25 Comments

Javier
August 25th, 2010 | 9:42 pm

Good for Mehlman for doing what he could to undermine those who would discriminate against gay Americans. Thankfully, there are even more non-gay Republicans who are now openly doing the same, including Laura Bush, Megan McCain, and Governor Shwarzenegger.

jh
August 25th, 2010 | 10:06 pm

I am against gay marriage but I am not sure what Melhman did was out of bonds. He gave his opinion and viewpoint but I don’t see that he did anything try to torpedo Conservatives that disagreed with him or tried to undermine them

dancingcrane
August 25th, 2010 | 10:29 pm

Another wolf in sheep’s clothing. I think I’ll have a heart attack from not surprised.

This is why I’m leery of supporting any seeker of public office. My effort and money to finance another Mehlman in disguise?

I expect to be lied to by a great many politicians who seek to ride the coattails of public disaffection into office. I’m sure that I’ll be told exactly what I want to hear.

This is how monsters like Hitler and Stalin come to power. People get so tired of corruption among their own. A man so angry and insane that he can’t lie to you, begins to sound…attractive.

Joe Bingham
August 25th, 2010 | 11:42 pm

Wow, godwin’s law moved fast today.

jh
August 25th, 2010 | 11:46 pm

dancingcrane I suppose I don’t get this viewpoint. When Haley Barbour was Chairman of the RNC I suspect he had very traditional views on Traditional marriage and gave his thoughts in private. Yet if the guy had a R by his name and might disagree with him on the subject of Gay marriage or at that time Civil Unions he would not hold it against them. He would make sure the RNC backed him

By the way what exact efforts did Mehlman “beat back”. He does not tell us. I canrecall in 2004 and in his time that most social conservatives were pushing this at a Federal Level. Give us DOMA and we should be fine. Perhaps he is trying to make himself more important on this issue than he really was?

Again I have no sense that Melhman tried to hurt anyone that disagreed with him. Until we have that evidence why make him a Maryter?

Scott
August 25th, 2010 | 11:49 pm

With almost all GOP media being filtered through gay men like Matthew Drudge and Jeffrey Carneal, is it any wonder that Mehlman and other homosexuals have been able to infiltrate and corrupt the GOP?

Mark
August 25th, 2010 | 11:49 pm

So there are closeted homosexuals in the Republican Party as well as libertarian-leaning individuals who privately — if not sometimes publicly — support gay marriage and gay rights. Breaking news, indeed.

The U.S. is a two-party country which means that, in practice, each political party is a coalition representing many different and often conflicting interest groups. If you don’t want to see your money go to people who may disagree with you on some pet issue of yours, the solution is simple: stay away from partisan politics.

John
August 26th, 2010 | 12:04 am

Based on the number of articles I’ve been seeing recently about how this person or group and that person or group “undermines” the Republicans, should I presume that’s the latest strategy of the left to try to distract voters from how the Democrats have been undermining themselves with voters by backing one unpopular policy or piece of legislation after another?

Joe Carter
August 26th, 2010 | 12:19 am

JH He gave his opinion and viewpoint but I don’t see that he did anything try to torpedo Conservatives that disagreed with him or tried to undermine them.

Part of the role of the RNC Chairman is to help develop and promote the Republican political platform. Mehlman is admitting that he not only did not promote that part of the platform, but that he was actively trying to persuade other senior Republican officials to back off from the issue.

If Mehlman could not, because of his conscience, do the job of RNC Chairman, he should have resigned. Instead, he smiled as took money from traditional marriage advocates and then turned around and used his influence to work against the issue. That is not only cowardly, it is a breach of trust.

But I think these comments are making my point. We are so used to the GOP dismissing our issues that we shrug and think nothing is really wrong with it. But imagine the reaction if he had betrayed the Republican Party on an economic issue? Every conservative publication and blog around would be thrashing him.

Joe Carter
August 26th, 2010 | 12:28 am

John Based on the number of articles I’ve been seeing recently about how this person or group and that person or group “undermines” the Republicans, should I presume that’s the latest strategy of the left to try to distract voters from how the Democrats have been undermining themselves with voters by backing one unpopular policy or piece of legislation after another?

Here’s a prime example of why the Republican Party will always be able to get away with whatever they want. Any criticism of the GOP must be a ploy by the Left.

Admittedly, my experience in electoral politics is extremely limited to working on the senior staff of one presidential campaign. But it gave me a front row seat to see how things work. Basically, anyone that isn’t a millionaire (or primary voter in Iowa) is treated like a useful idiot. If they can get people to avoid criticizing the party’s flaws by making them think that it helps the Left, they’ll do it.

