Sunday News Show Round Up: Part 1, Fox News Sunday
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?
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Comments :
Jun '10
Re: Sunday News Show Round Up: Part 1, Fox News Sunday
I think Daniels was just saying the obvious. When your house is burning down, stop arguing with your mother-in-law, and help her carry the photo albums out. First things first.
Jun '10
Re: Sunday News Show Round Up: Part 1, Fox News Sunday
If Sharron Angle is on the fringe, I guess that makes me a radical conservative. I've been in public education long enough to understand the absolute need to abolish the Department of Education as the first step toward a system based entirely on publicly financed vouchers. Someone needs to make the case publicly. On the other hand, if the idea does not resonate with the electorate, if people are content with public education despite the miserable results and outrageous costs, then I'm afraid we are too far down the road of decadence to recover our national greatness.
May '10
Re: Sunday News Show Round Up: Part 1, Fox News Sunday
Boy Scouts Boo Obama
Sorry if this is out of place, but a discussion of this week's news shows seems like that best location to put it in play. It will have to be done in pieces, bear with me.
Boy Scouts Boo Obama
As seen on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAWsy7VV8oE&feature=player_embedded
Scouts booing the president is a shocking and inexcusable breach of courtesy. The National Council owes the President an immediate and public apology. Each scout who booed, and their adult leaders, should write a note of apology.
That said, I will indulge myself in the sort of “root cause” analysis that some on the left use to exonerate rapists, rioters, and other bad actors.
The scouts themselves are mid teens, ages 13-18. Kids do dumb things and it was no doubt something of a “wave” phenomenon. The president chose not to attend, as has been customary, the scouts booed the video. Having been an adult scout leader for some 10 years I can assure you that boys that age are not interested in the kind of policy analysis that might lead an adult to be critical of the president.
May '10
Re: Sunday News Show Round Up: Part 1, Fox News Sunday
Boy Scouts Boo Obama (part 2)
Which brings us to the adult leadership. Had I been one of them, I would have squashed any booing by the scouts under my supervision. I have no doubt that is what many of the adult leaders did. So the question is why did some adults allow it? My experience with adult scouters has been that they are by and large a pretty fine group of (mostly) men, whose political persuasions run the full gamut of far right to far left.
My hypothesis is that we saw a manifestation of the growing anger over a government that seems increasingly out-of-touch and uninterested in the views and customs of a large number of the governed, as described in the last week by Peggy Noonan in her August 7 Wall Street Journal column America Is at Risk of Boiling Over (http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html), and Pat Caddell in an August 6 (?) Fox News Interview (http://www.examiner.com/x-35976-Conservative-Examiner~y2010m8d7-Video-Democrat-pollster-warns-American-anger-has-become-prerevolutionary)
May '10
Re: Sunday News Show Round Up: Part 1, Fox News Sunday
Boy Scouts Boo Obama (part 3)
Some of the adult leaders may have been disenchanted with the president’s policies, others may have been disgusted. Still others may have joined in the booing. For whatever reason they were not as energetic in quelling the booing as them might otherwise, and should have, been.
When the Democrats booed a Boy Scout color guard flag ceremony at (I think I recall it was) their 2000 convention, it was dog bites man. When the Boy Scouts booed President Obama at their Jamboree, it was man bites dog. One wonders if the president was listening.
Footnote: For enquiring minds who might wonder my background for writing about the Boy Scouts. Two of my sons are Eagle Scouts, as am I. I helped start a scout troop, was the Troop Committee Chairman for 6 years, am still a Committee Member and merit badge counselor, and have well over 100 camping days of adult field leadership of a scout troop.
Jul '10
Re: Sunday News Show Round Up: Part 1, Fox News Sunday
Agreed. And stop insisting on a "pro-life" litmus test in GOP primaries.
May '10
Re: Sunday News Show Round Up: Part 1, Fox News Sunday
For one thing, social conservatism is mainly advanced by changing attitudes rather than passing legislation. And we're winning there on some fronts, as youngsters are more pro-life than their parents. It can also be advanced by appointing judges that will reverse some truly pernicious precedents. Passing legislation is the last arrow in the quiver. Probably does more harm than good.
Jun '10
Re: Sunday News Show Round Up: Part 1, Fox News Sunday
I will put first things first, Gov. Daniels, 1. life. then comes 2. liberty. then comes 3. the pursuit of happiness.
One need not make a deal with the devil to convince other citizens that the current rate of spending is unsustainable and destructive to the republic.
He/we won't win without the social issues because there are enough citizens who truly put first things first and won't go along unless he does as well.
Re: Sunday News Show Round Up: Part 1, Fox News Sunday
Thank God for TiVo. As I've mentioned about 1,939,239 times here, I'm a Mitch Daniels fan. He'd be a terrific president. And he's saying, to me, exactly the right things -- the huge challenge for the next decade is going to be scaling back -- not cutting, or even repealing Obamacare. Well, not just doing that. But scaling back the creaky, bankrupting mess we've allowed to build up around us since FDR. That's going to be a hard, hard thing to do. And I like that Mitch is keeping his focus on that.
Perfectly put.
Jun '10
Re: Sunday News Show Round Up: Part 1, Fox News Sunday
It's needless to draw such distinctions this time around. We're not losing pro-abortion conservative votes or pro-gay marriage libertarians in this election. Anyone who is concerned about government spending won't be pulling the lever for a Dem in 2010 or 2012. What Daniels does by drawing such distinctions is make the crowd that brought President Bush to victory angry (much like McCain did...).
Obamacare needs 'scaling back' for many reasons - whether you're a pro-life conservative who doesn't want tax dollars supporting the full-scale destruction of the unborn, or a small government libertarian who knows the system to be financially unsustainable, or just someone who knows that Obamacare will provide a lower quality of care.
But, telling social conservatives that pro-life issues take a back seat to economic issues is foolish by my estimation, especially with 45 million dead unborn children looming in the forefront of those persons minds. Politically, you have nothing to gain from saying that because these people also know the dire economic situation we're in and were behind you before you told them that the most important issue in their mind needs to be put aside.