised his analysis: “They’re marching us toward 1984. . . . Like it or not, fascism is on the rise.” Footage of goose-stepping Nazis played across the screen behind him.

This is what the historian Richard Hofstadter has called “the paranoid style in American politics.” In the world of intelligence, it’s known as mirror-imaging: in this case, seeing in an enemy’s mental structure a reflection of one’s own feverish simplifications. Conservatives will not be able to understand the elusive nature of Obamaism and counter its formidable appeal until they remove the impediment of their own insular, rigid ideology.

Andrew Sullivan notes that the wingnut who pulled his AK-47 out of the closet and started killing cops the other day left detailed, wingnutty, explanations why behind.

Sullivan adds,

The only person responsible for these murders is Poplawski. But it's a reminder that whipping up paranoia can lead to unintended consequences, especially as gun sales go through the roof in the wake of Obama's election. When someone like Michele Bachmann talks about the Obama administration forcing people into re-education camps, or forcing a global currency on the US, and other insanities, she needs to know the tinder box she is busy throwing matches into.

Which calls to mind the Tennessee nutter, Jim Adkisson, who barged into a Knoxville Unitarian Church performance of Annie last July and pulled out a shotgun . He left a letter behind dissing liberals and gays for the state of the country, and his bedside reading included Bernard Goldberg, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage. Unable to pick off the 100 persons Goldberg says are ruining the nation, he picked some Unitarians at random.

It continues to astonish Waldo that SC's leading conservative bloggers never talk about things like this. It's like, when the idea is suggested that the GOP has some issues they need to sort out among themselves, they go all ostrichy.

Obamaism

George Packer, attempting to divine President Obama's operating philosophy, says the prez seems like what used to pass for a conservative:

This is not the rigid mentality of an engineer of human souls; it’s the attitude of a community organizer.

It’s also a pretty good description of what used to pass for conservatism—a sense that social relations and institutions are fragile things, and that, while government can’t create wealth or impose equality, at moments like this it has to establish a new equilibrium between individuals and huge economic forces, so that society doesn’t crumble. But modern conservatism has grown into exactly the opposite of its origins, in Burke’s respect for tradition and Madison’s promotion of countervailing checks on concentrations of power. Instead, like any revolutionary creed, it is abstract, hard-edged, and indifferent to experience and existing conditions.

Most of the remaining congressional Republicans seem content to adhere to this creed, and to allow banks, car companies, and homeowners to be crushed under the invisible foot of the market—all that matters is the consistent application of principle. Last week, the House Republicans released a shadow budget that would repeal much of the stimulus package and impose a domestic-spending freeze in the middle of what some economists are beginning to call a depression. While claiming to be fiscally responsible, it would also create new optional tax brackets and cut or eliminate taxes of every kind, from capital gains to the estate and alternative minimum taxes, tilting the benefits sharply toward—you guessed it—the wealthy.

Somewhere, Joseph Schumpeter is laughing.

A couple of provocative views of what's wrong with the news paper business. One argues the Internet has changed the way we find out about stuff we used to learn about from advertising. No ads, no newspapers.

Michael Kinsley says, get over it. They may all fail and then something else will come along to do the job.

The Artist Formerly Known As Artisan Speaks

In future we'll give his reviews space over at Waldo at Home, but this is a heads-up that Scoop Doggy has made his recently-threatened debut as an arts critic.

It's of a performance he didn't attend.

Somewhere, Rev. Fred Phelps is laughing

This week just ending, it seems all Americans can unite in looking upon President Bush's works in Afghanistan and Iraq, and- finally- say, "Mission Accomplished."

We have created a democracy in Afghanistan that passes laws allowing men to demand sex from their wives at their pleasure, and to deny their wives the right to leave home for any reason.

And in Iraq, this benchmark of flourishing democracy:

Six gay men shot to death in Iraq by tribe members

• Story Highlights
• In the most recent attack, two men were killed Thursday in Sadr City area of Baghdad
  
• Witnesses tell CNN a Sadr City cafe, also popular with gay men, was set on fire
  
• Shootings came after tribal meeting when members decided to go after the victims

By Mohammed Tawfeeq
CNN

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Six gay men were shot dead by members of their tribe in two separate incidents in the past 10 days, an official with Iraq's Interior ministry said.

In the most recent attack, two men were killed Thursday in Sadr City area of Baghdad after they were disowned by relatives, the official said.

