Gay-Baiting '08

"Society has changed since 2000," said out gay Washington DC political analyst, frequent cable news commentator, and founder of top political website AmericaBlog.com John Aravosis. "We’ve gone from Will & Grace being historic to Will & Grace being reruns. I’m serious. This is eight years later. You can’t do the same anti-gay stuff you did eight years ago. You just can’t. So it's got to be a finer dance."

John Aravosis

The "finer dance" means messages need to be carefully targeted in terms of where they're aired. Chris Matthews says that even in 2004, the message was used mostly in strategic locations. "Ohio was a key state for both sides last time and the marriage vote was obviously important," he told AfterElton.com. "We heard stories about Karl Rove … and the black ministers in Cuyahoga County urging the black church people to vote against them, to vote on the issue, to vote on the anti side. But that was a state where it was a key state – Ohio. It was the key state."

But beyond regional targeting is something harder to define. Dog whistling – the use of code words and loaded language that speak volumes to their intended audience but tend to go over the heads of everyone else – is likely to be one of the main ways Republicans deploy anti-gay messages in advertising and media talking points, at least early in the campaign.

"I think what we’re more likely to see – and what GLAAD is keeping a close eye on – is a kind of coded intolerance," GLAAD National News Director Cindi Creager told us. "Like some of what we see when anti-gay activists talk about quote-unquote 'defending marriage.'"

Do That To Me One More Time

Even if the rules of the game have changed, there are a number of reasons the Republicans may try to play the gay card yet again. After all, it's the conventional wisdom, and almost certainly true, that the 2004 Massachusetts Supreme Court recognition of marriage equality helped drive anti-gay ballot amendments in nearly a dozen states. Some observers have wondered if this year's similar ruling in California will have the same effect. Will Jon Stewart be able to say, as he did in 2006, "Oh yeah, here we go. It's anti-gay-marriage amendment time, my brother"?

To answer that question, we first have to look at the man widely seen as the architect of this strategy, Republican political strategist Karl Rove, currently serving as a behind-the-scenes adviser to John McCain's campaign as well as a commentator on Fox News.

Karl Rove

Rove insists that the plethora of anti-gay ballot initiatives around the country in the 2004 election arose out of a grassroots reaction to the Massachusetts court ruling, and not a coordinated effort on the part of the Bush campaign to energize the evangelical vote.

"I think it entered into force in the 2004 race simply because it was not introduced by the political actors themselves," he told AfterElton.com. "Neither the Bush nor the Kerry campaigns brought the issue forward. It was brought forward by a Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts. It sort of exploded on the scene and got a life of its own."