THE REPUBLICAN PARTY is in a ditch, light years away from Karl Rove’s infamous dream of a “permanent majority,” and the man they elect to lead them out of the political wilderness is a failed one-term lieutenant governor of Maryland?
Then again, Michael Steele did energize the GOP’s mindless masses with his “drill, baby, drill” chant at the party’s convention. And boy does Steele have a way with words.
Yanking a well-worn page from Rove’s playbook, he cynically used same-sex marriage as a wedge issue during his failed 2006 campaign for the U.S. Senate. At a rally, he asserted, oddly, that, “marriage is not a purely human institution.”
“Marriage defines not only the relationship between a man and a woman but also their journey through life,” he said. “They should not be brow-beaten into thinking something that goes counter to what the people in the community aspire to.”
Deep thoughts. Following Steele’s logic, if the people in the community aspire to, say, segregation, I suppose that would be OK.
In 2005, Steele braved frigid temperatures to speak at an Annapolis rally against same-sex marriage, declaring that, “We need to make it clear where Maryland stands.” He was joined at the podium by a cast of anti-gay characters, including notorious homophobe Del. Emmett Burns (D-Baltimore County), who told the small crowd, “My wife is pretty and she’s soft. I won’t turn on my pillow in the morning and hear someone say [in a deep voice] ‘Good morning, how are you?’”
He was booed.
The Robert Ehrlich/Michael Steele administration was a four-year aberration for Maryland, characterized by a series of assaults on the rights of gay residents. Activists in Maryland accused Steele of perpetuating the notion that gays can’t be people of faith, noting that while testifying before the General Assembly they were often asked whether or not they believed in God. The statewide gay rights group, Equality Maryland, was labeled a “security threat” by the state police and considered a terrorist group. The administration publicly supported a doomed effort to ban same-sex marriage via constitutional amendment and Ehrlich, who also opposed domestic partnership legislation and adding sexual orientation to the state’s hate crimes law, once described homosexuality as a choice. He vetoed two pro-gay bills, including one that would have granted medical decision-making rights to gay couples. Steele was an outspoken opponent of gay rights, deployed by Ehrlich to represent the administration’s anti-gay views at public rallies.
By electing Steele, Republicans have indicated they learned nothing from the historic election of 2008. Steele represents more of the same, tired GOP tactics of division and politics of exclusion. He’s another unaccomplished, anti-intellectual captive of the religious right – George W. Bush reincarnated.
(by Kevin Naff)
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