Monday

As Friday said to me the other day, it's actually somewhat interesting that W. is going to some length (though what a risk-free length that is) this early in the campaign to ensure that the Fire-n-Brimstone Brigade continues to consider him Their Man in Washington.

Or, more precisely, tries to ensure that they come out and vote at all.

Could it be that he's trying to get check his ideological boxes early so that, later on in the season, he isn't giving Kerry's folks more fodder every day for the Extremism angle?

Unlike Mr Bill, Kerry'd hardly be likely to make his first act as Prexy anything related to the Closet, so it's hardly a question of choosing between a bigot and a champion of gay rights in November, but I couldn't resist closing with Teddy K's observation that W. will

go down in history as the first president to try to write discrimination back into the Constitution.

Ok, actually, I couldn't resist closing with a few bits of entertainment from, ah, let's say a pretty different perspective on what's at stake in this election:

- this niceness

- and this gem, about which I have only one question: isn't the use of the word "agitprop" in the quote below a DEAD GIVEAWAY that the putative conservative is, in fact, an unregenerate MAOIST SPY trying to cover her true allegiance with a veneer of zeal for America? (As her supposedly-unjustly-shrugged-off Atlas, Senator Joe McCarthy, would have said, "Ma'am, you're saying exactly what I would say if I were, in fact, a Communist spy.")

From Hiss to Clinton: How, at every critical moment for the Democratic Party for the last 50 years, liberals would wage monstrous campaigns of disinformation and liberal agitprop

If it weren't for the fact that such vitriol is coming out of the halls of Congress and the Oval Office, we could all laugh at this stuff, however popular it's proving at the bookstores, but as it is, I just keep wondering when we're going to see the Patriot Act's re-up renamed the Alien & Sedition Act, Part Deux...

Comments

[A.R. Yngve]

To outside observers, the thing that American voters take for granted is quite stunning: a working two-party system for a country of over 290 million people.

The system works because each of the two parties can house so many different factions, and the factions yet agree on certain core principles. In practice, of course, principles must give way to compromise, or the parties would fracture under the internal pressure.

Is the gay marriage controversy the issue that may threaten the stability of this system? Because it seems to cut right through party politics: you see opponents and supporters in BOTH camps. It's not as simple as Democrats-For and Republicans-Against.

What if the issue split one or both of the two parties? Then you'd have a three- or four-party system, and it would make the presidential elections much more volatile.

It's not that I'm for or against in the controversy -- let it resolve itself in time -- but if the debate heats up too much too fast, I see consequences beyond the issue itself.