Evasion Strategy

As everyone already knows, President bush has put the full force of his office behind the terrible Federal Marriage Amendment that would outlaw gay marriage and civil unions throughout the United States forever. So, what should the Democrats do about this? Some bloggers, like Atrios, have said that the Democrats ought to do the right thing and back gay marriage. There is something to this argument, but I am not sure if it is the best strategy.

The best thing the Democratic nomineed could do, in my view, would be to simaltenously side step the actuall gay marriage isssue while weaving the President's support of FMA into a broader attack on the Administration's extreme cynicism. Whenever the issue is discussed, the Democratic candidate ought to bring out all of Bush's (and Cheney's) quotes from 2000 where he talked about leaving the issue up to the states and then point out that the proposed amendment makes it impossible for States to decide the issue for themselves. Then the candidate should say how this flip-flop shows that the President's support of FMA is only a political move and his decision shows that he's in the pocket of the religious right. From here, the candidate can make an easy transition to the big issues, the issues that he wants to talk about. He can say that just as the President is controlled by the Christian Fundementalists in this department, he is dominated by the economic royalists when it comes to making economic policy and hardline idealogues (neocons) when it comes to foreign affairs. Now, the candidate can just lay into Bush for his major failures, the millions of missing jobs, the absence of allies in Iraq, the growing numbe of uninsured Americans, rising poverty, etc, etc.

This method isn't exactly courageous or inspiring, but it might be more effective. Though of course if cornered, the Democrats should say they favor "equal rights" or some other vague and nice sounding thing.