Andrew Sullivan: Still Trying To Rationalize A Kerry Vote
Here are his thoughts on Bush’s speech. I don’t even care enough to rip into him on this, because I’ve been sick of the guy for the better part of a year. Allah Pundit has perhaps the best response to Sullivan, quoted verbatim below:
And lo and behold, the sage of Provincetown has weighed in with a surprise rave review. But hold on: The overall message was “Orwellian”; the convention “xenophobic”; and, after close, careful deliberation and an eminently fair-minded assessment of what he’s seen the past four days (he did say he loved the speech, didn’t he?), he’s decided that he can’t support George W. Bush for re-election . . . because of gay marriage. Knock Allah over with a supernatural fucking feather.
I will say that I think Sullivan has dropped support for Bush on more than just the gay marriage thing, and I can certainly understand his trepidation as he is, in fact, gay and would like to be married at some point. However, his analysis of the Kerry Democrats as the “party of fiscal conservatives” is silly at best and monsterously delusional at worst. Maybe Sullivan’s focus on one issue that, quite frankly, most people don’t care about (and again, yes, I know exactly why he does and I agree with him on the issue of gay marriage generally) has blinded him to the rest of the race as a whole.
And, don’t get me wrong, Bush is wrong on a lot. But, overall, I still think he’s a much better choice, even for right-leaning libertarians.
Olly: A slightly socially conservative big-covernment candidate with the right ideas about only two things [taxes, defense] does represent a pretty annoying candidate to me. However, an only slightly socially liberal [not for gay marriage, for the drug war, bad, bad record on privacy] candidate with all the wrong ideas about taxes and defense is a worse choice to my mind. Kerry has horrible ideas about WoT and taxes, and his Senate Record on privacy is horrible, and much worse than anything in the PATRIOT Act…well, except for the banking bit of PATRIOT that Kerry wrote. The guy wants ALL bank transactions monitored by government. That was the resurrection of a bill that failed in committee a few years ago, John Ashcroft was opposed.
I do think that Sullivan isn’t paying attention to his other boiler-plate issues. Kerry isn’t for the FMA (although Bush hasn’t brought it back up and I doubt he will, but I could be wrong), but he’s not come out in favor of gay marriage. He’ll be even more profligate with spending, worse on taxes, etc etc…it’s all over the blogosphere. And I can’t really blame Sullivan for focusing on the issue that’s most important to him, but I do think he’s using his hatred of Bush on that one specific issue to cloud his judgements about the rest of the platform. I doubt Kerry will be any better on gay marriage, and I doubt he’ll be anywhere close on defense, the economy, healthcare… Sullivan is also wrong about Bush’s healthcare proposal, as most of it is based on initiating private savings rather than mandating through a big-government program.
There is no small government party in the US anymore, at least not a powerful one. Apparently the people don’t want it. However, I do think that Bush’s government is likely to be smaller than Kerry’s government. Now, we can go back and forth on whether or not the Republican Congress would let any of Kerry’s stuff fly the way they have Bush’s (I sort of doubt it, but you never know), but I still have a feeling that the Bush big, horrible government proposals will be less bad than the Kerry big, horrible government proposals. And before you call me myopic with regard to defense, let me note that I don’t think Kerry is right on the following menu of issues: healthcare, taxes, defense, diplomacy, social security, business regulation, banking regs, and any number of other things that I’m going to save space by not ennumerating.
Another thought: why shouldn’t Sullivan focus on an issue that matters a lot to him, just because it’s not at the top of everyone else’s list? I mean, we all have our litmus-test issues. I think your “blinded him to the rest of the race as a whole” is unjustified.
Well, at least he liked the speech.
Sullivan’s stated decision not to vote for Bush has gotten him thrown off a number of people’s buddy lists, but I can absolutely sympathize with it. On a similar note, here’s Buzzmachine’s Jeff Jarvis. (Yes, I will eventually get around to catching up on other blogs.Because all the baggage that [Giuliani] can ignore, I can’t ignore.Pretty much sums it up. Tim, I would have thought that a socially conservative big-government candidate would represent the worst of both worlds to you…