Earl Appleby has some words for Vice President Dick Cheney, who undercut President Bush’s stated policy on same-sex unions. I don’t understand why Cheney would do such a thing. When you’re the second man on the ticket, your job is to stand behind the top guy and support everything he says, not to undercut, especially when doing so undercuts your base. Unless, of course, it’s a clever ploy to shore up support among the minority bits of your party, like the Log Cabin Republicans.
Unfortunately, what we’re seeing is the Republicans once again taking their base for granted. Every single primetime speaker at this week’s Republican convention is a liberal on social matters. Every single one is pro-abortion, for instance. And while the party platform remains mainly conservative, there was a major fight at the platform meetings to make sure it stayed conservative.
It’s funny that many Democrats complain that their party is drifting to the right, while many Republicans complain that the GOP is drifting to left. Pretty soon, there won’t be much left to distinguish the two. So there may come a time very soon when we ask why should anyone vote for either one when there isn’t a dime’s difference between them. That time hasn’t come yet, but the writing’s on the wall.