Pledging Allegiance to the Special Interests: Margaret Carlson
By Margaret Carlson
Bloomberg
Jul 19, 2011
Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman may be trailing the pack in the Republican presidential primary, but he is a leader in one important regard: Unlike his colleagues, Huntsman has refused to sign any of the special- interest pledges that are increasingly turning political office into an ideological straitjacket.
Huntsman has been joined by Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty in rejecting one particularly odious pledge -- the Marriage Vow put forward by the Family Leader, a conservative values group run by Bob Vander Plaats, a power player in the Iowa Republican caucuses. Those who sign the Family Leader pledge -- including Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum -- promise to oppose “intimate unions which are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, same-sex, etc.”
Although the pledge is largely devoted to the Godzilla-like terrors associated with all things gay and lesbian, it doesn’t stop there. It also demands that signatories oppose the deployment of women in forward combat roles and commit to protect women and “the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy” -- otherwise known as children -- “from seduction into promiscuity” and other instances of “stolen innocence.”
Bachmann received a round of bad press over the pledge’s assertion -- since modified -- that certain innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy had been better off as the fruit of slaves. “Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President,” the pledge stated. (As with the apposition of the words “holocaust” and “but,” the combination of “slavery, yet” is a sure sign that you’ve run off the rails.)
(More here.)
Bloomberg
Jul 19, 2011
Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman may be trailing the pack in the Republican presidential primary, but he is a leader in one important regard: Unlike his colleagues, Huntsman has refused to sign any of the special- interest pledges that are increasingly turning political office into an ideological straitjacket.
Huntsman has been joined by Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty in rejecting one particularly odious pledge -- the Marriage Vow put forward by the Family Leader, a conservative values group run by Bob Vander Plaats, a power player in the Iowa Republican caucuses. Those who sign the Family Leader pledge -- including Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum -- promise to oppose “intimate unions which are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, same-sex, etc.”
Although the pledge is largely devoted to the Godzilla-like terrors associated with all things gay and lesbian, it doesn’t stop there. It also demands that signatories oppose the deployment of women in forward combat roles and commit to protect women and “the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy” -- otherwise known as children -- “from seduction into promiscuity” and other instances of “stolen innocence.”
Bachmann received a round of bad press over the pledge’s assertion -- since modified -- that certain innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy had been better off as the fruit of slaves. “Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President,” the pledge stated. (As with the apposition of the words “holocaust” and “but,” the combination of “slavery, yet” is a sure sign that you’ve run off the rails.)
(More here.)
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