Saturday, June 03, 2006

It must be election time

Because president Bush is reportedly going to push for a Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage again.

This seems to be a favorite among this administration - using gay marriage to galvanize its base and attempt to define the Democrats.

The conclusion I reach is that this is a political move as opposed to anything else stems from the timing of this decision. This isn't an issue that hovers around the scuttlebutt, and hasn't seemed particularly gripping of national attention since the last time the President et al. brought it up.

Now, most people familiar with the Amendment Process will know that this amendment has little, if any, chance of passing. I'm willing to guess that president Bush is aware of this as well. That being the case, it seems even more likely that this is a transparent attempt to try to shore up the Republican vote this November.

It's a shame that the administration feels it must resort to measures like this to try to maintain the status quo, as opposed to running on the merit of the achievements over the last two years.


UPDATE

I'm sorry, I got it wrong. This is NOT motivated by a desire to arouse anti-gay hostility and galvanize the base. Silly me. Press secretary Tony Snow said this is coming up now because it's "politically ripe" - whatever the hell that means. And apparently it's being taken up now with "political expedience" because, as President Bush reported in a weekly radio address: "Activist courts have left our nation with no other choice. The constitutional amendment that the Senate will consider next week would fully protect marriage from being redefined."

I love the use of buzzword. "Activist courts." You see - many people don't know what an "activist court" is, they just know that the Republicans and Pat Robertson hate them, so they must be evil, and if a court is dubbed "activist" is must be wrong. They don't understand that usually "activist court" means - "a court that rules contrary to what I want it to."

I'm surprised he didn't accuse the activist courts of trying to rewrite history.

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