NOM’s ‘Elite’ Hoodwinking Of Middle Class Voters
It is commonly alleged that today’s Republican Party employs ruthless strategies to scare middle class voters into voting Republican, though doing so works mainly against those voters’ economic interests.
How might that allegation be tested against the manifest political strategies of the so-called National Organization for Marriage, which — despite its occasional affiliations with freak Democratic anti-gay bigots like New York State Senator and Reverend Rubén DÃaz, Sr. — is a resolutely Republican organization?
Consider NOM’s abuses of the word “elite.”
Elite acquires specific meanings in context. When people speak, for example, of “an elite athlete,” the word has an almost entirely positive connotation.
NOM’s anti-gay propaganda, however, uses “elite” as a pejorative. Consider these examples:
Yesterday, when the First Circuit Court ruled DOMA unconstitutional, NOM’s Brian Brown said, “It’s obvious that the federal courts on both coasts are intent on imposing their liberal, elitist views of marriage on the American people.”
Never mind that two of the First Circuit judges were Republican appointees. Brown’s propaganda clearly is targeted at a Bible-belt, gays-hating demographic, and encouraging that demographic to feel that something is being “imposed” on it by figures on “both coasts” with “elitist views of marriage.”
Notice that Brown makes no actual legal argument; anybody who even remotely appears to want to undo sexual orientation apartheid in marriage is smeared as “elitist.” NOM’s sheer, hateful gall in using this tactic is all the more deplorable that they are using “elite” — with implications that those so described have unmerited advantages over others — in the service of a political movement that benefits the 1% at the expense of workers, as well as of those who do not suffer marriage discrimination.
If you are not legally barred from marriage, you are hardly being imposed on by a supposed “elite” that is legally barred from marriage; you have the unmerited legal advantage over them, in fact.
Leave aside whatever you may think of the MIT-educated David Koch’s politics; clearly Koch himself does not think of the Reagan-appointed First Circuit Court Chief Judge Juan Torruella, who ruled that DOMA is unconstitutional, as an “elitist” in any pejorative sense. Brown is, I repeat, with his anti-gay propaganda targeting a demographic distinct in its fortunes from those of the Koch brothers.
Here is another example of NOM’s propagandistic abuses of the word “elite.”
Recently in the U.K., The Law Society, a group steadfastly committed to LGBT equality, canceled a planned anti-gay conference, which NOM’s Brian Brown was scheduled to attend, after learning that the organizers were gay-bashing bigots.
Brown’s press release about the cancellation is exceedingly “elite” heavy. In a foaming rage, Brown 1) calls The Law Society “an elitist organization;” 2) says that “in many ways the effort to redefine marriage represents a conflict between the elites and the people;” 3) says that  “the elites in The Law Society look down their nose at” those who oppose marriage equality; and 4) says that “The elites scoff at such things, and prefer to substitute their views for those of the vast majority of citizens.”
Brown very obviously laid it on thick with a trowel, to be sure that his target demographic of “non-elites” would have the idea that they were under a most hideous attack from the “elite” Law Society, whose crime according to Brown is that it furthers the cause of LGBT equality, at the alleged expense of “the  people.” Obviously in the context of Great Britain, references to “the people” do not generally include Lady Trudeliese Poppysmith and the Right Honorable Baron of Higgensbottom.
Additional examples of NOM’s propagandizing against “elites” are easy to find, but we must not overlook that Brown’s selfsame press release pointing angry fingers at the “elitist” equality supporters in The Law Society happens to mention that NOM’s Brian Brown studied at Oxford University. For persons unaware, the University of Oxford is an elite British institution of higher learning.
NOM’s other leading anti-gay bigots also are products of “elite” schools. Maggie Gallagher earned a B.A. in Religious Studies at Yale University. NOM’s current Board Chairman John Eastman holds a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School (academic settings do  not come any more “elite” than that of U. of Chicago) and a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate School. Earlier in his career, Eastman clerked for federal appellate court judge J. Michael Luttig and for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
You might think it would take a particular level of nerve for NOM’s Eastman, as a former Supreme Court clerk to participate in attempted smearings of federal judges on “both coasts” with “elitist” views of marriage, and you would be right, and yet, Eastman is surpassed in his Republican gay-bashing bigot’s shamelessness by NOM’s actual mastermind, its founder and “chairman emeritus” Robert George.
George earned a B.A. at Swarthmore College, a J.D. at Harvard Law School, an MTS at the Harvard Divinity School, and a D.Phil. at Oxford. He is on the faculty of Princeton University, and recently, Speaker John Boehner appointed him to the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom.
Clearly, George as a multi-degree-holding Princeton University professor, and United States government official, can not credibly disparage anybody else as an “elitist,” for any reason, really, but still less merely because they disagree with his gay-bashing bigotry. Just as clearly, George, who is listed on NOM’s website among its current personnel, was involved in writing and refining the notoriously anti-gay NOM pledge, signed very willingly by the likes of Michele Bachman and Rick Santorum, leaving Mitt Romney — (who once ran against Ted Kennedy by saying he would be the stronger supporter of gay rights) — no choice but to sign it in order not to be overcome by the likes of Santorum in the early and middle stages of the Republican presidential primaries.
