It is clear that public opinion polls, along with the results of the Presidential and Congressional Elections of 2012, indicate a desire to move ahead on many issues, but the Republican Party, which only won the majority of the House of Representatives by gerrymandering (losing the popular vote nationally for Congressional seats), refuses to budge!
The majority of Americans support:
Gay Marriage Rights
A path to citizenship for illegal immigrants over time and with penalties
Responsible Gun Measures, including universal background checks, and restrictions on some kind of weapons and size of magazines–particularly after realization that at Sandy Hook Elementary School, over 140 bullets were fired in just five minutes, killing 20 children and six teachers and administrators.
The Republican Party in Congress and nationally has less than 30 percent public opinion support, the lowest in modern times, but it has no effect on party leaders or members, and there are still examples of gay bashing and immigrant bashing, only worsening the image of a party out of tune with the American people!
Public opinion can be wrong. Even voters can be wrong. There are abundant examples. Chavez was reelected ad infinitum in Venezuela, Kirchner in Argentina, Correa in Ecuador and Obama in the US. Churchill was in the minority in the 30’s and against “public opinion”, yet he was right. Public opinion or as I prefer to call in “published opinion” in many cases has no relation whatsoever as to whether a certain position on an issue is the correct one.
Juan, you have gall to put Obama in the same sentence with Chavez, Kirchner, and Correa! We are NOT Latin America here, which has always been more backward in almost every way, compared to the US. Obama will eventually be seen as a Churchill type, the right man at the right time after years of deterioration under conservatives Reagan and Bush II, and a corrupt, disastrous GOP Congress under Gingrich and Hastert, and now Boehner!
Ron: Have you ever lived in South America? Have you ever been involved in the political process in any South American country? Do you have any idea of the political ideology of any country in South America? How many speeches have you heard of from South American politicians? Don’t you realize you have no data to compare and dismiss me? In any event I would suggest you calm down and think a little bit. All I am saying is, just as other countries commit mistakes in electing their leaders, so does the US. In this case the US has committed a tremendous mistake in electing Obama. As for corrupt, I know that most politicians are corrupt, that’s is why I am against giving them more power over us and furthermore the Democrats politicians as individuals have proven to be just as corrupt as any other politician from any political party. But what is more importantly, and is distinct, is that their ideology, leftism, is corrupt at its core. Now for the humorous part, you gotta be joking comparing Obama to Churchill! Ron , whatever you are on, please share like a good progressive and don’t be so selfish! LOL!!
Over time, Obama will be seen in a much better light, as a man of courage and principles! And America made a mistake in electing George W. Bush, but wait, they DID NOT elect him, the Supreme Court elected him after intervention to manipulate the vote count in Florida, so we actually had a President who, in any case, DID NOT WIN the popular vote, but did a good job backing corporate America and the wealthy at the expense of the middle class in America, putting us into the mess we are now in! And even in 2004, Ohio was corruptly counted, and Bush really did not win that state, and would have lost to Kerry, had the vote count been fair. And Juan, I have never smoked tobacco, marijuana or anything else even in pill form, as I am a traditional conservative about drugs, including never being drunk! 🙂
Ronald writes: “It is clear that public opinion polls, along with the results of the Presidential and Congressional Elections of 2012, indicate a desire to move ahead on many issues, but the Republican Party, which only won the majority of the House of Representatives by gerrymandering (losing the popular vote nationally for Congressional seats), refuses to budge!â€
It isn’t just that.
Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly—the first who is worshipped and the second who is revered by party-first Republicans—have thrown in the towel.
@ http://bostinno.com/2013/03/29/rush-limbaugh-bill-oreilly-are-pretty-much-okay-with-gay-marriage/
Does this mean Limbaugh and O’Reilly somehow favor marriage equality?
Actually I don’t care what the two think about the topic; what’s revealing is that they are aware enough of where the wind is blowing and are figuring the Republicans have no choice but to get on board.
Though I was thinking, after Ohio’s Rob Portman, that the next [U.S.] Senate Republican who would get announce same-sex marriage support would be Maine’s Susan Collins, it may turn out it to be Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.
@ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/03/28/lisa-murkowskis-views-on-gay-marriage-evolving/
At this point, there are very few Senate Democrats who haven’t signed on. (One is South Dakota’s Tim Johnson, who announced he will not run for another term in 2014. Either I don’t know what he is waiting for … or Johnson figures what he has to say isn’t important.) And I anticipate more Senate Republicans will move forward. Of course they’re liable to be ones hailing in blue or purple presidential states. And guessing the timing (which is part of what I’m doing with Collins; is Maine a wingnut state as well for their primaries?) is a fun part of the challenge.
I think, deep down, a majority of elected politicians from the Republican party don’t actually care. They’re interested in what it means to their electoral fortunes. But in the spring of 2009, both Steve Schmidt and Meghan McCain told the party to beat the Democrats first with coming out in support and embracing marriage equality in the party platform. The party ignored Schmidt and McCain and listened instead to the “Conservative Entertainment Complex,†as David Frum describes them (he too is no on board with marriage equality), which does have its share of closeted people. President Obama took the mantle and brought it to the platform of the Democratic Party first. So, this can be yet another example—of one party being better in tune with the voting electorate—showing why it may very well be that we’re in a presidential realigning period favoring Team Blue.
D, you are ABSOLUTELY correct, as the GOP once again is refusing to accept the future that is inevitable, and showing its bias and its narrow mindedness and intolerance, and that will kill the party and its future. It is because they refuse to repudiate the Tea Party Movement and the right wing evangelicals,which will be their death knell. Thanks once again for your contribution!
D: You represent the perfect example of those who misrepresent what Limbaugh has said. And that is because you only get your information from third party sources but not from the original. Of course then , you get a biased reading. In any event Limbaugh was just reading from an article in the Politico. This is the transcript –
” Well, I guess it’s official now. If there was any doubt, there isn’t any longer. My New Year’s resolution to go low profile and not get noticed is officially now out the window. Are you aware of what I’m talking about? I simply proclaim the inevitability of gay marriage, and you would think that God has spoken on this. Honestly! On the left, you would think God has spoken on this. I kid you not. There’s an element, however, that everybody — at least that I’ve seen or heard, and we got sound bites galore on this — is leaving out in reporting my claim yesterday that gay marriage in America is inevitable. What they’re leaving out is rather crucial, in terms of why I made the statement. If you recall, I made that statement after sharing with you the details of a Politico story about two Republican consultants, combined with 75 Republicans who signed on to the amicus brief supporting gay marriage at the Supreme Court to overturn Proposition 8. The Politico story said that the belief in the elite leadership levels of the Republican Party is to not fight it, to let the Supreme Court decide it. In fact, the desire is that the Supreme Court issue a sweeping ruling and make gay marriage legal in every state. When I saw that, what I interpreted is, “The Republican Party wants the issue to go away.” That’s what the consultants in The Politico story said, and one of them was from Florida. I forget where the other one was from, but it wasn’t just those two.
Remember, there are 75 Republicans of various ideological persuasions who signed an amicus brief before the court, and the consultants said they don’t want to keep the issue alive. They can’t win in 2014 or 2016 if this issue is still being debated because they’re gonna be called bigots and sexists and homophobes. So just like every other budget deal, they want to let the Democrats have it and move on to the next thing, and the point I made was, “Why don’t we just stop fighting everything?”
Why don’t we just say, ‘You know what, Democrats? You’re gonna win every election and we’re not gonna argue with you because we don’t want people to hate us.” My conclusion that it is inevitable was based on two things: A, the left isn’t gonna let go of it, ever. They never do, once these things start. Want me to go through the list here? Did they let go of global warming? Have they let go of amnesty? Have they let go of legalizing drugs? Have they let go of banning nuclear weapons? Have they let go of gun control?
They don’t ever let anything go — and right now, folks, there’s no pushback from the Republican Party on any of these things. There’s pushback by you. There’s pushback by the Tea Party. There’s pushback by evangelicals. But there’s no pushback from the Republican Party. The Republican Party is doing everything it can to send the signal that it would be okay with some form of amnesty, it’d be okay with some form of gay marriage. In fact, the more the better to get the issue off the table.
