"You have to separate the marketing from the reality. The reality is, these members are not homophobic. For the most part, they're using this marketing to play to our base and stay in power. They have to turn out the votes," said David Duncan, once a board member of the Lesbian and Gay Congressional Staff Association and a former top aide to Rep. Robert Ney (R-Ohio), who last week pleaded guilty to corruption charges linked to the Abramoff scandal.That's called lying to trick people into voting for you. And the religious right wonders why the Republican congress never passes any of its must-do legislation about abortion, gays, immigration, or much of anything else. That's because:
1. The religious right always threatens to sit out the election, but they never do. The Republicans know the religious right loathes Democrats, and would never really walk no matter how badly they were treated, so, as the saying goes, why buy the (sacred) cow when you get the milk for free?
2. The second reason the Republicans never really do anything for the religious right is because the religious always settles for "attempts" to pass legislation, rather than the real thing.
Anybody can offer a bill or an amendment. Anybody can bring said bill or amendment up for a vote. But that is not the same thing as truly, honestly trying to get it passed. This is a point I make, often, about certain Democrats like Mr. Kerry (and increasingly Mr. Feingold). They seem more interested in offering legislation, or filibusters, or censure resolutions, that they know have no chance in hell of passing. And what's even worse, rather than actually construct and launch and manage a real campaign around trying to build a consensus for passage of that legislation - something that takes a bit more than the 24 or 72 hours those two gentlemen often give us between offering the legislation and the final vote taking place - they offer their ideas without a real campaign to back them up, simply because they're not interested in actually passing the legislation, they're not interested in winning policy victories. They're interested in buying off the base with cute tricks, hoping that no one understands politics well enough to realize they're being snookered - snookered the same way the Republicans snooker the religious right. "Oh we tried to pass that anti-gay bill, Mr. Falwell, really we did - I was plotting with my openly gay top staffers all night on how we could do it, but we just couldn't figure it out." Yeah, right.
It never ceases to amaze me how gullible Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Donald Wildmon, Lou Sheldon, and the men at the Concerned Women for America are. Though this does explain why they constantly misinterpret the Bible - fortunately for our side, they're clearly not the smartest bulbs in the waiting line for Heaven.
