Politics & Public Opinion

Challenging the Elites

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Like other progressive movements, LGBTQ activism has wedded itself to the cultural and financial elites. Recall the Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment was delivered at a gala LGBTQ fundraiser in Manhattan featuring Barbra Streisand. The fundraiser reportedly brought in around $6 million, with ticket prices ranging from $1,200 to $250,000, with many paying $50,000, according to reports, which at the time I wrote about here.

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Hate Is Not a Virtue Because You’re a Progressive

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I hope that sharing power in a divided government will make Democrats less likely to continue inciting mob hatred of anyone who dares commit the heresy of disagreeing publicly with progressive and identitarian dogmas. But I’m not hopeful.

Via Tucker Carlson:

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The LGBT Vote

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This seems like it’s in keeping with most recent elections. What’s always surprising is that if you read the LGBT media, or even just mainstream media, you couldn’t be blamed for thinking gay people were 99.9% big-government liberal-left progressives.

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Both Sides Lost

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Megan McArdle writes:

If the left had been a little less visibly eager to condemn Kavanaugh before the trial — and if images of enraged protesters beating on the doors of the Supreme Court had not dominated our televisions —Democrats might have managed to knock the Republican Senate majority down, or perhaps even to shift it to a narrow blue wedge blocking Trump’s nominees. Instead, the Republican [Senate] majority has grown. It will be functionally impossible to remove Trump from office and even more difficult than it already was to stop a steady flow of conservatives into the vacancies on the courts.

I saw few people, however, entertaining such unpleasant thoughts on election night. Partisans seemed focused on the bright side: Democrats happily anticipating their House investigations, Republicans savoring their future judicial appointments. But eventually, these joys are likely to pall in the sight of the opposition’s ongoing victories, and partisans’ attentions will turn to what might have been, if they’d been a little more focused on practical politics and a little less focused on instant, evanescent victories in the culture war.

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HRC’s ‘Partisan Political Propaganda’

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Brad Polumbo writes: “Apparently, holding conservative views on abortion and immigration now makes you an anti-gay bigot in the HRC’s estimation.” Actually, this is nothing new for HRC. As Polumbo notes, “The organization’s ratings are basically just partisan progressive propaganda.”

More. Originally, the (then) Human Rights Campaign Fund focused on congressional races, supporting Democrats and Republicans who favored legal equality for gays and lesbians. Now, HRC finds reasons not to endorse gay-supportive and openly gay Republicans, such as if the aren’t pro-abortion or don’t toe the line on other progressive-left issues. That would be OK if they branded themselves as what they are—the LGBTQ outreach arm of the Democratic party. Instead, they claim to represent the whole LGBTQ community, and raise funds based on that claim.

Furthermore. One of the most disingenuous HRC press releases ever: Trump-Pence Admin Reportedly Planning to Erase Non-Discrimination Protections for LGBTQ People Across Federal Agencies. What’s actually being considered: not extending the meaning of “sex” discrimination in existing federal laws and regulations to include discrimination against people for being transgender. I’d actually favor covering transgender people under “sex” discrimination” but it arguably is a stretch, and there is a strong conservative argument for not creating new law by redefining words in current law. What’s not about to happen is what HRC is scare-mongering about.

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When Progressive Politics Becomes Your Religion

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Letting politics become your religion is a bad idea. The state is not God, and political power is not redemption.

And relatedly:

Sen. Ben Sasse writes:

Americans have always had political disagreements with their neighbors, but in the past, political differences could disappear when Friday night ballgames rolled around and the whole town turned out wearing the same colors and cheering for the same team. Today our towns are hollower, and we’re not on the same team anymore. …

If too many Americans feel like we’re not “in this together” right now, it’s because we’re not. We are screaming at each other, and the country no longer has enough real social texture to absorb and wick away the hatred. The only way out is to rebuild our communities and launch new ones—one person-to-person relationship and one local institution at a time.

