The Politics of Fear . . . Rolling Stone

[OneBlueSky]

Republicans are once again fanning the flames on gay marriage -- the same kind of scaremongering conservatives long used to fuel interracial hatred in the South

by Tim Dickenson
Rolling Stone
June 29, 2006

On June 5th, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the world's first AIDS diagnosis, President Bush called upon ''community leaders, scholars, family organizations, religious leaders, Republicans, Democrats and independents'' to join him in the Old Executive Office Building for a solemn announcement. Would the ''compassionate conservative'' mark this day with a moment of silence for the 500,000 Americans lost to the epidemic? Or perhaps, at long last, cooperate with global efforts to fight AIDS in Africa?

No, Bush had something very different in mind: endorsing an anti-gay bill that had no chance of passing in order to shore up his flagging support among evangelicals. ''You are here because you strongly support a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a union of a man and a woman,'' the president told his handpicked guests, ''and I am proud to stand with you.'' Americans, he declared, had reached a ''consensus'' against gay marriage.

In fact, anti-gay sentiments among voters are dwindling almost as rapidly as Bush's approval rating. Two years ago, when the president first proposed a constitutional ban on gay marriage, sixty percent of Americans supported his position. Today, according to the latest polls, that number has fallen to forty-two percent. In fact, Bush's move sparked opposition even among those closest to him. Laura Bush urged her husband not to use gay marriage ''as a campaign tool.'' The vice president's daughter Mary Cheney -- who joined Bush at his 2004 inauguration with her lesbian life partner, Heather Poe -- slammed the president for ''writing discrimination into the Constitution.'' Even Bush himself didn't have his heart in the fight: A friend of the family told Newsweek that the president's decision was ''purely political. I don't think he gives a shit about it.'' When the Senate debated the issue two days later, the proposed amendment received only forty-nine of the sixty-seven votes needed to pass -- just one more than it received in 2004, despite the fact that the GOP has gained four seats in the interim.

Why would the president throw himself behind a measure that he knew was opposed by most voters, let alone one that stood no chance of passing in the Senate? The answer lies in the political calculus facing Republicans in the midterm elections this fall. Bush's approval rating has not only fallen to a historic low among voters at large since he was re-elected -- it has plunged twenty-two percent among white evangelicals. ''The guy's dropping everywhere, but, Jesus -- that's the biggest drop of them all,'' says veteran political handicapper Charlie Cook of The Cook Political Report. ''If he wants to stem his losses, he has to find something other than the war in Iraq and Katrina and gas prices and budget deficits for his voters to focus on.''

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http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10533313/the_politics_of_fear