The Iowa Supreme Court brought the issue of gay marriage back to the forefront of issues (at least in Iowa) when it unanimously ruled that the gay marriage ban in the state of Iowa was unconstitutional.  Without missing a step, Conservative groups, both in Iowa and all over the country, declared their renewed support to halting gay marriage.  Proposals for a (state) Constitutional amendment akin to Proposition 8 in California sprung up overnight.  Despite the renewed efforts in halting gay marriage, the Iowa Amendment process makes it unlikely the issue will be brought to voters within the next four years because of the fact Amendments need to be approved by two legislative sessions before going to a vote to be approved.  Since the current session has a Democratic majority, it is unlikely any sort of Amendment could enter it’s first phase this session.

So Iowa will have gay marriage for at least four more years.  Conservatives may feel defeated, but I think it would do the entire movement good to take a good hard look at whether or not fighting gay marriage really makes sense anymore (and perhaps whether fighting it made sense to begin with).  Most of the opposition to gay marriage is based in the traditional religious view of marriage, and I can understand the reluctance to support something that goes against many’s religious views of the world.  But for the sake of self preservation, I can hardly believe that the Conservative movement can’t see the writing on the wall.

Regardless of the status of marriage in Iowa, or any other state in the union, Barack Obama has stated that overturning the Defense of Marriage Act is a goal of his administration.  If he plans to tackle this goal with Congress, it is more likely than not that he is going to attempt to do it sooner rather than later so that he has a Democratic majority to work with.  If doesn’t plan to do it himself, his inevitable Supreme Court appointments will do it for him.  Through the President’s eyes, allowing the court system to strike down the DOMA is more beneficial.  Declaring the law unconstitutional would make the only way to reinstate a federal ban on gay marriage a Constitutional amendment… which is highly unlikely.  And once the Act gets overturned, every state would have to recognize homosexual marriage the same way they recognize heterosexual marriages – regardless of whether gay marriage was legalized in that state, basically makes defiance of gay marriage a complete farce.

Furthermore, the mantra of the Republicans and Conservatives has long been smaller, less restrictive government.  In the economic sphere, Republicans have long argued for less government influence.  Why is this any different?  Have your own personal beliefs on the issue, educate your kids in whatever those are, and let others make up their own minds.  The idea of less government influence is the very nexus of the movement.  Why abandon it?

And coming out in support of gay marriage opens up the party to support from that demographic.  The gay community doesn’t have to be tied to the left – if we were more willing to follow our own mantra, we could have thousands more party voters and perhaps a few million more swing voters.

Or the party can continue along this path and have the new generation of voters eventually turn to a different Conservative party.

Upon reflecting upon the comparison between our current economic crisis and the Great Depression, I came across the realization that during both events, a surge of populism radically changed/is changing the way the country is run/being run.  Many feel the populism  is the best way to run a government; the truest representation of the will of the people and I can’t deny that populist approaches to government do have their appeal.  We all want to live in a country where we all have an equal say and our country and perhaps the easiest way we see that becoming 100% true is through populism.

But the populist approach to governance is more analogous and more conducive to the crazed and violent mob at a Wal-Mart store offering discounts for Black Friday than the best scenario for our government, or any government.  Populism amounts to mob rule and mobs are stupid.  The mob at that Wal-Mart last Black Friday actually trampled a guy to death.  That’s right, people were so intent on trying to be among the first ones in they allowed somebody to die because he (a Wal-Mart worker) was in their way.  Of course it isn’t any one individual from that crowd’s fault, because, as pretty much anyone who has ever been with a large group of people can attest to, the crowd takes on a life of its own.

Depressions, or in this case recessions, seem to bring out the worst of the mobs and the loudest cries for populism.  People in America and abroad (especially this week at the G20 summit) are so mad and blinded by the current economic situation they are willing to do basically anything to let their wrath be known.  CEOs of big companies get death threats daily, even CEOs who didn’t receive bailouts from the federal government.  Bankers and businessmen in London have gotten so many threats ahead of the G20 event there that London Police are actually advising them to go incognito.

And mob rule doesn’t isn’t even consistant.  Mobs, unlike the people who constitute them, can’t think, can’t rationalize, can’t even remember.  All they can do is react.

For President Barack Obama, nearly every move since the moment he became the first black American to be elected President of the United States, has been tracked and incessantly labeled as ‘First Breath’, ‘First Day’, ‘First Week’, ‘First time hitting head while entering Marine One’.  While to some extent, these ‘firsts’ are tracked at the beginning of every President’s first term, and with the public attention given to Barack Obama, it is hardly unexpected that President Obama has received so much attention.  But with his first month only four days away, how is Obama doing as President?

For a Conservative, his time in office thus far has been a major disappointment.  In his first two weeks, Obama did take a few good steps in attempting to work with Republicans; but when he began to realize Republicans weren’t just going to lay down and accept every disagreeable Democrat demand, he decided to drop his facade and stopped trying to appease Republicans.  The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, aka the Spending package cooked up by Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid, is almost entirely a Democratic grab bag.  The Dems only included requests from three Republicans in the Senate (all House Republicans voted against), putting them just over the required super majority, and making them filibuster proof.  Convenient, eh?

