A rare kudos to CNN’s Kyra Phillips, who highlights another absurdity in the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer’s recent attack on Mitt Romney’s national security spokesman. Any true conservative must be a fan of Ambassador John Bolton, right? And, as we know, Fischer has claimed no real conservative could possibly hire a gay spokesman, right? Well, as it turns out:
PHILLIPS: Did you think John Bolton did a good job when he was U.S. ambassador to the U.N.? [...]
FISCHER: He did a great job.
PHILLIPS: Okay. Grenell was his spokesperson….Bryan, I just thought that was interesting, you thought Bolton did a great job, and Grenell was his spokesperson.
FISCHER: Well, the point here is that personnel is policy. Everybody in D.C. says that. Personnel is policy. When Governor Romney picks somebody who is an activist homosexual and puts him in a prominent position, he’s sending a shout out, it seems to me, to the homosexual lobby.
Unfortunately Phillips’ logical fallacy didn’t cause Fischer to short-circuit like a robot, but you can watch him attempt to defend his untenable argument here.
Fischer isn’t the only social conservative who has criticized Romney for hiring Richard Grenell, and it’s worth wondering why this didn’t bother anyone when Grenell was working for Bolton. Is it simply because Romney’s in a more prominent position, and Grenell’s personal life was never really in the news before? If that’s the case, maybe these critics should realize that their concerns aren’t grounded in reality.
It seems more likely that the attacks on Grenell are based on a still-lingering anti-Romney undercurrent in the conservative movement. Fischer has made his disapproval of Romney’s religion clear in the past, which may explain his oddly vocal attack on Romney’s hiring decision.
Does this hurt Romney with conservatives? I doubt it. Or if so, only to a negligible extent (among conservatives who already dislike Romney for other reasons). n nFor most conservatives, having a Boltonian foreign policy guy as spokesman is something to celebrate. (And a PJMedia contributor to boot! A blogosphere-friendly guy.) n nSocial conservatives may be opposed to certain items of the so-called "gay agenda", but the vast majority of them have nothing against gay people per se. Whatever Grennell's views on e.g. the question of gay marriage may be, he's a Romney spokesman on foreign policy, not a Romney spokesman on gay marriage or domestic policy. n nI think, if anything, ironically, the more Fischer's attacks are publicized, the more this helps Romney. Makes him more palatable to independents, moderates, disenchanted Democrats, and young people who might consider voting for him. It differentiates Romney from someone like Santorum (who is more easy for the left or the Obama campaign to caricature as an off-puttingly extreme social conservative). The fact that Rommey is being attacked by a social conservative for hiring an openly gay guy will to some extent inoculate Romney against the homophobia card we can expect the Obama campaign to play (after "war on women" and "war on dogs", at some point we'll surely see "war on gays", especially from Democrats who calculate Republican + Mormon = double homophobe). n nI think Grennell's a good choice for reasons that have nothing to do with his sexual orientation. I think he was hired for reasons that have nothing to do with his sexual orientation. But IMO the fact that he's gay is, if anything, a political bonus rather than a liability.
I can assure you he doesn't have the gay vote. No matter how hard he may try to "change" or twist what he said his stance was or is….we are not falling for the BS.
“The real issue here is for Governor Romney and what he thinks about homosexual behavior…My complaint about Governor Romney all the way along is not that he’s Mormon, but he’s not Mormon enough…The Mormon Church believes homosexual behavior is sinful and that homosexual acts are offensive to God. So the question that needs to be asked of Governor Romney, do you agree with the teaching of your Church? If you do — that homosexual acts are offensive to God — then why have you made the face of your campaign someone who engages in conduct that your own Church says is offensive to God?” – Bryan Fischer
Romney tends to be a that-was-then this-is-now malleable sort: his core values, such as they are, exist within a field of permeable "give"–he was a Mormon bishop then, he's running for President now. Now trumps then. If the evangelical base wishes to prize heterosexual fidelity over all other issues then, well Romney has made his calculation that not enough will stay home from the polls to matter. But that Etch-A-Sketch has been shook. Might as well get used to it. He's going to run his massaged spread-sheet resource deployed demographic calibrated moderate campaign just like he intended to from the beginning. You go to the polls with the candidate you have.
Good points. Thanks for the observations.
I caught you. n nThis morning I responded to besht2003 by saying "Good points. Thanks for the observations." Later in the day I returned to the site, and I discovered that my response to besht2003 had been copied and entered at 15:33 as a stand-alone comment. It appeared as if I was complimenting Alana Goodman. n nSince I wasn't signed in at 15:33, only one of the boys or girls at Contentions could have pulled this off. n nBush league.