Biden allies dust off Bush's 2004 playbook, subbing abortion for gay marriage on the ballot
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Source: NBC News
April 5, 2024, 7:00 AM EDT
WASHINGTON — Twenty years after George W. Bush won re-election with the help of ballot initiatives that rallied voters around a popular cultural issue, Democrats are dusting off his playbook and attempting a similar strategy to keep Donald Trump out of office.
In 2004, Bush’s team seized on popular opposition to same-sex marriage, with strategist Karl Rove encouraging allies to put initiatives to ban it on ballots in key swing states, hoping to stir up voters and enable the president to ride the measures’ coattails to re-election. It worked.
Now, President Joe Biden’s allies are seizing on fury over the end of Roe v. Wade and putting abortion rights on the ballot in swing states like Arizona and Nevada, as well as red-leaning states like Florida and Montana, where pivotal Senate seats are up for grabs.
“It is the exact same strategy we employed in 2004 on culture wars — in reverse,” said Mike Madrid, a political strategist who worked on Bush’s re-election bid. “Culture wars used to be the place Democrats went to die. That’s not the case anymore. They win on these issues.”
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/biden-allies-dust-bushs-2004-playbook-subbing-abortion-gay-marriage-ba-rcna146406
= new reply since forum marked as read
Bush's use of gay marriage was cynical, hateful and purposely divisive. Using the abortion issue in a campaign is NOT cynical or designed to divide--it's an effort to assure a basic right for women.
Will the "both sides" approach by our media kill our democracy? I hate to say this, but I've seen it make an impact on almost every Democrat in my family. 
Last edited Fri Apr 5, 2024, 09:49 AM - Edit history (2)
which I interpret as "opposite" - and using your analogy, it would "for the purpose of advancing civil rights and inclusion, and was designed to unite". 
But what distinguished this was perhaps the faint praise on adopting a tactic that they concede is "working" for Democrats - DESPITE doing so with an opposite goal in mind as a strategy to win.
This just shows why and how much the GOP's entire frame of reference and hold on reality, have dissolved away.
(ETA - and now the song that goes with your username has become an earworm for me today 
)
Sorry about the earworm! 
just as liberals do.
Liberals recognize right wingers want ballot votes that make law subject to their baseless unbiblical religious beliefs, in order to take away equal protections; and liberals want ballot votes to make laws that restore women's constitutional rights & protections of bodily autonomy.
Just sayin'.
and no idea what to do about it. Yes... these R's hold what they consider to be "high moral values"... the most common of them do not see how they've been mind warped by people in the NAR. But I am willing to concede that some of them may have come to their decisions of their own beliefs. The problem is these people... because they are "speaking for God" refuse to allow for any compromise. To compromise means, to them, dissing their god, and they ain't gonna do that on pain of their immortal soul. They are Old Testament people; the new Testament (for whom their religion is based), means nothing to them any longer.
To my mind, these people cannot truly call themselves "Christians" because they disallow anything that the Christ taught. Of course, one would think this would align them with the Old Testament believers. But those people are Jewish... and that's anathema to them. They truly are a people with no religion. Their "Christian Nationalist" religion should not even be listed as Christian. It should be told to them over and over and often again that they are not Christians and to stop using the name of a religion that they do not follow. But that's my opinion.
Democrats who are religious, and some Independents, as well as many Pagans actually follow the New Testament beliefs. This, I think is one of the reasons they hate us so much. We show to them in talk and action what it means to be Christian. I include some Pagans in there because, although we may not be a part of that religion, what we follow and our actions actually align more closely to the Golden Rule, for example, than the Christian Nationalists. We've also got a lot of agnostics and atheists in the Pagan religion who believe no religion is necessary to act morally. The sense of ethics and morality doesn't need a religion; it comes from deep within oneself.
This major difference between religious R's and everyone else, tho, is that lack of the ability to compromise. By positioning themselves thusly, they make living within a civilization an impossibility. And herein lies our problem. Neither side is going to "give"... that's the reason I've said for years we have to jettison them to their own country... either on some uninhabited island, to a theocratic country with which they can agree with their positions, or divide our own country into two. Frankly, I'm tired of taking one step forward and two steps backwards on any progress because of these people. But there is so much to be considered in dividing us up, and I honestly don't have answers that would assure a peaceful coexistence... because these people are morally opposed to coexistence. Even if we gave them their own part of the country and found a way to help people move where they wanted to move within the two "tribes"... the R's are never going to be able to make it on their own and will try to usurp us and take what we've built. So, I go round and round with conundrum. But I am getting really tired of these people. And I don't think I'm alone.