The Republican Party is not really fighting much of anything budget-wise. So my conclusion that gay marriage is inevitable was simply in recognition of what The Politico story said, that the Republican Party wishes it would go away. By that, they mean the Supreme Court issue a sweeping ruling legalizing it in all 50 states. If the primary source of pushback isn’t going to push back, I’m sorry, it’s inevitable. That element of what I said was left out of every report on this. So you see, according to this, the Republican leadership thinks the best way to avoid losing elections is to let the Democrats win every controversial issue. Because these Republicans say, “We’re just gonna get beat up, and the longer the gay marriage issue is on the table, the more they’re gonna call us bigots and homophobes and racists. We can’t go into an election being called that! We don’t want to defend that. Let’s let ’em have it.”
The problem is that seems to be the working philosophy on everything. “Obamacare? Well, we tried to repeal it. We had a vote. But let ’em have it — and the sequester and the fiscal cliff and the stimulus and whatever Obama economic policy. ” So, The Politico says, “The only obvious way to square that political circle in the short term is through a sweeping Supreme Court decision — one that strikes down the Defense of Marriage Act and invalidates California’s Proposition 8…”
So these two consultants told The Politico what they prefer is the court strike down DOMA and make gay marriage the law of the land everywhere and then we can move on. So let’s just agree to lose another issue and kick it down the road. Now, the simplest way, I think, to maximize this kind of thinking is to just say, “You know what? Since the public hates us so much, and they’re always gonna hate us no matter what the issue — if we tell people what we think, they’re gonna hate us — let’s just, for now, let the Democrats have every election.
We’ll come back at ’em in like 2030 when everybody’s forgotten about this stuff. I mean, that’s the obvious solution. Let’s just do amnesty. Let’s let ’em have it! Let’s just open the borders. Let ’em have amnesty, and then we’ll come back to fight another day on taxes. While we’re at it, you know, let’s stop fighting them on abortion. Let’s just agree that it’s not an issue anymore. Because, man, we really get beat up on that. Cap and trade? Exactly right!
“Let’s pass a carbon tax, whatever, because, man, we’re just getting beat up here. You realize we’re not gonna be able to raise money if this stuff keeps up?”
Well, I don’t think they’ll say, “Turn in all the guns.” There is a line that they won’t cross. But, again, I must say, it’s just two consultants in this story, and these two consultants are characterized by Politico as speaking for the party. I doubt that they do. But nevertheless The Politico found ’em, or they found Politico. I don’t know how this happened.
I do know that several Republicans do use The Politico to get their hopes and dreams in the public domain. “That would be a crushing defeat for voters and politicians, predominantly on the right, who believe marriage is exclusively between one man and one woman. But to Republican consultants…” Get this, now, ’cause this is the part that’s believable. “But to Republican consultants, fearful of ending up on the wrong side of political history, such a ruling would be a liberation.”
There are two consultants who are the sources of the story. So, as far as they’re concerned, they don’t want to be on the wrong side of cultural history, so don’t oppose this. Here’s the theory: “‘It removes the issue from the Democratic playbook of fundraising scare tactics and political demagoguery and breaks their usual messaging dynamic of, “You’re a beleaguered minority; let us protect you from the evil GOP — oh, and here’s your absentee ballot,”‘ said Florida-based Republican consultant Rick Wilson.”
That quote here is attributed to him, that having the Supreme Court strike down DOMA and legalize gay marriage everywhere, takes the issue away from Democrats. So they can’t run around and fund-raise by calling us a bunch of bigots, and it’ll stop the Democrats from running around telling people that you’re a bunch of minorities that the Republicans don’t like, and they’re trying to stick it to you. The evil GOP! We can remove this evil GOP from their playbook if gay marriage is legalized.
That’s the fallacy here. The Democrats are never gonna get rid of the evil GOP as a campaign tactic, no matter what the GOP does. Last I looked, it was the Republican Party that ended slavery. We’re still racist. Dick Cheney came out in 2004, and was one of the early Republican supporters of gay marriage. How’s that working out for him in terms of the left stopping their assault on the guy? It didn’t. Who was on the wrong side of cultural history in Rome? The Caligula crowd, or those who were opposed? ” – End of transcript.
