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Sun 4 Jun, 2006 08:40 am
Posted on Fri, Jun. 02, 2006
Republicans plan controversial votes on gay marriage, flag burning
By James Kuhnhenn
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - When President Bush beat John Kerry in 2004, Republicans said a ballot initiative in Ohio to ban gay marriage sealed the election, drawing legions of conservatives to the polls.
Bush and Republican senators now will seek another dose of conservative magic to embolden their party's base. Call it nostalgia - or election-year jitters.
In Saturday's radio address, Bush will urge support for a national ban on gay marriage. A meeting Monday at the White House with opponents of gay marriage will follow, then a full-blown debate and vote in the Senate on a constitutional amendment to limit marriage to the union of a man and a woman.
Next, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., wants votes on two perennial conservative causes: repealing the estate tax and giving Congress the constitutional authority to ban flag burning.
None of the measures is expected to pass, though the estate tax debate could yield a compromise that applies the tax only to the largest inheritances.
The detour into socially conservative causes comes as Congress is locked in a stalemate over immigration policy, paralyzed over ethics legislation and flummoxed by the Iraq war.
Despite the futility of the gay-marriage and flag-burning votes, some Republican strategists said they were just the jolt that conservative voters - angry over illegal immigration, profligate spending and congressional scandal - needed to overcome their growing antipathy toward the party.
"Every time you have that conversation it reminds (voters) of what team they're on," said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform and a prominent voice in conservative circles.
Some conservatives, such as political direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie, are skeptical about Republican motives. The upcoming votes, he said, aren't enough to compensate for what he considers a pattern of wayward behavior.
"No conservative is going to take this as a change of heart or as a newfound belief in conservative principles," he said.
Other Republican operatives say the strategy is a waste of time when most Republican voters are angry or divided over the Iraq war, high gas prices and immigration.
"Those are the issues that are dominating people's dinner-table talk," said Scott Reed, who managed Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign. Reed dismissed Frist's plan, saying: "If you're a gay who likes to burn flags, it's going to be a long year."
It's an awkward time for Republicans to pick up the gay marriage cause. Vice President Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter, Mary, who's traveling across the country promoting her political memoir, has criticized the amendment as "fundamentally wrong."
First lady Laura Bush, in a recent interview with Fox News, cautioned against politicizing the issue.
"I don't think it should be used as a campaign tool, obviously," she said. "It requires a lot of sensitivity to just talk about the issue - a lot of sensitivity."
That quote probably will get plenty of use from Democratic senators.
How potent an issue gay marriage is remains an open question.
Political insiders concede that having the 2004 referendum on the ballot in Ohio may, at best, have energized social conservative voters or, at least, neutralized any hostility religious voters may have felt toward Bush over the economy or the war.
Voters in seven states will decide gay-marriage initiatives this year. Alabama has it on the ballot Tuesday; the rest will be decided Nov. 6. Two other states want ballot initiatives as well.
But a Senate vote to change the U.S. Constitution is much more removed from voters. Even if the House and Senate managed to get the necessary two-thirds majority, 38 states would have to ratify the change.
"I don't think they're going to have nearly the impact in `06 that they had in `04," said Charlie Cook, a nonpartisan handicapper who publishes the Cook Political Report. "The Iraq war is in a different place and public attention is in a different place. There's not quite the vacuum you saw in 2004."
John Green, an expert on religious voters at the University of Akron in Ohio, said the party's appeal to social conservatives might work, but would satisfy only one slice of potential Republican voters.
"It's not going to bring back swing voters who are angry over Iraq, or fiscal conservatives," he said.
What's more, a national debate over gay marriage could backfire. It might energize liberal Democrats and alienate Republican moderates. A study by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning research center, observed that public opinion has become more accepting of homosexuality. Polls show that while a majority don't support gay marriage, the country is evenly divided over a constitutional ban.
The issue's history is complicated. A constitutional ban has caused rifts before even among conservatives.
Some, such as Sens. John McCain of Arizona and John Sununu of New Hampshire, have opposed an amendment, saying marriage is best governed by states.
For McCain and Frist, the issue has presidential implications.
Both are considered likely contenders for the Republican nomination in 2008. McCain has been reaching out to social conservatives after many of them worked to defeat him in 2000. But his stance on gay marriage and support for a path to citizenship by undocumented immigrants still could keep conservatives away. For Frist, whom many conservatives view with ambivalence, calling for such a vote at least could distinguish him from McCain.
The issue could be complicated for Democrats too. Polls show that many African-American voters don't support gay marriage.
And gay-rights advocates say the amendment could be only one sentence - "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman" - which may appear less threatening to lawmakers who support gay unions but don't want to alienate voters on the question.
"They're hearing an awful lot from the other side, and we've got to make sure that they hear just as much from us," said Joe Solomonese, the president of the Human Rights Campaign. "We're being pretty aggressive to make sure we're reaching out to everybody."
Bush to Press for U.S. Ban on Same-Sex Marriage
June 3, 2006
Bush to Press for U.S. Ban on Same-Sex Marriage
By JIM RUTENBERG
New York Times
President Bush is beginning a major push for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, part of a new campaign to appease cultural conservatives who say he and his party abandoned their issues after the 2004 elections.
Mr. Bush plans to declare strong support for the amendment ?- scheduled for a vote in the Senate next week ?- in his radio address on Saturday, and at an event at the White House on Monday with conservative activists and religious leaders, White House officials said Friday.
Taken together, the events will be the first time Mr. Bush has so strongly promoted his opposition to same-sex marriage since his re-election campaign nearly two years ago. Democrats accused the White House of trotting out a reliable hot-button issue to help soothe and re-energize disgruntled conservative voters five months before the midterm Congressional elections. "Everybody's going to see through it," said Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
But, in a new twist this year, some conservative activists expressed similar cynicism. They said Mr. Bush and the Republicans in Congress had a long way to go to convince social conservatives that they viewed the issue as anything but a politically convenient tool that they picked up only when they needed to motivate their core voters.