And we’ll fall for it because we really are just useful idiots.

jh
August 26th, 2010 | 1:36 am

“Part of the role of the RNC Chairman is to help develop and promote the Republican political platform. Mehlman is admitting that he not only did not promote that part of the platform, but that he was actively trying to persuade other senior Republican officials to back off from the issue.”

I very much understand the platform. I also understand that while it is important that most GOP folks don’t know what was in it. He seemed to have given advice that it would not be wise to make this a “National Issue” of huge importance compared to others were were facing.

Of course I suspect as I said before he is being self promoting a tad and these victories of his he proclaims did not amount to much.

It seemed the MSM MEMO was that Bush partly won because his election was tied to issues on gay marriage on the ballot in several states at the time of the Presidential election. Thus pushing social conservatives to the polls and helping Bush. PLEASE NOTE Ken Mehlman is not saying he disapproved of that.

The issue here is complex. We are indeed a party of Coalitions here with pro life, pro choice, pro gay marriage, anti gay marriage , pro Comp Immigration reform, hardline anti illegal etc etc. There are needless to say various economic viewpoints.

If we are going to demand that the Chairman not be able to give his advice on the practical politics of what to push and not to push then we might as well just lose.

For all we know he acted with what he best thought would be in the interest of the party in winning the election. Heck maybe he was right. Maybe the public with so much on it’s plate was not wanting to talk about gay marriage on top of having to discuss the issue of WAR and economics. Perhaps just Perhaps if we had pushed it might just might have been enough if handled in a bad way to make us lose. Thus we would see no Alito, no Roberts on the Court.

I mean during the 2004 election I saw Bush where he said he would support Civil UNIONS between gays. Where is that in the platform? It might not directly address it but I am willing to bet it violates the spirit. But Ken Mehlman is called out for as someone that undermines” the GOP and Bush is not.

Heck The Vice President of the United States we nominated disagrees on certain elements of the platform as to this issue. SO the President and Vice President get’s a pass? Where oh where was the indignation then?

I rarely disagree with you Mr Carter but as a person that is against gay marriage I am not sure I would have advised to make it front and Center of the 2004 fight. We had a lot on our plate. By keeping it in the states and locally we gained.

Let me give another example.Lets say the most partisan of GOP folks on the immigration issue gets elected to the platform committee. They then pass a Deport them all big and small policy. Well I suspect that it would be the Chairman’s job to have the common sense after looking at the platform and seeing what polls and does not poll where to decide what to really hit and what to avoid or mitigate. If a Tancredo stance was perhaps a more negative on the whole than lets say promoting Free trade well Free Trade wins

Can we admit this. His being gay was the worst kept secret at the time in DC and on the internet. Everyone knew it. SO I am not shocked at this.

However there is no evidence he undermined Conservative folks running on this issue though perhaps he was in much disagreement with them. I am sure to do that he had his own matter of morals to deal with as to that that . I suspect that were not easy. So before we accuse him of “traitor” as some have we should look at the total picture.

If he is to be called out then call out our President and the VP.

Finally we conservative largely control the party. We threaten to bolt at even the hint of a pro choice VP person. There are people in the party that don’t agree with us on all issues. They are pro gay, pro abortion, etc etc. If we never give them any positions of power, where they cannot even express their own educated views and positions in private where will the party go. If I was them I would not stay. If they left that would leave us. Well in a heck of a pickle. As I watch Glen Beck on TV and some other “conservatives” on FOX It seems we have made out bed quite willing with the Libertarian wing of the party.

Mr Mehlman caused the least damage to our cause than the talking heads we so much support but are afraid to criticize because of the wrath of our other conservative friends.

OK enough of my rant off to bed :)

Truth Unites... and Divides
August 26th, 2010 | 1:43 am

Internal civil war between social conservatives and fiscal/security conservatives who are socially liberal would be a good thing.

Joe Carter
August 26th, 2010 | 1:59 am

JH Mr Mehlman caused the least damage to our cause than the talking heads we so much support but are afraid to criticize because of the wrath of our other conservative friends.

I agree with you on this point. Mehlman wasn’t the worst, though he was in an important position of trust and failed to honor his position. But the fact is that we religious conservatives are absolutely terrified to take a strong stand on these issues. And heaven forbid we say something about a pundit that spends their days ranting on the radio or TV. To speak ill of these “great Americans” is tantamount to treason.