Saturday Night Live may like to make fun of Republicans betting on regaining the majority through public outrage over this spending package, but Obama is making a very poor strategic choice here.  By starting his Presidency off on the wrong foot, he is virtually guaranteeing his time in office will be much tougher than Bush’s was.  For a man who will in all likelihood remain the best campaigner America has seen at least in the last century, he has shown extremely poor foresight for his prospects of reelection in four years and (more importantly) the chapter that will surely be written about him as the first black American as President.

2010 and 2012 should be far off however; for those of us involved in the 2008 election, it quickly became obvious that the electorate became extremely fatigued of the elongated election cycle.  For now, Republicans should stick to their principles on government and with any luck, the excessive [governmental] expansionist policies will be abandoned or at least slowed. 

I still wish the best for our President, but perhaps more so I wish that he would correct his course after taking us on a rocky first month.  After all, we all have to pay for it (literally).

Today, Barack Obama and the American people proved that in America anything really is possible and that any child, regardless of race, can realistically dream of becoming President.

I wish President Obama the best of luck as President of the United States.  The people in our country will always disagree about the decisions and policies of the President and Congress, but I hope we can live up to the true message of the 2008 campaign; we can disagree without being disagreeable.

My worry has long been that if Senator McCain didn’t win the 2008 election and failed to bring more moderate, less socially conservative, ideals to the Republican party that it would go the way of the Federalist and the Whig parties of the past.  We’re failing to connect (both figuratively and literally) with the younger side of the party in favor of the older side of the party, who are the most socially conservative.

If we are to avoid our impending doom, we need to change our rhetoric.  Barack Obama, like Ronald Reagan was for the Republicans, is setting the standard for the Democratic party.  College and High School students who would not have been involved in the process, were more so then ever (even if they did not or could not vote), leading me to predict a generation of people who will think they are Democrats for their superficial support of Obama.

Now, in 2009 and the immediate future, we have a unique opportunity to change the dismal forecast for the Republican party.  It is time for us to drop three issues that the loudest and most annoying of us are pursuing so loudly and annoyingly.

1. Abortion – I do believe that the Republican party is on the right side of the abortion issue because I believe human life to begin at conception, but we need to drop this issue because, to independents and moderate Democrats, we are increasingly being viewed as a party where only one issue really matters.  The choice of Governor Palin as McCain’s running mate, really boiled down to one issue: abortion.  When the idea was floated that McCain might pick a pro-choice running mate like former Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge or Senator Lieberman, all hell broke lose in the authoritarian social conservative branch of the party.When it comes down to it, abortion is really a philosophical debate and not a religious debate as ’so-cons’ would have you believe.  No religious texts, including the Bible, mention abortion… at all.  Fanatics stretch the meaning of words and passages to follow their belief abortion is a sin against God.  But when it comes down to it, religious texts are silent on the issue… because abortion did not really exist at the time in which they were written. The issue is strictly a philosophical debate because it poses a question religion is mute on, and science can never answer: when does human life begin?  Does it begin at conception, birth, or somewhere in between?  This issue is like the old rhetorical question “‘if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”, because the answer depends upon the beliefs and thoughts of the person.  Science can tell you the boiling point of water, but it can never answer a question the humans themselves interpret so drastically differently.

   Furthermore, religion should never be used as justification for making something legal or illegal.  I can recognize that people think that their religious beliefs guide them on this issue, but every single person has a different belief.  If somebody can come up with a non-religious argument about why we should make abortion illegal, I would probably support it (and support the Republican party supporting it).  But until then, we should keep quiet on this issue and raise our children with whatever belief set to which we subscribe.

   Also, it is important that the issue of abortion be separated from the issue of embryonic stem cell research. On the issue, they look to be very similar, however it is my assertion that they are not because abortions are a waste of precious human cells that could, theoretically and in practice save millions of lives. Most importantly, it would be possible for researchers to use the thousands of leftover embryos from procedures like in vitro fertilization that otherwise get thrown away.

2. Gay Marriage – Republicans, though few will admit – perhaps logically so, are already on the wrong historical side of the issue of gay marriage.  Opponents would argue that only two states have gay marriage and that a major victory was achieved in liberal California with the passage of proposition eight.  This is true and currently makes the issue look like social conservatives are winning the war over marriage but a few things are going to happen that are going to drastically change the tide of this argument.  Firstly, Obama and the Democratically-controlled Congress is going to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996.  This will force the federal government and every state to recognize same-sex marriages in Massachusetts and Connecticut meaning that laws against gay marriage in the other 48 states will be effectively meaningless because all gay couples will have to do is take a trip to New England to get married.  I would guess that eventually, states will just give in and allow gays to marry in their respective home states.
3. Creationism/Intelligent Design – Opposition to teaching evolution in science classrooms is one of the most ridiculous things that many in the Republican party still trumpet.  While it is the right of any person to believe whatever they want, our schools need to be educating students in the fields of science to be competent with students from other countries. Indoctrinate them at home and in church; let the schools give them real science.

Hopefully, with these issues no longer at the forefront of our party platforms, we can begin to forge a new path for ourselves.  I strongly believe that by “staying-the-course” with social conservativism the Republican party is creating its own downfall.