Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[OrangeFluffyCat]

Wonder how the swift boaters felt about that?
They don't care, they are making money, and playing get even.
When it's done they can go back to bashing Catholics, women, gays on Internet posting boards...And no doubt there will be more money coming to them in paybacks..

The right-wingers who dominate party ideology were safely hidden out of sight.
A very active "hidden":

Bush campaign rallies religious conservatives in private

NEW YORK The Bush-Cheney campaign has held a closed-door rally in New York for hundreds of religious conservatives.

Leaders who were introduced at the "Faith, Family and Freedom Rally" included the Reverend Jerry Falwell, conservative activist Gary Bauer, and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council.

The campaign also distributed written endorsements from Christian leaders including the Reverend Jack Graham -- Plano-based former president of the Southern Baptist Convention -- and Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family.

President Bush appeared on video, emphasizing his opposition to abortion and gay marriage.

GOP convention planners have been careful not to include anti-gay marriage or anti-abortion rhetoric in the prime-time speeches, much to the dismay of Gary Bauer, conservative presidential candidate in 2000 and a "family values" activist.

Mr. Bauer said that if he were running the convention, he would make abortion and opposition to same-sex marriage the subject of key prime-time speeches.

He argues that that Republicans should not be afraid to put those issues front and center. Mr. Bauer tells reporters he definitely wants President Bush to win re-election but that with an approval rating of below 50 percent, always a danger signal for an incumbent president, "we have to be really aggressive [on social issues] to pull this out."

The conservative Family Research Council (Paul Cameron) is handing out thousands of fortune cookies at the convention to promote four messages - supporting a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, impeaching "activist judges,'' permitting adult stem cell research to find a cure for such diseases as Alzheimer's, but banning embryonic stem cell research on the grounds that aborted fetuses could be used to obtain such cells, and banning human cloning.

One "fortune" read, "Real men marry women." Another says, "No. 1 reason to ban human cloning: Hillary Clinton."

Phyllis Schlafly is still making her point, unabashedly

Phyllis Schlafly is a longtime opponent of the gay rights movement.

Over the years, she has warned that the Equal Rights Amendment would lead to a recognition of gay rights. She has said people may demand "restrictions on homosexuals for public health reasons" because of AIDS. She has complained that children's sex-education programs are misused to spread the belief that homosexual sex is acceptable if a condom is used, when educators should "just tell them to keep their hands out of what's inside your swimsuit."

If anyone has helped conservatives nail down the plank in the Republican Party platform opposing same-sex unions, it is this octogenarian stalwart, who emerged as a pivotal force this week behind language supporting a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

And she did it all with the help of the oldest of her six adult children, John Schlafly, 53, her aide de camp, who is gay.
"It's no problem," Schlafly says. "He supports me in everything I do."

John Schlafly literally supports her, holding her arm firmly and lugging a big bag of her books, as mother and son trudge down a Manhattan sidewalk under a pitiless sun. Schooling around them in the humid miasma is a surreal parade of tourists, protesters, delegates, sightseers, police -- and yes, publicly affectionate gay couples.

Inside the convention, where traditionalists clash with those promoting tolerance of other lifestyles, Republicans talking about the divided America need look no further than the Schlaflys.



Shrewd operator

Phyllis Schlafly is a disarming woman, with a genteel but very direct manner. Earlier in the day, she greets a guest in a well-lighted suite of an old-fashioned hotel that is decorated with gilt mirrors and salmon toile. She smooths the skirt of her lavender knit suit, which is set off by a gold elephant pin and another spelling out "GOP." Her blond hair is upswept in a retro marcel wave-style do.

But make no mistake: She is a shrewd political operator who has hammered a raft of conservative planks into a number of Republican Party platforms over the years. Her St. Louis-based Eagle Forum is an influential conservative group.

Christian leader Ralph Reed, the Bush campaign's coordinator for the Southeast region, said Schlafly has been a behind-the-scenes player on GOP platform issues since she began attending as a delegate in the 1950s.

"Given her leadership on the pro-life plank on the platform, she's highly respected and well-regarded and influential," he said. "She's prominent at every convention."

Fellow conservative Gary Bauer said Schlafly's role reflects her stature as a member of the anti-abortion movement, which he said is ardently opposed to gay marriage.

"The whole pro-life movement feels very strongly about that issue, as does the president," he said. "I bet if you asked the delegates to vote, it would be 99%" against same-sex marriage.

Schlafly's son, an attorney by profession, is a paid staffer, she says. He is director of an Eagle Forum office in Alton, Ill., where he lives, and helps her with fundraising, scheduling and mail.

John Schlafly is a soft-spoken man with deep, expressive eyes, whose dark khakis and light cotton shirts rumple quickly in the New York heat. He stops for a moment to collect his thoughts when asked if he supports his mother's signature issue of the week, a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

"I think the traditional definition of marriage has served our society well, and it shouldn't be changed," John Schlafly says, choosing his words slowly. "That was the law in every state, and still is except for certain court decisions. I don't see why there's anything wrong with it."

On this day, he is helping his mother sort through the stacks of party invitations that can make the convention experience as disorienting as a video on fast-forward. Phyllis Schlafly idly asks her son what day of the week it is.

On this night, there is the possibility of a dinner with the Missouri delegation, he tells his mother. And a more lavish party thrown by fellow conservative Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform. People are saying the latter is "the desirable place to be, not the Missouri people," he tells her.

"Why, because they're conservatives?" she asks.

"Well, Grover has a reputation of throwing a good party," he says knowingly.