The shootings came after a tribal meeting was held and the members decided to go after the victims.

On March 26, four additional men were fatally shot in the same city, the official said, adding that the victims had also been disowned by their relatives.

The official declined to be identified because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

Witnesses told CNN that a Sadr City cafe, which was a popular gathering spot for gays, was also set on fire.

The Southern Baptist Convention and Republican Party Platform could hardly sum up the benchmarks better.

Will same-sex marriage kill off the Iowa caucus?

Picking up on WaPo's Chris Cillizza's piece on the effect of marriage equality on the 2012 GOP Iowa caucuses, Soren Dayton at The Next Right makes a provocative suggestion:

Let me offer another thought. This could lead to a further minimization of the Iowa Caucus. My understanding is that Mitt Romney, who must be considered the front-runner, is already trying to figure out how to avoid Iowa or somehow reshuffle the deck. A number of candidates could reasonably try to skip it.

Which raises the question: if marriage equality is so toxic moderate Republicans will want to skip the Iowa caucuses, when will the GOP wise up and realize they are on the losing end of  a demographic hinge that will only get worse for them? Or is Anaconda right: the GOP Must follow the Pope's strategy for the Catholic Church and purge it down to its essence before it can grow again?

Damn you, Bob Jones, and your twelve inch ruler

Sauron says liberals hate Sarah Palin because she's just too darn pretty to lead this great nation, you know?

Well golly, CBS, you found us out. Our animus toward Our Lady of Wasilla has nothing to do with her double dipping her taxpayers, her clothes scam with the RNC, her fabulous claims, her proven lies, or her willful- even enthusiastic-ignorance. Never mind her crime-spree-prone extended family.

It's about that slinky figure, so lovingly portrayed by Sauron in a remarkable photo spread. Is there a wall of those at home?

Clearly Palin's calling is to be companion to Sauron's other obsession, Doctor Who.

Gotta get more exercise. Might live to see the day after all.

Andrew Sullivan publishes an email from a high school student in North Carolina who explains why, having grown up in the presidency of George W. Bush, he- and everyone he knows- consider themselves Democrats:

Conservatism as a movement has lost its future, because it has, from what I can see, completely lost the young. The Hour is getting very late for the Right to talk about deficits or of social squabbles. It only reinforces their image to the young as the political group that has to be stopped. They are fast digging their own graves.

Newt Gingrich is channeling Jeanne Kirkpatrick:

Gingrich sums up the left

@ 5:14 pm by Jeremy P. Jacobs

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich summed up his thoughts on the left in this tweet today:

The left blames everything on america It is one of the biggest differences between the left and the rest of us They instinctively blame us

This, of course, raises the question, who does the right blame?

Cross posted at the Twitterroom.

Remember how Laura Bush touted the liberation of Afghan women? President Karzai needed a nudge.

All over the land of double-wides bubbas are drooling: "Every fourth night? Whether they want to or not? Day-um, y'all."

Chris Cillizza thinks the big winners in the reax to Iowa's marriage equality ruling are Huckabee and Palin. He rightly notes Romney will forever be suspect in the fullness of his conversion to homophobia. But Cillizza goes one step further and posits the big loser to be Utah governor Jon Huntsman, who's been saying the GOP has to recognize reality in dealing with gay issues. Siwwy Wabbit! Huntsman never had a hoot's chance in hell with that view, with or without the Iowa court decision. Here's a roundup of comment by the entire Republican Party. Except Sarah Palin, who's busy slagging the boy who knocked up her daughter.

The things you can do with math! Nate Silver looked at past state referenda on marriage equality, polls on the religiousity of voters, and demographic data, and came up with a fascinating regression analysis of when each of the 50 states' population will tip over to a majority opposing same-sex marriage bans. (NC and Georgia: 2019. SC: 2021. Alabama and Mississippi do their duty, too.)


Scared that Obama will ban guns? Get your killing out of the way early. 


AIG has four PR firms on the payroll, including the she-Clinton's hapless media guru, Mark Penn. It ain't over till the fat man speaks.

Q.E.D.

Greenville is not among the cities listed as taking part tomorrow in World Pillow Fight Day (h/t Andrew Sullivan), no doubt because pillows = beds = sex = Bob Jones University = fear of homosexuals. Bust mostly it's an excuse to re-review one of the more delightful TV ads of recent years:

Somewhere, Cardinal Hume is cringing.

