October 26, 2004

Live From Forked Tongue, Wisconsin

... or, uh, no, fuck you, George.

The NYT is reporting that Bush now thinks that the GOP plank banning civil unions as well as gay marriage is wrong.

As Andrew Sullivan so rightly says, "President speak in forked tongue."

(The Confidence Man must suppress his initial instinct to respond to Andy, "What do you mean we, Paleface?" We think that supporters of the Bush pResidency should be subject to a domestic corollary to Colin Powell's Iraq "Pottery Barn Rule": you bought it, you own it.)

Sullivan also (wilfully?) misreads the pResident's statement as opposing individual state laws currently banning civil unions. Bush states quite clearly that he's in favor of letting states make the decision to ban civil unions on their own.

All that aside, this is quite a clumsy move by Bush. The Confidence Man doesn't see how this can't hurt him grievously among the Fundies and their fellow travelers, in numbers far outweighing any Log Lean-To and/or swing voters.

It's also, of course, grossly hypocritical and insulting for Bush to claim that he doesn't support a plank in his own god-damn party platform as well as a Constitutional Amendment for which he has been campaigning. Asshole.

2 comments:

Tom Kertes said...

I think framing the comment in the context of the overall civil marriage issue matters most. Regardless of the election outcome, Bush's comment is good for those who are currently denied civil marriage rights.

monkeyball said...

Tom,

You are certainly correct in that regard.

And what's more, Kerry's and Edwards' desparate and craven "marriage is only between a man and a woman" we-tooism enabled the GOP to control the frame and contributed to setting back the cause.

But ultimately, I think Bush's comment is going to be forgotten -- it's not as if post-presidency Bush will morph into Jimmy Carter and start cutting PSAs for PFLAG.