But first, there is the book signing. Lugging big tote bags crammed with books, mother and son spill into the steamy afternoon and pile into a New York taxi. The driver goes a couple of blocks and pulls over with a scowl. There's no way he's heading into the collective insanity of crowds and police barricades around Madison Square Garden -- not even for a fragile-looking elderly lady.

Thus begins the Great Trek down 34th Street.

After a few crowded blocks loaded down with books, the walk seems like an extreme sport. But Phyllis Schlafly, the Olympian of the conservative movement, won't even duck into Macy's for refreshment. Finally, she spots the hotel ("Oasis!" she says) for the signing of the anthology "Thank You, President Bush," to which she has contributed.

"The aggression of the whole sexually activist community to present sodomy as the equivalent of the Holy Sacrament -- we can't leave that up to the states," a speaker, Star Parker, is saying as the Schlaflys walk into the hotel reception room where the event is in progress.

Parker, the only African American on the panel, is "a former single Los Angeles welfare mother" and author. ("As I point out in my book, 'Uncle Sam's Plantation,' the pulsating primitive rhythms and rhymes of rap music simply reflect the truths that are transmitted to blacks through the wafer-thin veneer of popular American culture," reads a passage from her chapter in "Thank You, President Bush.")

"I understand the left, and I am here to say they are wrong," Parker tells the very small gathering of faded-looking people who made it through the Darwinian obstacle course of heat, barricades and locked hotel doors to attend the event.



A quiet presence

Schlafly's son hovers nearby. He doesn't like to discuss his sexual orientation.

He was outed in September 1992 by the New York gay magazine QW, just after the Republican convention in Houston at which Pat Buchanan declared "America's culture war" and where his mother debated a gay Republican.

"There is no way to control your adult children," Phyllis Schlafly was quoted as saying at the time, in a reaction story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "They have their own lives to live. I still love them…. He's an adult. What am I supposed to do? I can't control what he says or his behavior."

She also said at the time that she supported the plank in her party's platform that opposed extending civil rights to gays or allowing them in the armed forces. She said, "I don't believe in sex outside of marriage," and since homosexuals couldn't marry, she disapproved of the homosexual sex act.

Today Phyllis Schlafly is unfazed by questions about her son, though she'd rather talk about the "beautiful" building the Eagle Forum has purchased in the tony St. Louis suburb of Clayton. "I get asked all the time," she says with a shrug, as she takes $20 bills from buyers of her books and counts the change herself.

Today, the hotly contested specter of gay marriage is on the table in America. So is the idea of a ban, which has just been passed by Schlafly's home state of Missouri. What does John Schlafly think?

"It doesn't prevent gays from living their personal lives any way they choose," he said quietly, as conservative fans of his mother pushed past him. "Gays have all the same civil and political rights as everyone else. The rights guaranteed by our Constitution."


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Keyes Criticizes Cheney's Lesbian Daughter
Tue Aug 31 2004 23:04:55 ET

Alan Keyes, the Republican candidate for a vacant U.S. Senate seat in Illinois, said Tuesday that Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter Mary is a "selfish hedonist" because she is a lesbian.

His comments came during an interview with SIRIUS satellite radio.

Keyes said: "The essence of ... family life remains procreation. If we embrace homosexuality as a proper basis for marriage, we are saying that it's possible to have a marriage state that in principal excludes procreation and is based simply on the premise of selfish hedonism."

Asked whether that meant Mary Cheney "is a selfish hedonist," Keyes said: "That goes by definition. Of course she is."

Keyes: No time for Illinoisans
Ex-Gov. Thompson says he can't support right-wing candidate

Alan Keyes said Monday he doesn't have time to be "schmoozing" with members of the Illinois GOP, even though the U.S. Senate candidate is staying at the same Manhattan hotel as delegates attending the Republican National Convention.
http://www.lincolncourier.com/news/04/08/31/a.asp
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CNN drops pro-gay advert

Wednesday 1 September, 2004 11:44

Two US political groups that advocate for LGBT rights have launched commercials targeting delegates at the Republican National Convention, but a cable news giant has refused one of the ads.

The Log Cabin Republicans (LCR) unveiled on Monday a 30-second commercial that is playing in New York City, the site of the convention, and on cable networks nationwide -- except for CNN.

The 24-hour news network rejected the ad because it contains images that are "too controversial," according to the gay group's press release.

CNN did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

The TV spot contrasts the Republican Party of former President Ronald Reagan with the party of conservatives like Pat Buchanan, Rev. Jerry Falwell and Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.

The final image suggests that the "politics of intolerance" espoused by the latter three men leads to violence and hatred: Rev. Fred Phelps holds a "God Hates Fag" sign at the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a victim of an anti-gay hate crime.

"Last week we told the Republican Party that you cannot sugarcoat the vicious and mean-spirited platform, today we want CNN to know that you cannot sugarcoat the politics of fear and intolerance that lead to hate," Patrick Guerriero, LCR executive director, said in a prepared statement.

Meanwhile, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation's largest LGBT rights group, is sponsoring billboards with a message: "George W. Bush: You're Fired." The ads appear through Friday on the sides of four trucks driving throughout New York City.

The message trades on a phrase made popular by New York real estate mogul Donald Trump, who fires a contestant on each episode of the reality show "The Apprentice."

"Equality trumps discrimination," said Cheryl Jacques, HRC president. "We're hitting the streets with the message that the chief advocate of the discriminatory Federal Marriage Amendment doesn't belong in public office."

Last February Bush endorsed the proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex couples from marrying. The measure was defeated in the Senate last month, but the Republican Party has included it in the platform unveiled at this week's convention.

The LCR plans to announce next week whether it will endorse Bush for president.