So you see , Limbaugh is not in favor of gay marriage and he was taken totally out of context, as always.
Excellent post Professor. I very much agree.
Hello Professor,
As Bob Dylan in his song of epiphany , (The Times They Are A-Changin’) pointed out during the Civil Rights Movement in 1964:
Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.
Those opposed to the subjects mentioned, well history shows they will be run over. Progressive Mind Sets always win…..That is why it is called Progress.
It’s not about expanding marriage, it’s about destroying marriage. That would be the most obvious explanation as to why the same societal groups who assured us in the Seventies that marriage was either (a) a “meaningless piece of paper†or (b) institutionalized rape are now insisting it’s a universal human right. They’ve figured out what, say, terrorist-turned-educator Bill Ayers did — that, when it comes to destroying core civilizational institutions, trying to blow them up is less effective than hollowing them out from within. One reason why conservative appeals to protect the sacred procreative essence of marriage have gone nowhere is because Americans are rapidly joining the Scandinavians in doing most of their procreating without benefit of clergy. Seventy percent of black babies are born out of wedlock, so are 53 percent of Hispanics (the “natural conservative constituency†du jour, according to every lavishly remunerated Republican consultant), and 70 percent of the offspring of poor white women. Over half the babies born to mothers under 30 are now “illegitimate†(to use a quaintly judgmental formulation). For the first three-and-a-half centuries of American settlement the bastardy rate (to be even quainter) was a flat line in the basement of the graph, stuck at 2 or 3 percent all the way to the eve of the Sixties. Today over 40 percent of American births are “non-marital,†which is significantly higher than Canada or Germany. The conservative defense of marriage rings hollow because for millions of families across this land the American marriage is hollow.
If the Right’s case has been disfigured by delusion, the Left’s has been marked by a pitiful parochialism. At the Supreme Court this week, Ted Olson, the former solicitor general, was one of many to invoke comparisons with Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 case that struck down laws prohibiting interracial marriage. But such laws were never more than a localized American perversion of marriage. In almost all other common-law jurisdictions, from the British West Indies to Australia, there was no such prohibition. Indeed, under the Raj, it’s estimated that one in three British men in the Indian subcontinent took a local wife. “Miscegenation†is a 19th-century American neologism. When the Supreme Court struck down laws on interracial marriage, it was not embarking on a wild unprecedented experiment but merely restoring the United States to the community of civilized nations within its own legal tradition.
Yet, beyond the Court, liberal appeals to “fairness†are always the easiest to make. Because, for too much of its history, this country was disfigured by halfwit rules about who can sit where on public transportation and at lunch counters, the default position of most Americans today is that everyone should have the right to sit anywhere: If a man self-identifies as a woman and wants to sit on the ladies’ toilet, where’s the harm? If a woman wants to be a soldier and sit in a foxhole in the Hindu Kush, sure, let her. If a mediocre high-school student wants to sit in a college class, that’s only fair. American “rights†have taken on the same vapid character as grade-school sports: Everyone must be allowed to participate, and everyone is entitled to the same participation ribbon.
Underneath all this apparent “fairness†is a lot of unfairness. Entire new categories of crime have arisen in the wake of familial collapse, like the legions of adolescent daughters abused by Mom’s latest live-in boyfriend. Millions of children are now raised in transient households that make not just economic opportunity but even elementary character-formation all but impossible. In the absence of an agreed moral language to address this brave new world, Americans retreat to comforting euphemisms like “blended families,†notwithstanding that the familial Cuisinart seems to atomize at least as often as it blends.
“Fiscal conservatives†recoil from this kind of talk like homophobes at a bathhouse: The sooner some judge somewhere takes gay marriage off the table the sooner the right can go back to talking about debt and Obamacare without being dismissed as uptight theocratic bigots. But it doesn’t work like that. Most of the social liberalism comes with quite a price tag. The most reliable constituency for Big Government is single women, for whom the state is a girl’s best friend, the sugar daddy whose checks never bounce. A society in which a majority of births are out of wedlock cannot be other than a Big Government welfare society. Ruining a nation’s finances is one thing; debauching its human capital is far harder to fix. Just to think that some call all of this “progress”.
