Tag: GOP

Posted onOpinionated Junk

Gary Johnson announces support for same-sex marriage

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Today Gary John­son, GOP can­di­date for Pres­i­dent in 2012, announced that he is [updat­ing his posi­tion on same-sex mar­riages ver­sus civ­il unions](http://www.garyjohnson2012.com/governor-gary-johnson-announces-support-for-gay-marriage). I sup­port the legal­iza­tion of same-sex mar­riage in my own state so over­all I’m pleased to hear this announce­ment. I am also a lit­tle con­cerned about the lan­guage Gov John­son used when he said that mar­riage should be up to indi­vid­u­als rather than the states.

I’d like to see the Defense of Mar­riage Act (DOMA) go away and I would like to see the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment rec­og­nize for tax and oth­er legal pur­pos­es any mar­riage that was legal in the state in which it was per­formed. But I’d like state leg­is­la­tures or the peo­ple of each state to make that call. If a state does not wish to issue mar­riage licens­es to same-sex cou­ples, I don’t think the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment ought dic­tate that they do. That seems almost as bad as DOMA.

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Posted onOpinionated Junk

The elephant in the room

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Tonight at 6pm Pacific/9pm East­ern time, nine GOP pres­i­den­tial hope­fuls will take the stage in a live ques­tion and answer ses­sion intend­ed to famil­iar­ize Amer­i­cans with the can­di­dates. This will be the sev­enth so-called debate in the 2012 pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry sea­son, and the sec­ond to include Gov­er­nor Gary John­son, who appeared in the first of these debates back in May but who has not been per­mit­ted to par­tic­i­pate since. In a sur­prise (but wel­come) deci­sion on Sep­tem­ber 20th, Fox News invit­ed John­son to par­tic­i­pate in the debate over the objec­tions of the Flori­da Repub­li­can Par­ty, a co-spon­sor of the event.

John­son was the Gov­er­nor of New Mex­i­co from 1994 to 2003, a repub­li­can elect­ed and reelect­ed in a pre­dom­i­nant­ly demo­c­rat state. Unlike some repub­li­can gov­er­nors elect­ed to lib­er­al states, he was uncom­pro­mis­ing on fis­cal pol­i­cy, using his guber­na­to­r­i­al veto over 750 times in his eight years in office. This proves two things about vot­ers that seem to be for­got­ten in today’s polit­i­cal cli­mate: that vot­ers will back a can­di­date they believe has integri­ty even over one with whom they agree on pol­i­cy issues (with­in rea­son, of course) and that vot­ers are hun­gry to escape from the unholy alliances that par­ty pol­i­tics force.

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