Thursday, May 10, 2012

Obama's Cold Calculation

This is an excellent piece by Tim Stanley, appearing in the Telegraph:
The day after North Carolina voted 60-40 to ban gay marriage, Barack Obama did what any sane politician would do and … endorsed gay marriage. He told ABC that he felt compelled to by the gay interns he knew, his wife, his children and Jesus. Why did he really do it? Sheer, naked opportunism. Like the contraception issue before it, this is an attempt to distract from how bad the economy is. What will Obama do next in his desperate bid for re-election? Make a claim on the Falklands?

It’s unlikely that Obama is taking a principled stand for civil rights. In 1996, he said he was for gay marriage. In 2004, when he was running for the Senate, he said that Jesus told him it was wrong (Jesus, apparently, changes his mind almost as often as the Prez). In 2008, he repeated that gay marriage was a step too far. Then he started to “evolve” and, like the caterpillar, he turned into a beautiful pink butterfly.

This is an important social issue, to be sure, but from Obama's standpoint, this is all about distracting people from the pathetic state of the economy, for which he is responsible.

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