Rove's New Minority

Many of the Republicans who lost on Tuesday (other than the corrupt ones who are going to jail soon) were moderates. Jim Leach of Iowa and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island pop to mind.

The moderates in the Republican party have been marginalized and ignored every bit as much as the Dems during Bush and Rove's tenure. This is exactly what Goldwater Republicans did to the venerable Nelson Rockefeller. He was booed by the radical right during the 1964 convention.

The result of such a political purge was to push many moderate Republicans into the Democratic Party in '64. I think "the Architect" is unintentionally producing the same effect. The Republicans will become more extreme and will lose the center.

Chafee is already thinking about changing parties. Marginalizing and ignoring smaller segments of his own party will boomerang on Rove. He may be in the midst of producing a "New Minority" instead of a new majority.

Rove should know better. The Democrats did severe damage to themselves by not allowing people like by Bob Casey's father speak at a convention because of his anti-abortion stance. There is nothing like losing power for 12 years to bring politicians to their senses. That is why the Dems backed Bob Casey despite his anti-abortion stance.

No party can produce a majority by establishing innumerable litmus tests a potential candidate must pass in order to get party backing. The Dems lost power trying to do it. Rove is doing it now. He's going to have a very small tent if he keeps it up.

"Out" all Republican Gays in Congress

The best thing for the whole country is to force the Republican Party to "out" every gay on their side of the aisle in Congress, whether on staff or a politician. This is not a homophobic reaction to the Mark Foley scandal. Quite the contrary, it is to expose Republican hypocrisy and to take the gay issue off the political table.

Every two years since George Bush took office in 2000, Republicans have bashed gays for political advantage. They have quite intentionally misled their social conservative base into thinking that the Democratic Party is the party of homosexuals.

They were getting ready to do it again in this year's mid-term elections. They were campaigning on a theme that Nancy Pelosi would be the next Speaker of the House if the Dems took control. She is the representative from, horror of horrors, San Francisco, Sodom reborn.

Then the Mark Foley page scandal erupted and they were left without a campaign strategy and on the defensive. Does anyone believe that Foley is the only gay Republican? It is well known in Washington that other Congressmen, Senators, and staff are gay. It is coming out in the investigation of the Foley scandal that gays were working for the top leadership in the party.

Yet every two years these deeply closeted gays have had to endure the cynical hypocrisy of the Republican Party denounce gays in order to gain votes. They will have endure it in the future as well, unless everyone knows how many Republican gays are in Conress and what positions they hold.

That will prevent the Republicans from bashing gays every two years and then employing them to advance their agenda until the next election. It will effectively remove the gay issue from the political table, at least as a Republican versus Democrat issue.

Then both parties can admit they knowingly employ and rely upon intelligent and loyal gays in advancing their political agendas. This will only come as news to the followers of Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, Pat Robertson and Tony Perkins. The Falwells, Dobsons, and Robertson and Perkins's know that there are gay Republicans. They are just as cynical as the Republican Party itself in acting surprised that one turned up.

It will be cathartic for both the Republican Party, and the oppressed gay Republicans that have to stay closeted, to out them all. It will also end a major point of hypocrisy that has become ingrained in the political culture, i.e., gay-bashing rather than discussion of real issues like Iraq, healthcare, and the real War on Terror.