Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyJune 20th, 2013
Sometimes I think the National Organization for Marriage gets so caught up in their own spin that they have no notion of how surreal their proclamations sound. Consider this bit about Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski’s recent support for equality:
Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, responded: “Senator Murkowski has sealed her political fate. Alaskans voted by an overwhelming majority (68%-32%) to protect marriage in their Constitution when given the opportunity, and an even stronger majority of Republicans in Alaska supported that move; thus, her betrayal of marriage is tantamount to political suicide.”
For those who have forgotten, in 2010 Sarah Palin and the Tea Partiers ran a candidate against Murkowski in the Republican primary. She just wasn’t conservative enough for them. And when Joe Miller won the primary, they thought that Murkowski’s moderate positions had sealed her political fate.
But Murkowski ran a write-in campaign.
I don’t mean a third party ticket. I don’t mean being listed without a party. I mean that people had to pull out a pen and physically write her name down on their ballot. There hadn’t been a US Senate seat win by write-in ballot since Strom Thurmond in 1956.
Murkowski won. Miller challenged a bunch of the ballots due to misspellings of Murkowski’s name, but she still beat him. He sued and went to court claiming that there must have been fraud (cuz, really, how could that many people go write in her name?) and the courts still said that she won. The people had a choice between ticking the box for a NOM-approved candidate or remembering and writing in a difficult-to-spell name. They chose Murkowski.
So in just what surreal reality – let’s call it a NOMian reality – does Brown think that the Alaskan voters are going to replace Lisa Murkowski with a more conservative candidate?
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Markanthony
June 20th, 2013
They have to release something or they look out of touch, but there is not much for them to say. NOM just has to pretend that voters are stuck in 2004.
bill johnson
June 20th, 2013
Exactly right Mark, they are stuck citing wins in states that happened years ago and they completely ignore the fact that public opinion has shifted since then. They always cite the number of states they “won†years ago whenever they try to counter polls about public opinion today, again ignoring the fact that public opinion has shifted since then and the votes would have gone the other way or would have been closer if they were held today.
Moving forwards we will start to have states voting out the bans that they put in place years ago and I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of the NOM worker that has to try to write a reaction to that happening.
Nathaniel
June 21st, 2013
It is also a lovely example story for how extreme intra-party politics has become. Primary voting attracts those with the most extreme viewpoints, resulting in a party’s candidate appearing unattractive to the general population. Given a choice between writing in someone’s name or electing the guy that doesn’t even represent the majority view of his party as a whole, it isn’t surprising Murkowski won. I wish more politicians, and more voters, were as daring. Even more, I hope people can begin to see the importance of primary elections.
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