After the 2004 campaign, they say, Mr. Bush put his energies into domestic issues like Social Security and immigration rather than into the marriage amendment and other topics of interest to grass-roots conservatives.
"It was so central in the 2004 election," Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative research group, said of same-sex marriage. "And the day after, the president began a crusade to reform Social Security and it went nowhere. Why not put energy into something that's vital for our society and our country?"
Mr. Perkins said he was encouraged by the White House plan to promote the amendment. But he said that as Washington's attention had been focused elsewhere, judges in several states had ruled against state laws banning same-sex marriage, including Georgia and Nebraska. And he and others said they were concerned by other court cases pending in states including New York, New Jersey and Washington.
Washington Republicans and so-called values voters, Christian radio stations and Internet blogs have been on fire with discussions of moves by what they call activist judges to destroy the institution of marriage as the immigration debate and developments in Iraq have dominated the mainstream news media.
Conservatives expressed still more alarm as Mary Cheney, the vice president's daughter, who is a lesbian, went on national television promoting her book this year and discussed her distaste for the president's opposition to same-sex marriage in 2004.
Adding to what conservatives describe as the fuzziness of the White House's position, the president's wife, Laura, said of same-sex marriage last month, "I don't think it should be used as a campaign tool."
Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Mrs. Bush added, "It requires a lot of sensitivity just to talk about the issue, a lot of sensitivity."
The Senate debate on the marriage amendment is the first in what is expected to be a series of efforts by the White House and its allies to highlight social conservative causes in the run-up to the fall campaign.
After having received widespread praise from conservatives for winning confirmation for two new Supreme Court justices last year, the White House has signaled that it intends to nominate another group of conservative federal judges. In addition, Congress is likely to vote on an amendment banning flag burning, and some Republicans hope to find ways to focus attention on efforts to restrict abortion further.
There is no assurance that the White House effort to motivate social conservatives will be as effective in the election year as it was in 2002 and 2004. Conservative leaders have grown increasingly disenchanted with the administration's record, and at the grass-roots level Mr. Bush is under fire for his position on immigration.
This week White House officials have emphasized that whatever the views of those around the president, his belief that marriage should be between a man and woman has never changed.
Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, on Friday batted down suggestions that the president's involvement in the same-sex marriage debate was politically motivated. Rather, he said, with a number of court cases in the works and the Senate's move to vote on the constitutional amendment on Tuesday, the time "is ripe."
The vote on the amendment is considered largely symbolic because it is not expected to pass by the required two-thirds majority in Congress, let alone the ratification by three-fourths of the states that a constitutional amendment requires. The amendment would not only define marriage as being between a man and a woman, but would also prevent courts from requiring that states allow civil unions.
Opponents say the amendment could prohibit the legal equivalents of marriage, like civil unions; supporters say it would leave that up to states but take away the right of courts to impose civil unions on states that have voted to ban same-sex marriages.
"Nobody thinks it's going anywhere," said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group, saying he believed the move was meant to divert attention from high gasoline prices and Iraq.
Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster, agreed that other issues sapping conservative enthusiasm ?- such as moves to open the way to citizenship for illegal immigrants ?- would overshadow any progress on gay marriage. But he said those most loudly complaining about the president's conservative agenda would never be appeased.
Citing the president's successful nominations to the Supreme Court of John G. Roberts Jr., the new chief justice, and Samuel A. Alito Jr., Mr. Fabrizio said, "I'm trying to think of what he hasn't done for them ?- talk about fair-weather friends."
Phil Burress, who organized the successful campaign against same-sex marriage in Ohio in 2004 that many credit with helping Mr. Bush there, said the president's involvement would call attention to the issue as several states moved on "defense of marriage" initiatives this election year.
Mr. Burress said the Senate's amendment was already paying off for a Republican senator in his state, Mike DeWine, who faces a tough re-election fight. Mr. Burress said that he was displeased with Mr. DeWine as being too silent about same-sex marriage, but that his opinion changed when Mr. DeWine co-sponsored the proposed amendment.
"It's going to send him back to Washington," Mr. Burress said.
Bush's Old Friend On Gay Marriage:
Bush's Old Friend On Gay Marriage: "I Don't Think He Gives A S--t About It"...
From drawingself.com
As the White House scrambles to retain its slipping conservative support, President Bush will hold a White House news conference today to push a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Newsweek magazine adds to the charge that due to his low poll numbers, Bush is simply playing politics. An old friend of the president is quoted as saying that his recent enthusiasm for a gay marriage ban is "purely political. I don't think he gives a s--t about it."
Newsweek also reveals that Focus on the Family founder James Dobson recently met with and threatened top GOP congressional leaders, warning them of the political consequences of abandoning key religious issues like marriage. "If you forget us, we'll forget you," he told them. The amendment, however, is seen as not having enough votes, and is widely expected to fail in both the Senate and the House.
Read the whole story
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13121953/site/newsweek/
CNN: Bush moves gay marriage press conference to less prominent location
RAW STORY
Published: Monday June 5, 2006
President Bush has unexpectedly yanked a press event on the Federal Marriage Amendment from the White House Rose Garden and placed it inside the Old Executive Office Building without explanation, CNN reported Monday.
In other gay marriage news, MSNBC's conservative host Joe Scarborough said Monday that most conservatives "know" Bush is "pandering" on gay marriage (Video here). The amendment does not have enough votes to pass the Senate.
No further details were available on Bush's decision to move his press conference. More on the conference when it occurs later today.
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