Recently Savonarola got all moist- amid a lugubrious post about the replacement of the last Catholic autocracy in Europe to modern democracy and an expansion of Daniel J. Cassidy's boy choir fetish to Moscow- about the new Archbishop of Westminster (Tony Blair's parish priest):

Now, from Ruth Gledhill, we get a glimpse of how the new Bish seems tobe as tone-deaf about PR as his boss:

Half an hour into a new era, a new Archbishop, and we have a new eschatology.

Press officers are generally taught at nursery school that they might think we are s**s, they might think they know some of us are, they might even find a way to keep us in the dark and feed us on it like mushrooms. But they should never, ever tell us this to our faces, especially when surrounded by bishops and archbishops of the Roman Catholic church, itself an institution only beginning to recover from a series of PR disasters.

Jonathan Wynne-Jones, religious affairs correspondent of The Sunday Telegraph, pictured above, was sitting next to me and we had just finished chatting to Archbishop Nichols, who was charisma personified, at the press conference at Ambrosden Avenue this morning when Peter Jennings, long-serving press officer to Vincent Nichols, appeared and Jonathan introduced himself.

They had not had the pleasure of meeting before. Jennings promptly told Jonathan Wynne-Jones that he was a 'total s**t' for reporting the letters sent by two English bishops complaining that his boss Vin Nichols would be a divisive choice for Westminster. He also accused him of something else in terms so defamatory that I daren't reproduce it on this blog as it involves the banned 'l' word, except to say that I know for a fact this accusation Jennings made against Wynne-Jones is not true. Jonathan does not tell porkie-pies. That is a fact.

Jennings also said the outgoing Archbishop of Westminster' had not been as effective as he might have been' at the start of his time at Westminster, when the Michael Hill affair erupted.

Andrew Brown has reported this exchange in brief over at Comment is Free. Wynne-Jones was up for specialist of the year at this year's press awards. To have the soon-to-be Archbishop of Westminster's press spokesman making such accusations against him in public cannot go unreported.This could be the first test of what Archbishop Nichols is made of. Worth reading the comments on Jonathan's own account of the incident.

There is much to be commended about Jennings. He writes regularly for The Times on Newman and is a tireless advocate of the Newman cause. He's a true survivor and a man of faith. Over the years I have become truly fond of Peter Jennings and remain so.

Peter Jennings subsequently apologised and withdrew the remarks. But it raises questions, not least because his response to this post has been to threaten me with all withdrawal of future cooperation. Great isn't it? Within hours of the appointment of the new Archbishop of Westminster, his press officer falls out with The Times and The Sunday Telegraph and makes a laughing stock of himself over at The Guardian.

Vin Nichols, meanwhile, could perhaps be compared to Tony Blair. He's swung to the right, he's commendably pragmatic, he has a deep, deep faith, he's good-looking, charismatic, charming, personable. He can expect to stay in office a long, long time. But as Blair had Peter Mandelson and Alistair Campbell, so Nichols has Jennings. In a politician, perhaps, some might find it acceptable to have a legman to do the dirty work you're not prepared to do yourself, and phone up newsdesks at midnight after the first editions drop to tell them they're a bunch of s***s. Personally, I don't find that acceptable. I find it even less so in a member of an Archbishop's staff.

Lets hope the language of scatology is not the tone of things to come at Ambrosden Avenue. I was hoping for eschatology from Vin.

Inside the teeming id of the Republican Party: 2

Confronted by marriage equality in his state, Mitt Romney fretted that Massachusetts would become the "Las Vegas of gay marriage."

Today Iowa congressman Steve King, for whom homosexuals are but one of his two great white whales, is fretting that Iowa is about to become the "gay marriage mecca."

Like Willie Sutton said, you break in where the money is.

One legacy Sarah Palin seems not to have left Wasilla from her mayoral service is freedom from crime. First it was her erstwhile son-in-law's mom getting busted for dealing. Now Todd Palin's half-sister has gotten popped for breaking into the same house twice in a week.

Somewhere, Mike Huckabee is laughing

GayPatriotWest shares his Daddy Party's post-election enthusiasm for purging the Republican ranks, and reveals that the only "normal" gay American is a Republican:

One thing which I did wish to consider, however, becomes particularly timely in the wake of the reaction of gay activists to the Hawkeye State decision. I had intended to write on the need for an overhaul of the leadership of the gay movement, replacing those with left-wing backgrounds with those who can appeal to more socially conservative citizens, those who still harbor a degree of animosity toward and/or ignorance of gay people.

