My old boss Ramesh breaks it down so well I’m just going to post his whole post:
REPULSIVE REPUBLICANS [Ramesh Ponnuru]
1) Republicans are preparing to bring the Federal Marriage Amendment
to a vote. So I guess the plan from now on is to do this in all
even-numbered years, and then throw the idea aside in odd-numbered
ones? I know a lot of people support the FMA for principled reasons,
but a decisive number of Republicans are clearly just picking on gays
for political profit.2) Republicans are leading a charge to subject "527 groups" to
onerous regulations. A minority of them, again, have sincere and
above-board reasons for doing this. Most of them just want to shut down
groups that are trying to beat them in elections. For a majority to
restrict the freedom of others to try to boot them out is pretty much a
textbook definition of the abuse of power, isn’t it?
Sounds about right to me. It almost sounds like a good topic for a book.
1) What’s that you say? Politicians exploiting an emotion-laden issue for political gain? Off with their heads!
2) What’s that you say? Politicians exploiting their political power to obtain electoral advantage? Off with their heads!
I’ve read Ramesh Ponnuru’s writings for some time. He can certainly do better then to belabor the obvious. And, he’s certainly smart enough to realize that no amount of nagging is going to alter human behavior.