They won't live in a pluralistic society, and we see that this country was founded on pluralism. Frankly, I really want badly to deport them all to an island someplace and let them keep telling themselves there's no such thing as climate change, while waiting for their god to rescue them from the rising waters. But, like I said, my tolerance level has reached it's limit. But then, I'm a woman and a pagan. I know I'm definitely not on their list of "good" people!
a democratic vision of a free society. Which we are. We just have people too stupid to responsibly use their freedoms for the betterment of others and not just their own advancement up some social status or power ladder. It only takes a million to tear down what tens of millions have built up. Any dwarf can tear down a building built by engineers and skilled workers.
Did you read the part where I said their morals are "baseless unbiblical religious beliefs"?
IOW, a false morality, as in not based on their Bible's scripture.
Their false morality is based on temporal patriarchal power, therefore control of males through forced compulsory heterosexuality on males, or else calling them sinners worthy of punishment and ostracism. Which Jesus Christians know to be total bullshit.
Jesus always, always said that all judgment is from God ONLY; two of the many times he said that are
"judge not lest ye be judged" (Matthew 7:1), and "Ye judge after the flesh. I judge no man." (John 8:15)
You're right to say rethugs won't ever make it on their own. We've been dragging these mindless, fearful cripples around since Jimmy Carter (yeah, I'm judging them for their temporal and spiritual Sloth; and I used to be atheist that way ). It's their immoral, social, hateful parasitism that tries to drag down a healthy body politic.
We beat them back by a 7,000,000+ vote margin in 2020, and so far, Simon Rosenberg's exactly right -- we've kept beating them.
Take heart. 48% of Democrats who are Christian don't buy Republicans' self deceiving lies and liars. Nor does their vote depend on their beliefs about abortion. Add to that 7 million the the votes of outraged women (and girls, whether of childbearing age or not), the votes of LGBTQ, Gen Z, Blacks, and all the 16% of Republicans who said they won't vote for Trump again, and we got this. Can we in 2024? Yes we can.
This will never stop. Like it or not, it's the price we "aware/woke" Americans pay to enjoy the benefits of the oldest and best and most free democracy in human history.
their ways. They must learn spiritual discipline. They must learn their religion, that the New Testament supersedes both all their OT cherry picking and the OT itself. That's the kind of thing Jesus called the Pharisees and Sadducees hypocrites for doing.
That's how old the prideful, out-of-context misuse of scripture is.
I'm sorry you're ill. I've had a friend with lupus. It's rough on body and spirit. I wish you healing, rest and peace, my friend.
You might give your husband this link. It's pretty thorough about woke. "Woke" is biblical; it's used a whole lot in the Bible. That's how Black slaves learned to use 'awake'/'woke', from reading the Bible.
-- one secular, Pew Research; and one religious, Christianity Today -- came up with the exact same numbers when polling Christians on how often they read their Bible. Bottom line, 70% don't read it at all, but just listen or hear about it; another 10% read it a couple of times a year, which is really no better than not at all.
Consider then, that when 80% of Christians don't read their Word of God Himself (expedient historical pronoun choice); when they don't know their religion, don't know Jesus, and when asked to define "gospel," are wide-eyed silent.
I do not support Christians who don't practice reading their Bible regularly.
What's worse than someone who can't read? Someone who won't read.
Have you really read the Bible? If so, you wouldn't say it takes both sides of ANY issue.
The biblically illiterate Christians are suffering for their sins of spiritual sloth.
then bringing a new human understanding -- from God Himself -- of who the Jews' Yahweh/God really is, and correcting the Jewish belief in a messiah, to teach them what the messiah really is.
The apostles were Jews, Jesus was a Jew, and what he taught was meant to change the Jews and bring a new understanding of what being "saved" and "redeemed" really meant then and now. If you think the Bible has contradictions, then you might consider whether you really know how to read and understand and take it in.
I suggest anyone raised Christian who has problems with the Bible, read this. Of course this 120 page paperback uses more sources than Bible quotes. It addresses all the "Buts..." across ten chapters, including Chap 16, "But the Bible is Full of Contradictions..."
https://www.amazon.com/Bible-Uncomplicated-Christian-Business-Christianity/dp/B09X4FGN4X?asin=B09X4FGN4X&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1
I think it was especially useful in midterm elections, which are slack times for voters, because those issues would bring them out and then as long as they were in the voting booth they’d vote the GOP ticket. It worked well in presidential years, too.
When I read about that, I thought it was a strategy the Dems really, really ought to adopt. It sounds like we finally are.
