Gay-Baiting '08

That's a claim political analysts on either side of the political spectrum find a bit hard to swallow. "I think Massachusetts made it easier to get issues like this on the ballot and to get people ginned up, but at the same time anybody who thinks Karl Rove didn’t know what ballot initiatives were going on ballots underestimates Karl Rove," Joe Scarborough responded when asked about Rove's remarks. "Karl Rove’s job was to get George Bush elected. I’m sure Rove looked at it, and people who worked for Bush looked at it, as a wedge issue to drive evangelicals out. And if you look at the results of 2004, it was an evangelical base that ended up making the difference to George Bush in Florida and Ohio and in a lot of other states that really mattered. As far as the strategy they employed working, it did."

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass), one of the most powerful gay political figures in America, holds the same view. "I think what he’s telling you now reflects the fact that he and the President and their political people tried very hard to whip up anti-gay marriage sentiment in 2005 and 2006 by forcing several votes on the Constitutional amendment, and it blew up in their face," he said in an exclusive interview with AfterElton.com. "What Rove is telling you is probably true now, but he forgot to add that he’s very disappointed because he tried very hard to exploit it for the 2006 election and it had no impact…. We passed an anti-discrimination bill by a large majority. We passed the hate crimes bill…. I think the air is substantially out of this balloon."

Congressman Barney Frank

Since even Rove told us he doesn't see the California marriage battle as having galvanized national attention yet, adding, "I'm not certain it will by the end of the campaign," GLBT viewers may think they can watch the news this election season with only the usual amount of angst. But when pressed, some of the analysts we spoke to felt there were a few situations in which the Republicans could still "go nuclear" on gay issues.

One is basically by accident. As Keith Olbermann told us, "The only way that something like that could probably get done, in terms of being turned into a big media story, would be if you have, uh, I don’t know, Obama’s invited to officiate [at a gay wedding] or he’s the best man – you really have to go almost comical in your thinking to see how a story like that would get mainlined into the controversy of the day."

Of course, he pointed out, there are folks at Fox who'd be more than happy to do just that, even though no "surprise orientation-related story has proved anything but hilariously disastrous for the Republican Party."

Another, probably more likely, scenario is desperation on the part of the McCain campaign. John King, CNN's chief national correspondent, spoke with AfterElton.com about that possibility. "As you know better than I, late in campaigns sometimes this is used as just a powerful, divisive, emotional wedge," he said. "I do think McCain himself does not like that kind of a campaign…. He does not lead with 'God, guns and gays,' which has sort of been a Republican reflex or a conservative reflex in some of their campaigns. It’s not McCain’s instinct to do that."

But he then went on to say, "Now, does that mean if we’re in the last weeks of September into October, and it’s a 50/50 race, and you’re looking for something to swing West Virginia or something to hold Ohio, that the tone of the campaign won’t change? That’s… the unpredictable path we’re on right now."

John King

Here we go again? How might it play this time?

While its effectiveness may be unpredictable, it doesn't take a crystal ball to realize that at least some Republicans are already pushing for McCain to start with the gay-baiting, with some success. In addition to a highly-publicized come-to-Jesus meeting with conservatives in Ohio where he promised to speak out more strongly against gay marriage, McCain's been getting pressure from the right wing media, too.

For instance, in June, Weekly Standard editor and Fox News talking head Fred Barnes told Fox News Sunday that Republican presidential candidate John McCain has no choice but to go anti-gay in order to "energize the right" on "cultural" issues like "gays in the military" and "gay marriage."

And it's not like McCain hasn't already started gay-baiting, as John Aravosis pointed out recently. What else is it when code words like "fussy," "fancy," and "hysterical" are used to describe Barack Obama, particularly in combination with an ad comparing him to "bimbo-esque" celebs Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, and Republican pundit Cheri Jacobus responding to criticism of the ad by saying of Obama, "We don't need a homecoming queen"?