The ugly side of the issue: Well the issue is plain ugly, like race and gender politics. Bush knows it, and Kerry knows it, but that won’t prevent either of them from playing politics with it.
Watch for the classic Rove-Bush strategy of allowing the president to take the high-road– proclaiming himself a reasonable moderate who respects diversity– while unleashing proxy spokespersons to really sling the mud. Rove knows that if Bush caters too much to the right, he risks losing moderate voters. At the same time, he needs to slyly clue the extreme right in: he doesn’t mean what he says to a national audience– it’s all code
Does the right continue to believe that Bush can actually do something about abortion? Yes. Well, he can. He can appoint sympathetic judges to appeals courts and to the Supreme Court. Will the Supreme Court, then, ever outlaw abortion? In your dreams. .
Kerry will also have to speak in code. Publicly, he will probably oppose same-sex marriage. Privately, he will want his hard-core supporters to know he will be much kinder to gays than Bush.
It’s like a bunch of big, tough school kids standing around. And they see a little thug picking on an even smaller, unpopular kid mercilessly. The Democrat says, they shouldn’t pick on him. The Republican says, “oh– you a friend of his?” The Democrat says, “Who? Me? Are you kidding?”
Both these guys know that America would be much better served by a frank discussion of taxes, military policies, security, and energy, and the environment. But that doesn’t score many votes for Bush, so watch for the gay bashing to enter a fever pitch as the election campaigns reach their strides.
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