My president, my congress, why hast thou forsaken me?

Today's papers suggest that Bush and Frist are both getting cold feet on on the Gay-Bashing Amendment to the US Constitution. First, Bob Novak slams the president for all sorts of not-family-values policy decisions in DC, including his announcement he isn't going to push for the Gay-Bashing Amendment this term (forget the fact that he ran on it during his re-election). Then Frist refuses to include the amendment in the Top 10 list of GOP congressional priorities for this congress, just released today.

Now, don't get me wrong, the religious right will squawk, and then Bush and Frist will respond with something anti-gay to make them happy - thus the amendment still could come up again, or something equally nasty. But both Bush and Frist are signalling that they don't think this issue is a winner for them at the national level (they'd likely rather use it in particular red states to rev up the pro-slavery wing of the party come election day). Still, this is not a good sign for the religious right, who thinks that Bush is back in office because of them.

One final note: Ken Mehlman. Don't put ambiguously-gay people at the head of your party and then wonder why the party isn't family-values enough.