Maverick -- or panderer?

[kweerwolf]

Next month, the Senate will act out what has become a favorite Republican ritual in election years by calling up a constitutional amendment to prohibit homosexual couples from marrying. In theory, the objective of this splashy spectacle is to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment with the required two-thirds majority and send this obnoxious legislation forward toward full ratification by Congress and the states. But since that is impossible, why would the Senate leadership waste everyone's time on this nonsense?

If nothing else, the marriage amendment provides a test for the most politically ambitious Republican senators -- notably Majority Leader Bill Frist, who promised evangelical conservatives last winter that he would bring the amendment to a vote before the summer recess, and Sen. John McCain, whose principled opposition to the amendment is now an obstacle to any rapprochement with the religious right.

For McCain, the issue of the marriage amendment has risen again at a particularly inconvenient moment. As he moves toward a presidential campaign in 2008, his dilemma is whether to pander to the right, and thus destroy his centrist "maverick" image, or uphold principle and damage his prospects in the Republican primaries.

This weekend, he is scheduled to deliver the commencement address at Liberty University, the Virginia higher education institution where Jerry Falwell molds young minds. At that happy event the Arizona senator will share the podium with Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, who has publicly mocked McCain's reputation for "straight talk" and questioned his commitment to the "sanctity of marriage."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2006/05/12/mccain_and_right/

[applegrove]

1. Mostly diminished.

[terrya]

2. Big reason...November.

There is an extremely good reason for Frist to push this legislative hate crime...the Republicans stand an excellent chance of losing control of Congress in November. Pushing this amendment now is a "rally the right wing fundie bigots aka our base" tactic. This hatefilled anti-gay amendment has zero chance of passing...again. But they're seeing this as mobilizing the assholes who support this.