Yesterday, President Obama came out and said what everyone knew all along, but he had been too much of a pansy-a$$ chicken to actually admit: he thinks teh ghey should be able to marry each other. He suffers from advanced kerryitis – he was for it before he was against it before he was for it.
Or something.
Andrew Kaczynski at Buzzfeed has helpfully chronicled Obama’s evolution on the issue. His position started with the 1996 statement “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.” Which left him with the baggage of a definitive statement, which just would never do.
The result was that he backpedaled eight years later in 2004 to a more nuanced “My religious faith dictates marriage is between a man and a woman, gay marriage is not a civil right.” This would be the same “religious faith” that was nourished in Jeremiah Wright’s church, so it remains unclear what was really guiding him through this stage of his evolution.
His views did not evolve much over the following four years. In 2008, he said, “I believe marriage is the union between a man and a woman. As a Christian it’s also a sacred union.” I wonder what might have led to this consistency of thought???
Two short years later, his evolution seems to have kicked back in: “My feelings about this are constantly evolving. I struggle with this.”
This evolutionary period continued for the next two years until it was rudely interrupted by his erstwhile and impertinent second-banana Joe Biden, who clearly stated his support. Coincidence? You decide.
Obama is something I never thought I would see: someone who is even more brazenly cynical than Bill Clinton. Clinton had the ability to sugar-coat his cynicism to make it at least somewhat plausible that he really had a change of heart.
Not so with Obama. Only the densest cranii out there had even the slightest measure of belief that Obama either did not support gay “marriage” or at the bare minimum would not impede efforts to normalize it.
I suppose that is the most puzzling thing about all of this. That he thought he needed to maintain the charade for over sixteen years in order not to alienate the voters, who never believed him in the first place.
The upshot of all this will be – nothing. This was not any sort of epiphany to anyone. This was simply ending a contrived charade.
If anything, the prevaricating hurt Obama because those who were against him anyway will not be swayed by this naked cynicism; they knew what his position was and would ultimately be shown to be. He has damaged himself among those who would generally support him:
Gawker: Barack Obama’s Bull[poo] Gay Marriage Announcement
…it seems fairly clear from the network’s coverage that his announcement amounts to much less than meets the eye. He now believes that gay couples should be able to marry. He doesn’t believe they have a right to do so. This is like saying that black children and white children ought to attend the same schools, but if the people of Alabama reject that notion—what are you gonna do?
HotAir notes a NY Times tweet by Jeff Zeleny:
Some Obama advisers were divided on decision to support same-sex marriage, but concluded his brand has been damaged enough by hedging.
There’s lots of other stuff out there that’s easy to find, but the last couple of weeks have seen team Obama commit many own goals – mostly because people are paying attention and are seeing through the smokescreen.
And they are not liking what they see.