God Hates Fags– And if You Do Too, Fred Barnes Sez You Can Be Preznit
(posted by Mona)
Neoconservative poltroon Fred Barnes announces on Fox a very promising strategy for John McCain to become President of the United States– exploit hatred and fear of gays. McSame, solemnly declares the Very Serious Barnes, must pander to the social-conservative right by going after:
BARNES: In particular, gays in the military for one. We know Barack Obama is for allowing gays in the military, and Bill Clinton tried to do, but backed off. This is not a popular issue. Gay marriage is another one. These are both issues that I think McCain’s going to have to use. You can’t ignore the right. If he does, he’ll lose.
Sure, Barnes may be wrong as to the efficacy of such a foul strategy, as the analysis at the above link shows. But of course we must — in this “time of war” — demonize, ostracize and discharge decorated gay vets who have risked their lives to save other soldiers and civilians. True patriots only hate the troops if they have teh gay.
July 7th, 2008 at 7:53 am
This reminds me of a comment I made yesterday. I said that our politics is dominated by shallow pragmatism. And what does it say about the state of a nation when someone might not be able to win the presidency without demonizing gays?
This is a dark time in America. A very dark time.
July 7th, 2008 at 7:56 am
*After reading that the majority of Americans in one poll support openly gay individuals serving in the military
Still a dark time in America, but that statistic is heartening!
July 7th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Barnes is off the wall with this. This election will be decided by the middle, not the fringes. If McCain wants to win, he should distance himself from Bush, the neocons, the religious right and others whom many believe to be responsible for the current sorry state of things.
If McCain’s handlers knew what they were doing, they would try to reinvent their candidate as a responsible statesman and commander in chief, sound on economic policy, and hawkish but prudent on foreign policy, unlike that reckless slob George Bush with his creepy religious right connections and that crazy black radical Obama.
That’s what would sell. Unfortunately, it’s far from the truth. As Buchanan says, McCain is Bush on steroids.
It’s a bit of conventional wisdom that the gay marriage referendums on the ballots in many states are what won the 2004 election for Bush, by motivating the Jeezo-philes and Bible bangers to come out and stuff the ballot box. The problem with that theory is that it’s not true. Bill Bradford of Liberty magazine looked into that afterwards and saw that Bush actually did worse in most of those states than he had done in 2000. Some of that is attributable to the general shittiness of Bush himself, of course, but it is also at least partially attributable to increased activism, militancy, and voter turnout by gays and their supporters.
In other words, gay-bashing is a losing strategy and Barnes is a fool for advocating it.
July 7th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Let’s do the numbers. 5-10% of the population is either gay, lesbian, or bi and leaning in one of those directions. Most anti-gay measures affect non-gays too. For example, 1-2% are IS or TS and less than 50% of us are also gay or lesbian or bi and leaning in one of those directions. So anti-gay politics directly threatens 6-11% of the population and also alienates many friends, family members, etc.
Anti-gay politics only makes sense if there are more homophobes than lesbians, gays, and allies. It’s frightening to think that there are anywhere near that many homophobes. 30% of the population? And if they consider us subhuman, they are willing to consider other people subhuman too.