I seem to remember lots of pundit-speak in the media back in 2000 about how Republicans would need to cater to the far-right wackos throughout the primaries in order to win the nomination. And, considering the Bob Jones U. stuff, the trashing John McCain in fundraising letters because he adopted a daughter of another race, and an email effort calling his campaign “an army of fags” because he spoke to the Log Cabin Republicans, those prognostications were pretty much right on target. No, no, the Bush campaign didn’t do any of these things directly (well, except for the Bob Jones speech). Instead, they coyly turned the other way while Paul Weyrich, Pat Robertson, Richard Viguerie & Co. did the dirty work.

But it’s no different on the other side. I’ve written before about how Dennis Kucinich sold out a lifelong anti-abortion position so he could run for president. Now, not only does he take the other position, he tosses off jokes about it, quiping to the Human Rights Campaign that he’d consider nominating a transgendered person to this Supreme Court “so long as she supports Roe v. Wade.”

My worst thoughts about politics in that story. In a matter of months, the guy goes from believing abortion is the taking of human life to nonchalantly tossing out zingers about the procedure. What a sleaze.

And now comes Joe Lieberman, lifelong opponent of affirmative action, who ate that position back in 2000 so he could run with Al Gore. Lieberman was so eager to kiss and make up with the NAACP (whose national convention he dissed to tape an appearance with Bill O’Reily), he apparently suggested NAACP President Kweisi Mmfume would make a good Supreme Court Justice.

As the New Republic points out, Mmfume hasn’t even been to law school.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2003 at 8:26 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.