Uruguay is now on board for marriage equality.
@ http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2013/04/uruguay-senate-lawmakers-approve-same-sex-marriage-bill/
“MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — Uruguayan lawmakers have voted in favor of a proposal to legalize same-sex marriage.
“The Senate voted 23-8 on Tuesday [04.02.2013] in favor of the bill, which would make Uruguay the world’s 12th nation — and the second in Latin America — to legalize same-sex unions.
“The bill was previously approved by the lower house of Congress in December [2012].”
By the way: Two, in one day, with more U.S. senators announcing support for same-sex marriage.
Illinois’s Mark Kirk has become the second Republican U.S. senator to endorse marriage equality.
@http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/04/02/mark-kirk-becomes-second-gop-senator-to-back-gay-marriage/
“A second Republican senator has announced his support for gay marriage, with Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) joining Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio).
“Kirk, who recently returned to the Senate after suffering a significant stroke, suggested in a statement that his near-death experience has changed his perspective.
“’When I climbed the Capitol steps in January, I promised myself that I would return to the Senate with an open mind and greater respect for others,’ he said. ‘Same-sex couples should have the right to civil marriage. Our time on this earth is limited, I know that better than most. Life comes down to who you love and who loves you back — government has no place in the middle.’â€
Delaware’s Tom Carper is the lastest Senate Democrat to support same-sex marriage.
@ http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/04/tom-carper-latest-senate-dem-for-same-sex-marriage/
“The senator [Tom Carper], 66, made the announcement on his Facebook page this morning, saying, ‘As our society has changed and evolved, so too has the public’s opinion on gay marriage – and so has mine.’
“’Through my prayers and conversations with my family and countless friends and Delawareans, I’ve been reminded of the power of one of my core values: the Golden Rule,’ Carper continues. ‘It calls on us to treat others as we want to be treated. That means, to me, that all Americans ultimately should be free to marry the people they love and intend to share their lives with, regardless of their sexual orientation, and that’s why today, after a great deal of soul searching, I’m endorsing marriage equality.’â€
D, I think that Mark Kirk is a crucial example on gay marriage. We are all on this earth for a relatively short time, and he has learned from his stroke, that it is essential that people have a right to their happiness, even if they are gay or lesbian. I salute Senator Kirk, and hope other Republicans will stop letting the religious hatemongers–Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson, Gary Bauer, Reverend Fred Phelps, Bryan Fischer, Tony Perkins, the Roman Catholic Cardinals, etc —control their ability to be open minded and tolerant.
In ten years, these characters above will have been totally repudiated, and their names in history will be seen with disgust and disgrace–that instead of promoting love, they promoted hate in the name of God! What hypocrisy!
“the influx of immigrants into Arizona will put this conservative stronghold into the hands of the Democratic Party.” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/27/janet-napolitano-immigrants-will-change-arizona-re/) Oops! I think the Secretary blurted out something she wasn’t supposed to say. Gee , I wonder why the Democrats love open borders and want amnesty???
Leave it to you, Juan, to be sarcastic about a comment that does not mean as much as you give it meaning! Since the GOP in Arizona has been very racist and nativist, indeed, over time, the state will turn ‘blue”, and of course you will now say the GOP is not racist and nativist, with Russell Pearce, Joe Arpaio, Jon Kyl, Jan Brewer, et al, but I have news for you–they ARE!
LOL! I was just asking. In any event I just do not comprehend why we as a nation bend over backwards to give a pathway to citizenship to people who entered illegally the country? Just give them permanent residence without possibility of citizenship, unless the join the army of course, and be done with it. After all, the vast majority came her for the money, which by the way the send back to their home country. They just want to work and be left alone. I just do not think they should be in the same category as those that followed the rules. So fine, don’t deport them, let them stay, create a new residence category and let it be. Is that so unreasonable?
What you suggest, even if done, should not apply to their minor children, who should be given the opportunity for citizenship when they become adults, since they did not choose where they ended up living. Therefore, the DREAM Act should be passed as soon as possible! (with requirement of military service or college education four year degree!