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A Kavanaugh Roundup

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These were a few of my favorite tweets:


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A Heroine

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Sen. Susan Collins has stood up to the mob and our republic will be the better for it. From her speech on the Senate floor:

Some argue that, because this is a lifetime appointment to our highest courts, public interest requires that doubts be resolved against the nominee. Others see the public interest as abiding to our longest tradition of affording to those accused of misconduct a presumption of innocence. In cases in which the facts are unclear, they would argue that the question should be resolved in favor of the nominee. Mr. President, I understand both viewpoints. This debate is complicated further by the fact that the Senate confirmation process is not a trial. But certain fundamental legal principles about due process, the presumption of innocence and fairness do bear on my thinking and I cannot abandon them. In evaluating any given claim of misconduct, we will be ill-served in the long run if we abandon the presumption of innocence and fairness, tempting though it may be. We must always remember that it is when passions are most inflamed that fairness is most in jeopardy. The presumption of innocence is relevant to the advice and consent function when an accusation departs from a nominee’s otherwise exemplary record.


The Human Rights Campaign, which believes women (except for Juanita Broaddrick…‎Paula Jones…‎Kathleen Willey…et al) responded predictably.

And here:

And the Women’s March weighed in:


Versus:


More, you say:


Let’s remember what’s driving the hysteria. Other than reflexive Trump hatred, it’s the demand for a Supreme Court that will oppose state restrictions on abortion, including limits on late-term abortion on demand, preferably done at taxpayer expense. (I agree with more-knowledgeable court-watchers that the likelihood of a whole-scale overturning of Roe by the conservatives on the court, especially under an incrementalist like Chief Justice Roberts, is virtually none.)
I know, I am not entitled to an opinion about terminating the lives of unborn babies.


Flashback
I wrote in September 2011 about Collins’ pivotal actions in overturning the military ban against openly gay service members:

Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, it should be noted, never pushed for repeal or any other pro-gay equality legislation, but his role with “don’t ask, don’t tell” was particularly egregious. In late 2010, he insisted that the repeal bill be combined with an appropriations measure that the GOP was determined to block, and did with its filibuster. Reid then declared it was the GOP’s fault that the repeal failed. An incensed Sen. Collins and Sen. Lieberman demanded that a separate, stand-alone “don’t ask” repeal bill be brought forward, and the media glare [they generated] forced Sen. Reid to capitulate. The stand-alone repeal was brought up for a vote and easily passed with the support of many senators, including Sen. Brown, who had voted against the combined appropriations/repeal bill. …

…Sen. Collins shared that she simply couldn’t, at first, believe what Sen. Reid was doing (and then charged to the podium to protest the maneuver and its foregone conclusion—to no avail).

Keeping “don’t ask, don’t tell” in place as a campaign and fundraising issue while blaming the GOP for blocking repeal was the strategy all along. For the same reasons, when Democrats had a big majority in the House and a filibuster-proof Senate majority for nearly two years (2009-10), and with a “progressive” president in the White House, they choose not to pass comprehensive immigration reform (or vote on a federal LGBT anti-discrimination measure, for that matter).

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Sorrow and Pity

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Andrew Sullivan writes:

And it is the distinguishing mark of specifically totalitarian societies that this safety is eradicated altogether by design. … You are, in fact, always guilty before being proven innocent. You always have to prove a negative. …
Perhaps gay people are particularly sensitive to this danger, because our private lives have long been the target of moral absolutists, and we have learned to be vigilant about moral or sex panics. For much of history, a mere accusation could destroy a gay person’s life or career, and this power to expose private behavior for political purposes is immense.
I’m not equating an accusation of attempted rape in the distant past with sodomy. I am noting a more general accusatory dynamic that surrounded Ford’s specific allegation. This is particularly dangerous when there are no editors or gatekeepers in the media to prevent any accusation about someone’s private life being aired, when economic incentives online favor outrageous charges, and when journalists have begun to see themselves as vanguards of a cultural revolution, rather than skeptics of everything.

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