IGF contributing author David Boaz has penned an insightful
commentary taking aim at the GOP for abandoning its commitment
to federalism on marriage and other issues:
Perhaps most notoriously, President Bush and conservatives are pushing for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in all 50 states. They talk about runaway judges and democratic decision-making, but their amendment would forbid the people of New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, California or any other state from deciding to allow same-sex marriage.
Democrats, on the other hand, bear some responsibility for this
situation:
Liberal Democrats...spent 50 years eroding federalism and expanding the power of the federal government at every turn. ... For decades, liberals scoffed at federalist arguments that the people of Wisconsin or Wyoming understood their own needs better than a distant Congress. ... Now those chickens have come home to roost.
Reader Tom Scharbach commented (on the item below) about the
GOP, "pandering out of cynical self-interest cost the party it's
soul, it's reason for being, it's genius. The party no longer
stands for Constitutional conservatism..." I'll add that it's
certainly an opening for the opposition, which unfortunately
remains frozen in time. As Boaz notes, "most liberals can't give up
their addiction to centralization."