The thing that bothers me most about the musical chairs the Senate and House played on Nov. 2 was that in the rush to prove which candidate had real moral values, right-winged extremists slipped into the positions that will decide the fate of human rights in this nation. Many candidates did nothing to earn their seats other than state their support for President Bush.
Republican Tom Coburn, the new senator from Oklahoma, said he advocates the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions and fears the rampant lesbianism he said he heard was developing in Oklahoma schools.
Coburn even compared Republican leaders to the Biblical Pharisees in a book he co-wrote, Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders.
Newly-elected South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, a Republican, ran his campaign on replacing the income tax with a 23 percent sales tax and said he believes gays should not teach in public schools. He explained to The New York Times that I would have given the same answer when asked if a single woman who was pregnant and living with her boyfriend should be hired to teach my third-grade children.
But it is not only in the Senate that there is a push toward extremism. Eleven states voted to ban gay marriage, including Ohio by 62 percent.
Moral values was cited as the top issue for voters -more often than the war in Iraq, terrorism or the economy, according to a poll conducted by nearly two dozen news organizations. Almost 80 percent of voters who cited moral values as their driving force to the polls voted for Bush. In other words, Bush won an election based on issues that shouldn't even concern the government, much less be the only things that matter to the voting public. It was an excellent campaign strategy -getting people to argue over the definition of the concept of marriage to take their minds off the bloodshed in Iraq. The only problem is that it bitterly divided the nation.
After Bush said in a press conference Thursday that he earned political capital and he intended to cash it in, it begs the question: Why bother to talk about national unity when his moral agenda is the divisive factor? Why should the Republicans compromise, and why should the Democrats expect them to? After all, Bush believes he is right.
-Megan Cotten is The Post's state editor. Send her an e-mail at megan.cotten@ohiou.edu.
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Megan Cotten