They need to find people who can do what Mary Cheney did when she appeared on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, provide an image of a normal gay American to those who do not readily have access to such imagery.

So let's see the proof, GPW: when, where, and to what extent has Mary Cheney changed anyone's mind?

Bipartisan Iowa judicial activism stirs Grand Old Panic

The 2012 Iowa Republican caucus raced was framed today. The big loser: Mitt Romney, who was for gay rights until he wanted to be president, and on whose watch as governor Massachusetts became the first state to adopt marriage equality. Nextest loser: Sarah Palin, who last year admitted having an anonymous lesbian friend. When your party base assays moral purity out ten decimal points, having a gay friend is a problem appointing a wingnut homophobe your attorney general may not fully assuage.

Winners? Mike Huckabee, whose smiley-faced homophobia has gotten more hard-edged since the Prop 8 results indicated it might be an issue with which to peel off African-American voters. It's a wash for Bobby Jindal and Mark Sanford, who have way bigger problems ahead becoming credible candidates.

Purity above all, never mind Phyllis Schlafly's son.

Iain Dale, himself a gay Tory, has poll numbers that show gays in the UK are more likely to vote Conservative than for Labor or the LibDems:

Gayers Now More Likely to Vote Tory Than Labour (Or LibDem)

Iain Dale 5:07 PM

Pink News is reporting that the gay website, Gaydar, has published a poll showing that gay people in Britain are, for the first time ever, more likely to vote Tory than for the two other main parties. Here are the results of the poll.

The survey of 1,800 gay men and women, found 30 per cent said they intend to vote Conservative at the next general election. It was conducted by the Gaydar consumer panel for the Outright Consortium last month.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats each took 18 per cent of the vote, while 17 per cent said they will not vote and nine per cent were undecided. At the last general election in 2005, 33 per cent voted Labour compared to 21 per cent who voted Conservative.

Unsurprisingly, 73 per cent said the next election will be fought on the state of the economy. Ten per cent said unemployment would be a key issue and five per cent cited immigration. Fifty-nine per cent of respondents felt Gordon Brown was not doing a good job as prime minister.

In terms of finance, 24 per cent of those questioned were most worried about losing their job in the recession, compared with 20 per cent who were concerned about paying their mortgages. However, 22 per cent said they were not worried at all. Although 71 per cent blamed the banks for the recession, 72 per cent said they were not planning to change financial services providers in the near future.

Just over half (51 per cent) said the recession had impacted on their spending, with 35 per cent admitting to making the biggest cutbacks in their social lives.

This will cause much gnashing of teeth in the predominantly left wing gay press, but will not come as a surprise to the rest of us, who have always thought gay people as a group ought to find Conservative ideas about liberty and individualism more attractive than the alternatives.

The funny thing about this is this:

US Republicans talk the same line. The difference is, Tories have figured out gays have the same quotidian policy concerns - as voters- as everyone else. US Republicans still view gays as toxic waste, where the electoral money is made being against them as often, and in as many different ways, as possible. Andrew Sullivan:

Tim Montgomerie tries to translate for NRO:

In one year's time David Cameron is likely to be the world's most senior conservative leader. American conservatives can find much to admire in his social and fiscal conservatism. His "realism" on foreign policy and enthusiasm for the green lobby will be more problematic.

Yes, the pursuit of the national interest in foreign policy is indeed secondary at NRO to nation-building, and utopian scheme to turn Iraqi and Afghan culture into modern Western democracies by the use of armed force and massive amounts of US taxpayers' money. And for some reason, they're still peddling climate change denialism, rather than smart alternatives to cap and trade. As for fiscal conservatism, NRO fully supported a president whose spending made even Gordon Brown seem like a tightwad. And here's Cameron's social conservatism:

I stood up in front of a Conservative conference, my first one as leader, and said that marriage was important, and as far as I was concerned it didn’t matter whether it was between a man and a woman, a man and a man or a woman and a woman. No other Conservative leader has ever done that. I don’t think any Labour leader has done that. Even since then.