Our cowardice makes us easy to push around. As I’ve pointed out ad nauseum, you simply can’t question economic orthodoxy and be considered a conservative. The people who identify as economic conservatives would burn down the GOP if they did not give lip-service to this position.

As someone who thinks that conservatism requires both a defense of free enterprise and social issues, I’m fine with that. But we have to quit thinking that we must compromise on the social issues because we might lose some swing voters in Ohio.

Perhaps if their was an RNC Chairman (or a DNC Chairman for that matter) who could make the strong case in public for why traditional marriage is important, we could change some people’s minds. Instead, we have them letting their own orientation determine whether they will support the issue or trying to convince other people to downplay it. That ain’t right. And it shouldn’t be tolerated.

Ben
August 26th, 2010 | 7:52 am

The only good thing about my ever having voted Democrat — a youthful indiscretion that I quickly outgrew — was that it kept me from voting Republican. Since then, I’ve gotten by just fine not doing either one. And I’ve seen no reason at all to think the country would have been better off for my having been a useful idiot for either one of these cabals and cargo cults.

Jon Rowe
August 26th, 2010 | 8:54 am

“With almost all GOP media being filtered through gay men like Matthew Drudge”…

I suspect — and that’s all I can do given Drudge is pretty good at keeping a low profile on his personal life — that Drudge is a religious conservative who does not “embrace” any kind of homosexual orientation he might have. If that doesn’t describe where he is right now, I (again suspect) he was for a time in his adult life as a conservative figure.

John
August 26th, 2010 | 8:56 am

Joe Carter, both the left and right use the bogeyman of the other side to deflect criticism of their own side (e.g., “vast right-wing conspiracy”) and both sides take their base for granted. That said, the specific point of my criticism (which was not given to me by any right-wing overlords) is that I’m seeing quite a few articles in the media about how this or that is “undermining” the Republican Party when the reaction on right-wing message boards and in right-wing media sources is largely a yawn, which makes all of these articles seem to be more a matter of wishful thinking on the part of authors who want this or that to undermine the Republican Party rather than something that actually is undermining the Republican Party.

For me, personally, I think the high heterosexual divorce rate, the out-of-wedlock birth rates, and indifference to having children thanks to careers and birth control do far more to undermine the cause of traditional marriage than homosexual marriage ever could and those changes are precisely what have made it so hard for people to argue the case that marriage should be exclusively heterosexual. People simply do not have a strong sense of what marriage is for because for many heterosexuals, it’s simply a legal convenience between two adults to be discarded when it becomes inconvenient to either or both of them.

Framed differently, the homosexual marriage issue could let conservatives focus on the promiscuity problem by putting a focus on the importance of monogamy in marriage and conservatives need to address what I think is the real issue which is that gays and lesbians are abnormal and odd (i.e., the original meaning of “queer”) and not just as good or desirable as heterosexuality by focusing on things like children, adoption, gays and lesbians being given foster children, and problems in the gay and lesbian community (e.g., the continued prevalence of AIDS among gay men, the cruising for sex at rest stops and in parks problem, etc.). In other words, conservatives need to explain what marriage is for and why gays and lesbians are not the same as heterosexuals if they want to get any traction on this issue. You can’t push back the front of the culture war by addressing the symptoms rather than the root causes.

Sean
August 26th, 2010 | 9:29 am

All of which makes me angrier the more I think about how Bush Jr. squandered what should have been eight years in service to the social conservatives who elected him in order to focus on lowering taxes and invading Iraq. Eight years with a self-described conservative christian president, six of them with a Republican house, and by the end, gay marriage, stem cells, et al are further along than ever.

What exactly does the Republican Party do for social conservatives?

jh
August 26th, 2010 | 10:47 am

“though he was in an important position of trust and failed to honor his position.”

I am still wondering why everyone is taking his comments as well that truthful. What did he stop?

The Engaging Essentials at
August 26th, 2010 | 10:56 am

[...] GOP Not Always Right – Stories like these confirm why we are a nonpartisan policy and advocacy organization.  We have friends and detractors in both major political parties and continue to press both parties to demonstrate their commitment to the truly conservative values of life, marriage, and religious liberty. [...]

