It's that time of the week again--Sunday news show time! Let's start with Fox.
Today on Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace hosted Ted Olsen, the conservative lawyer who argued for striking down California’s Proposition 8, a ballot measure defining marriage between a man and a woman.
Was the judge’s ruling a case of judicial activism? Olsen said, “It’s not judicial activism when judges do what the Constitution tells them to do” and follows precedent. “We’re not talking about a new right, we’re talking about a fundamental right.” Marriage. The “judge is simply keeping that leading promise,” given to us in the aftermath of the Civil War, “that all men are created equal.”
Olsen continued, saying that the right to marry is a right guaranteed under the Constitution, as judges of the Supreme Court have declared in at least 14 cases. Olsen noted, for instance, that the Supreme Court struck down laws prohibiting interracial marriage in 1967 (Loving v Virginia). In those cases, they reasoned that the right to marriage in general is a right for all citizens. Since same-sex marriage is a particular kind of marriage, then it falls under the general right to marriage that the Court has codified into our society.
Of course, Olsen is a brilliant lawyer and I think he makes a compelling case. In fact, I see eye-to-eye with Olsen on this issue. However, I think there’s a weak point in his argument that, I was surprised to see, he did not address. Namely: in cases of interracial marriage—where he is deriving his legal precedent—marriage was still between a man and a woman. The essence of marriage, as society has understood it, is not altered if a black man marries a white woman. It does seem to me, however, that the definition of marriage does change once it applies to two members of the same-sex. For this reason, I don’t think that the precedents Olsen sites are as analogous to his own case as he was arguing them to be on Fox News.
Mitch Daniels also appeared on Fox News Sunday. Speaking sincerely and thoughtfully, he reiterated many of the fiscal conservative points that have given him great notoriety as governor of Indiana. For instance, he mentioned the necessity to scale back on entitlement programs like social security and medicaid.
He also discussed a controversial quote he recently gave to the Weekly Standard, saying we need to call a “truce on the so-called social issues,” until our country’s economic malaise is resolved. He sees a “Republic-threatening dimension and nature of this fiscal disaster that’s waiting for us.” Therefore, he thinks all conservatives must come together to address fiscal issues first.
Conservative leaders must “stop dividing people as these [social] issues do,” because “we need to come together in concert to do some very difficult and novel things.”
On running for president: “I have not decided to do this. Many people have said ‘at least keep an open mind,’ and I said ‘alright.’”
Whether he plans to run or not, his comments on Fox News Sunday are music to the ears of independent voters and tea partiers, two groups who are chiefly concerned with the country’s economic outlook and less concerned with social issues--and two groups that are bending the political winds these days and will likely continue to into 2012.
But on the panel, Juan Williams asked whether conservative leaders like Mitch Daniels—and Chris Christie, another intrepid governor—stand for what conservatives will represent in November 2010 and 2012, or whether more fringe figures like Sharron Angle and Rand Paul are more indicative.
What do you think?