Cameron [Sullivan continues] actually supports family life for all people, unlike NRO which opposes all rights for gay couples, on theological grounds, and has not even endorsed minimal civil unions. President Bush tried to amend the US constitution to prevent any gay couples from having any civil protections for ever. His view is that being gay and committed was so un-American it had to be forbidden in the constitution itself, a position NRO supported.

Apart from that, American and British conservatives really are in synch, aren't they?

All of which underlines the point that, in America, as Linda Richman might say, "Conservatism is neither conservative, nor an ism. Discuss."

It's an odd position for a party that, for the last nine years, has maintained that governing by fiat is when you get 50 percent plus one. In close votes, even queer votes count.

Which brings us back to the age-old conundrum. Republicans says, gays will never vote for us; fuck 'em. Democrats- as we predicted would be the case- are all about kicking the can down the road to another day that never quite comes. 

And the difference remains that benign neglect, however Oliver Twist-like, is miles better than active hostility and attempts to legislate second class status.

Suckers.

It's Back to the Future with the GOP, or April Fool's Day has been extended. At The Next Right- which tries to position itself as the forward edge of the New & Improved Old Confederacy & Buffalo Commons, it's just risible for them to be quoting old-school vote suppressor Hans von Spakowsky complaining about vote suppression in the NY-20 special election. 

But not as risible as Spakowsky's Dr. Evil, Karl Rove, whining that "Chicago politics" has entered the White House and that Team Obama is keeping score. GMAFB.

"Are there no work houses? Are there no prisons?"

The Palmetto Scoop is rolling up its sleeves and doing its part for the stimulus- of logical fallacies! Two whoppers in just one blog post today:

Scoop Doggy leads off with what seems to be his all-time favorite, post hoc, ergo propter hoc:

A week ago I called on South Carolina legislators to consider doing something a number of other states are doing, cracking down on drug abuse by welfare recipients.

And I’m glad to learn that someone was listening, err… umm, reading.

State Rep. Rex Rice (R-Pickens) introduced a bill Tuesday requiring random drug tests for those receiving public assistance and removing a two-time offender from the state’s assistance roles.

Then he offers up a relativist fallacy from the man he claims- without any sourcing- to have influenced:

“This legislation protects our tax dollars from fueling drug addictions,” Rice said in a statement Wednesday. “This legislation, like my proviso to mandate immigration verification, ensures our tax dollars do not aid or abet illegal behavior...

“We face tough times: 11 percent unemployment, a faltering economy, and a skyrocketing national debt,” said Rice. “We must do everything we can to protect hard earned tax dollars from being wasted on those who break the law."

The poor, you see, are often illegal immigrants, and when they aren't they are still the poor and we need to tighten up on their demands upon the monies of the non-poor, who, of course never use drugs.

Not that Rice has any proof that poor people are unusually predictable drug fiends and general layabouts.

He doesn't have to.

Just ask Daniel J. Cassidy over at Savonarola.

Better yet, write Cillizza and urge him to leave The Palmetto Scoop OUT. Please.

Poor Boy Fogle, stuck licking envelopes for the Quinns all day long and blogging, at night, alone at home, terrified of break-ins because cop money is being siphoned off to fund gay pride parties, ties the Lunatic Fringe Influence Award with Savonarola week after week, then that rat bastard Chris Cillizza named Anaconda the only influential SC political blog in 2008. And now Anaconda's swanning around as if he expects the same outcome this year.

And, they're unveiling a new feature called Palmetto Pulse.

Cillizza, for his part, is sniffily unimpressed:

• South Carolina, Iowa and New Hampshire -- the three most important states in the presidential nominating process -- are surprisingly light on good political blogs.

All that pandering, week after week, to get back into The Show, as the memory of his fleeting blog turn at Newsweek fades, his Vice President Kaine scoop is become the stuff of farce; and his no-homo-tourism campaign only makes sense to the Governor and a handful of Upstate legislators (like stimulus money, it's bad for South Carolinians), and The Post passes him over? WTF?

Only one thing for it: Scoop Doggy's exhorting his flying monkey Twitter brigade to lobby Cillizza, 140 characters at a time, for getting included in:

If you think The Palmetto Scoop is the best blog in SC, please RT: @thefix - add @PalmettoScoop to your list for SC.

So far it's a runaway-four people of TPS' 2873 Twitteratis have recommended Scoop Doggy. Honorable mentions for Indigo Journal, too.