TheAgitator.com
Court Hands Bush Victory…Again
Wednesday, November 3rd, 2004Only it’s the Massachusetts Supreme Court.
People who want to sound smugly knowledgable about chaos theory will tell the story of a butterfly flapping its wings and causing a storm. In the 2004 election, that butterfly was the Massachusetts Supreme Court. Their ruling on gay marriage stoked fears among religious conservatives. This inflated the religious conservative vote, helping President Bush and hurting the candidate from Massachusetts. I interpret the election returns not as a mandate for America’s tough stand on terror or for privatizing Social Security. This election was a rebuke to the Massachusetts Supreme Court. If they had not out-ed the gay marriage issue, then the result of the election, for better or worse, would have been different.The exit polls, which if anything may have undersampled Bush voters, showed that one of the top issues among voters was “moral values,” with Bush gaining an overwhelming majority of the “moral values” voters. In my pre-election essay, I despaired of what I called President Bush’s decision to run as a Bible-thumping moral legislator. It’s a good thing for Republicans that I wasn’t their chief electoral strategist…
Even though I voted for the winner in the Presidential race, I am not smug that my views prevailed in the election. On the contrary, I share with my Democratic friends the sense of being humbled by an expression of public opinion that is much at variance with my own.
Sadly, I agree.
Though I’m going to argue in my Fox column tomorrow that an unambiguous reelection and wider majorities in Congress mean there should be no excuses for Bush to do anything but make great strides in cutting the size and scope of government, I think Kling may come closer to extracting last night’s message.
Gay marriage went down (no pun intended — get your mind out of the gutter) to resounding defeat in eleven states last night, by large margins. And as Kling notes, “values” topped the list of concerns of Bush voters.
I’m afraid that this election might have been a repudidiation of libertarianism, though obviously not an explicit one. Seems to me that Bush voters last night voted for Ashcroftian morality, aggressive foreign policy, and were generally unconcerned about the massive spending and expansion of government that took place under Bush’s watch. Given that his strongest supporters were seniors, the prescription drug benefit probably helped him more than it hurt him.
Troubling, to say the least.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that’s what most of the country feels, or that it’s what Bush should actually do. It just means that’s what the most motivated people feel. 51% of the people who voted last night were generally in tune with the big-government, Great America, neoconservative worldview.
Hogwash. The “gay marrriage” ballot initiative did almost as much to turn out the religious black anti-gay (but who otherwise vote Democrat) as the conservative. And who says Catholics (and the other religions) are 100% Republican? Going into a voting booth to vote yes or no on a gay marriage initiative is simply not indicative of how a person voted in the general election. In Georgia (where I live) the amendment passed by more than 3 to 1. Bush only won 58% of the popular vote.
You need to seperate your beliefs from your political analysis here – one is tainting the other.
Finally, it saddens me that so many people voted against freedom yesterday. That does not bode well for small or big-L libertarians.
BS.
This wasn’t a mandate of any kind.
Bush voters just saw Kerry as worse on their pet issue, be it guns, taxes, or trrrism.
Senators don’t become president anymore.
Dean probably had a better chance of winning.
Here in Ohio, the stupid godforsaken marriage amendment passed by something like 60% to 40%. That’s a considerably wider margin than Bush won Ohio by. I know at least some of the Bush voters were people like my girlfriend, who voted for Bush but against the marriage amendment (maybe only 1-2%, but some). Which means there had to have been a significant number of Democrats who voted for the marriage amendment. Possibly as many as 15-20% of the people who voted for the amendment must have also voted for Kerry.
radley is not saying that only repubs voted for the amendments or that only dems voted against them. All he is saying is that it is the real issue that motivated a majority of the electorate, mostly bush supporters. had gay mariage not been an issue this election, my guess is some of the evengelical right might have gone over to Kerry’s side, or not shown up to vote.
In the days leading up to the election, I heard alot about the increased registration and higher turn-outs. All I could think was, who is voting for Bush that didn’t vote last time. In retrospect, it turns out that Rove was right and that there were a lot of the regligious right that didn’t vote last time but came out to support bush on the “moral” issue.
I voted for Dubya, and against the marriage amendment.
And even if victory for Bush IS the result of activist judges, better for us. Perhaps this will lead “them” to see the er in their ways. Interpret the law please, don’t make it. Maybe it’s more of a referendum on that??
every judges decision is activist. if the law is “clear” the case doesn’t get litigated. you only declare a judge is activist if you disagree with his decision.
It seems to me that the faction of people who are think-for-yourself has steadily declined for the past hundred years or so (if it was ever that high to begin with). Now the trend is towards a leader who’s more like a king. There are no longer “states’ rights” in the minds of many, just sweeping legislation to trounce all of us. This country is uniting in all the wrong ways, under a sort of strange socialist-totalitarian mélange. The only time states’ rights come into play seem to be when there’s something that can’t be pushed through on the national level. This continuing indifference and ignorance on the part of so many in the nation is stunning and frightening.
Just my two cents.
J
Westy – yep, activist is one of those words that the conservatives use to motivate their base, like liberal.
John, I’d give at least a nickel for your two cents worth…the only problem is that only a very small majority cares about the States’ rights…and unfortunately today’s repubs are CONSUMED with power…I was hoping that the pendulum was slowing down, it seems to be speeding up to the right, and it may be a while before it slows down…maybe after 4 more years of increased federal gov’t, balooning deficit and loss of liberty, it will come back
proud to be a liberal…
vote Liberterian
Radley, sheer excellence as always.
One of the things that I find really obnoxious is the fear of “activist” judges. One of the purposes of the judiciary is to try and prevent or at least reduce a tyranny of the majority that comes from misuse of the democratic systems.
In theory, it would be possible to pass a law requiring all Jews to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing. Noting the way the Alabama populace voted to retain the language of segregation in their Constitution, that sort of thing isn’t completely impossible.
However, it is important for the courts to then step in and tell the public that they can’t violate the Constitution, no matter how badly they want to do it.
That is the reason why segregation laws which remain on the books in Alabama are purely symbolic. As much as the Alabama banjo pickers want to retain segregation laws, the Supreme Court came in and stated that segregation violates the Constitution.
The problem comes not from the use of the judiciary to overturn unconstitutional legislation, but from judges who create rulings which have no relevance to anything Constitutional.
I think that although “activist judge” isn’t a clearly defined term, it has more meaining than some give it credit for. There are unquestionably cases where the law is clear, but a hired lawyer will still try to run the case through the courts; It’s self-evident that stealing private property to give to GM isn’t “public use” and is obviously not something the law allowed, but how long did Poletown stand? The term “activist judge” is usually meant to describe a judge who uses power to allow things that the legislature would not pass to occur for political reasons; they also look to expand government power through “reinterpretation”. Again, not always cut and dry, but it has meaning.
“repudidiation”??? Are you mocking the President?
Bush is NO Reagan
My friends, Bush is no Reagan. And don’t EVER tarnish the reputation of Ronald Reagan’s place in the history of the conservative movement by EVER asserting the two are somehow alike.
Radley, over at The Agitator, writes:
I’m afraid that this elec…