The Senescent Man

Republicans should send a thank-you note to San Francisco's mayor, Gavin Newsom -- liberalism's George Wallace, apostle of ``progressive'' lawlessness. He did even more than the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts to energize the 11 state campaigns to proscribe same-sex marriage. All 11 measures passed, nine with more than 60 percent of the vote. They passed in Oregon and Michigan, while those states were voting for Kerry. Ohio's measure, by increasing conservative turnout, may have given Bush the presidency. Kentucky's may have saved Sen. Jim Bunning.

Newsom's heavily televised grandstanding -- illegally issuing nearly 4,000 same-sex marriage licenses -- underscored what many Americans find really insufferable. It is not so much same-sex marriage that enrages them: Most Americans oppose an anti-same-sex amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which is why it fell 49 votes short of the required two-thirds in the House and 19 short in the Senate. Rather, what provokes people is moral arrogance expressed in disdain for democratic due process.

Republicans should send a large spray of flowers to thank the British newspaper The Guardian. It urged readers to write letters to residents of Ohio's Clark County -- the city of Springfield and environs -- urging them to defeat Bush. The backfire from Ohio was so strong (e.g., one resident told The Guardian, ``If you want to save the world, begin with your own worthless corner of it,''), the paper quickly canceled its intervention. In 2000 Bush lost Clark County to Al Gore. This year Clark was the only one of Ohio's 88 counties to support Bush after opposing him in 2000.

// posted by The Senescent Man @ 9:44 PM