Mike P.
August 26th, 2010 | 12:25 pm

Joe,
I’m back, to sympathize with your criticisms but also to critique them a bit. This is less about the GOP or the conservative movement generally and more about Mr. Mehlman himself. The GOP has done what it can to fight for marriage, and for life, and on other social-issue fronts. There is no reason to think that anything the GOP or GOP politicians could have done to protect marriage was frustrated by Mehlman’s “opposition” to such measures. While I am equally distressed by his apparent attempt to stop GOP support for traditional marriage measures, because it obviously ignored the will of rank-and-file GOP voters, there is no reason to think it succeeded. Remember, Tim Kaine, current DNC chairman, is “pro-life.” How many of us think that he has frustrated the Democrats’ pro-abortion agenda?

The state marriage amendments were not widely perceived as needed until after the 2003 Massachusetts decision, and in the years since then 30 states have adopted such amendments. The local GOP in those states played a big role in fighting for these measures. We have two new judges on the Supreme Court who will likely vote to protect marriage. The difficult thing about social issues is that elected officials play a smaller role in them than they do in deciding tax hikes, budgets, and so forth. This is because social issues are uniquely wrapped up in the courts. Questions about abortion, church and state, and (increasingly) marriage, are often decided by state and/or federal courts- which makes them very hard to resolve. The only way to remedy a federal court ruling is to amend the U.S. Constitution, which is almost impossible, because the bar to do so is so high that by the time an amendment is perceived as needed, public opinion has shifted enough that the bar cannot be met, even if a majority continues to support it.

I also think that you overstate the extent to which “social issues” are ignored and economic issues are given precedence. For example, Karl Rove pushed the Medicare Part D expansion basically because he thought older voters in Florida would vote for Bush in 2004 as a result. He was not drummed out of the conservative movement as a result of “betraying” economic conservatism, which have you claimed is the only mortal sin a conservative can commit. The eight GOP votes for cap-and-trade (the “cap and tr8ers” as they were called)Ron Paul is not beloved, but not drummed out of the movement either, for this passionate and outspoken opposition to almost every GOP foreign policy position (and some domestic ones, too). I also do not think that most National Review writers like to deny anybody’s conservative credentials, for any reason.

I think you’d be surprised how many economic conservatives were dissatisfied with Bush’s tenure, too, and how many blamed his “failures” on economic policy to his attention on social issues. Many “moderates” in the GOP are as convinced that the GOP is held hostage by social conservatives like us as you are convinced it is held hostage to others.

Sean,
Bush absolutely did what he could for social conservatives, but, as I wrote above, because the issues are wrapped up in the courts in a way that other issues are not, it is extremely difficult for legislators to make much progress on them. Also, amending the Constitution is just really, really difficult, and so it is not really Bush’s fault that he could not get a federal marriage amendment passed. Otherwise, the marriage issue is left up to the states, and states have taken action. As for stem cells, Bush limited federal funding of embryonic stem cells, but since this was done by executive order, it was obviously undone by Pres. Obama when he took office.

Sean
August 26th, 2010 | 12:39 pm

Mike P.,

Good points, but I remember that the general consensus on Bush’s effort to pass a federal DOMA was that he made a token attempt at best. He spent nearly all of his political capital elsewhere.

Still, we got two good judges on the SCOTUS from him, and that counts for something, i.e. California’s pro-marriage amendment will be narrowly overturned instead of lopsidedly once the lawsuit reaches them.

Mike P.
August 26th, 2010 | 1:34 pm

Well, he didn’t want a federal amendment of DOMA, he wanted a federal ban on all same-sex marriages in every state, which some conservatives opposed on federalist grounds. If he had tried to pass an amendment that simply left the decision up to each state (like DOMA does as law) it may have gone through. But, again, it is extremely difficult to amend the Constitution.

I do not know what the Supreme Court will do, but I wouldn’t count your eggs before they’ve hatched.

The Republican apostasy continues « Throne and Altar
August 27th, 2010 | 2:14 am

[...] Republican apostasy continues By bonald Ken Mehlman, former RNC Chairman:  enthusiastic sodomite and now open advocate of androgynism in the [...]

James Patrick Finnegan
August 29th, 2010 | 1:07 pm

Homosexual “marriage” is a perfect example of an oxymoron. To refer to the dangerous, disease prone, deviant, relationship of two homosexuals as “gay,” is also a euphemism of the highest degree.

The sad thing about this is the homosexual activists care little for what this will do to country, families, and their children, in their unholy desire to cram down our throats their chosen dead end lifestyle.

Illinois Family Action a sister organization to Illinois Family Institute » Where Have All the Conservatives Gone — Long Time Passing
August 31st, 2010 | 2:23 pm

[...] Carter, web editor of the First Things blog, First Thoughts, asks why conservatives tolerate this kind of [...]