Truth about the Founding Fathers and the 2nd Amendment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBtZ6go_R4g
In that YouTube video, the citizen militias would be like Switzerland where there is universal service and a national draft and guns are kept in armories. Today that would be our National Guard.
We all know that guns can cost lives because the media repeat this message endlessly, as if we could not figure it out for ourselves. But even someone who reads newspapers regularly and watches numerous television newscasts may never learn that guns also save lives– much less see any hard facts comparing how many lives are lost and how many are saved.
But that trade-off is the real issue, not the Second Amendment or the National Rifle Association, which so many in the media obsess about. If guns cost more lives than they save, we can always repeal the Second Amendment. But if guns save more lives than they cost, we need to know that, instead of spending time demonizing the National Rifle Association.
The defensive use of guns is usually either not discussed at all in the media or else is depicted as if it means bullets flying in all directions, like the gunfight at the OK Corral. But most defensive uses of guns do not involve actually pulling the trigger.
If someone comes at you with a knife and you point a gun at him, he is very unlikely to keep coming, and far more likely to head in the other direction, perhaps in some haste, if he has a brain in his head. Only if he is an idiot are you likely to have to pull the trigger. And if he is an idiot with a knife coming after you, you had better have a trigger to pull.
Surveys of American gun owners have found that 4 to 6 percent reported using a gun in self-defense within the previous five years. That is not a very high percentage but, in a country with 300 million people, that works out to hundreds of thousands of defensive uses of guns per year.
Yet we almost never hear about these hundreds of thousands of defensive uses of guns from the media, which will report the killing of a dozen people endlessly around the clock.
The murder of a dozen innocent people is unquestionably a human tragedy. But that is no excuse for reacting blindly by preventing hundreds of thousands of other people from defending themselves against meeting the same fate.
Although most defensive uses of guns do not involve actually shooting, nevertheless the total number of criminals killed by armed private citizens runs into the thousands per year. A gun can also come in handy if a pit bull or some other dangerous animal is after you or your child.
We need to recognize the painful reality that, regardless of what we do or don’t do about gun control laws, there will be innocent people killed by guns. We can then look at hard facts in order to decide how we can minimize the number of needless deaths.
But that is not the way the issue is presented by many in politics or the media. Every story about an accidental shooting in the home will be repeated again and again, while a thousand stories about lives saved by defensive uses of a gun will never see the light of day in most newspapers or on most television newscasts.
More children may die in bathtub accidents than in shooting accidents, but you are not likely to read that in most newspapers or see it on television newscasts. Some in the media inflate the number of children killed by counting as children the members of criminal teenage gangs who shoot each other in their turf fights.
Many seize upon statistics which show that Britain has stronger gun control laws than the United States and lower murder rates. Yet they ignore other countries with stronger gun control laws than the United States, but which have much higher murder rates, such as Brazil, Russia and Mexico.
Even in the case of Britain, London had a much lower murder rate than New York during the years after New York State’s 1911 Sullivan Law imposed very strict gun control, while anyone could buy a shotgun in London with no questions asked in the 1950s.
Today, virtually the entire law-abiding population of Britain is disarmed– and gun crimes are vastly more common. Gun control laws make crime a safer occupation when victims are unarmed.
The gun control crusade today is like the Prohibition crusade 100 years ago. It is a shared zealotry that binds the self-righteous know-it-alls in a warm fellowship of those who see themselves as fighting on the side of the angels against the forces of evil. It is a lofty role that they are not about to give up for anything so mundane as facts– or even the lives of other people. – Thomas Sowell
Agree to disagree with Juan’s posts.
In my opinion, when it comes to gun culture, our country is like the Wild West in the 1800s.
When obama comes after your part of the Constitution all will become clear, just like obama care it is not about health care it is about govt control just the thing our founding fathers warned us of, ” we give you a republic, if you can keep it”.
Republicans are such hypocrites. They don’t want gun safety regulations yet they want to regulate what we women do with our bodies or what consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedrooms.
Totally agree, Princess Leia!