The NOM pledge (non-bindingly) commits the signer, Romney, to appointing federal and Supreme Court judges, and attorneys general, who always will rule against same-sex marriage rights. NOM’s intent is hardly that such judges and attorneys general should not be culled from elite backgrounds. Robert George cultivates political and personal connections with the right-wing members of the Supreme Court, including Antonin Scalia, whose praise for George often is cited on George’s bio blurbs. George has introduced Scalia when Scalia has spoken at Princeton.
Ask yourself, if Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Princeton University Professor Robert George are talking to each other, are they going to say “We are not the elite. Only elitists want same-sex marriage.”? Then ask yourself when NOM will publish on its blog, “We get most of our money from a very small cadre of elite political investors.”
NOM’s despicable tactics of branding equality supporters negatively as “elitists” come right out of the Karl Rove playbook of whipping up anti-gay hatred to get bigots to vote Republican, even if doing so is against those voters’ own economic interests. Where NOM’s donor rosters have come to light, (and we have seen that NOM gets the lion’s share of its funds from a very small sampling of large donors,) it becomes clear that the meme of “only elitists support same-sex marriage, which is against God” is directed at a downscale Bible-thumping demographic, in order to get that downscale Bible-thumping demographic voting for the Republicans that NOM’s big donors want in office.
That NOM is a Republican proxy organization is further evidenced in its relentless attempts to get African-American voters to vote Republican, mainly if not only because of their opposition to same-sex marriage. There are not many means to stop an overwhelming majority of African-Americans from voting for President Obama, but NOM and its large, wealthy white Republican donors are working hard to attempt to get enough African-Americans in one or two swing states to vote for Romney, as part of a larger Republican strategy of throwing tight swing states to the Republican.
A May 31, 2012 NOM Blog post concerning attempts to repeal equality in Maryland showed only African-Americans as gay-rights opponents and contains a puke bucket full of NOM ploys for angering black anti-gay bigots over same-sex marriage being called a civil right, even though the NAACP has declared that it is one. Also on May 31, NOM Blog carried a post titled “Black Church & Civil Rights Leaders Convene Press Conference Opposing President on Gay Marriage.” The white NOM Republican leaders know that most African-Americans have not wavered in support for Obama because of same-sex marriage, but are counting on a cold-blooded, unending barrage of malevolent anti-gay propaganda directed at African-Americans throughout the election to yield fruit with some black voters, by hate-mongering them into voting for Romney. NOM’s handful of big donors are gay-bashing bigots, to be sure, but banning same-sex marriage is not their chief political objective in giving money to NOM.
There has been one instance of NOM using the word “elite” in what it thought was a non-pejorative sense. NOM’s notorious gay-bashing strategy documents — the ones that revealed evil plots to drive wedges between minorities and to fan hostilities against gay people — also called for the deployment of “non-cognitive elites” to gay bash “across national boundaries.” NOM used “non-cognitive” as a euphemism for “dingbat.” NOM’s elite leaders wanted dingbats to spread the message of anti-gay hate, to get other dingbats to vote Republican. Carrie Prejean — whom NOM dumped after discovering her porno past — was one such “non-cognitive elite” willing to gay bash across national boundaries. Â Do not miss reading Fred Karger’s letter, dripping like an over-ripe mango with sarcasm to Maggie Gallagher about her fallen dingbat-savior Carrie Prejean.
Here is the bottom line on this.
NOM’s leaders all have elite educational backgrounds, making it all the more repugnant that they engage in Rove-style political gay bashing. Â With malice aforethought, the NOM elite demonize all equality supporters as “elitists” — to downscale Bible-thumpers who do not understand how the financial-trickery-wool is getting pulled over their gay hating eyes — in order to get those downscale Bible thumping gay haters to vote for Mitt Romney, who wants to lower his own taxes while raising theirs.
Â
New York City– based novelist and freelance writer Scott Rose’s LGBT– interest by– line has appeared on Advocate .com, PoliticusUSA .com, The New York Blade, Queerty .com, Girlfriends and in numerous additional venues. Among his other interests are the arts, boating and yachting, wine and food, travel, poker and dogs. His “Mr. David Cooper’s Happy Suicide†is about a New York City advertising executive assigned to a condom account.
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President-elect Donald Trump pledged to fast-track permits and tamp down regulations, including environmental, for any entity that wants to invest $1 billion or more in America, while offering no specifics or parameters, including how the federal government could arbitrarily overrule state and local laws.
“Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social website.
During the campaign, Trump told oil and gas executives and lobbyists at a closed-door Mar-a-Lago fundraiser that if they invested $1 billion in his campaign, he would scale back or remove environmental regulations.
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“Attendees included executives from ExxonMobil, EQT Corporation and the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies for the oil industry,” The New York Times had reported in May. “The event was organized by the oil billionaire Harold Hamm, who has for years helped to shape Republican energy policies.”
Trump has announced his nominee for Secretary of the Interior will be North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum.
“Under the National Environmental Policy Act,” Forbes reports, “the federal government is required to conduct environmental reviews before approving energy production plans, infrastructure builds and other projects. How Trump will help investors get around regulations isn’t clear, but Trump has vowed to increase domestic production of oil and natural gas, projects that are often stymied or killed in the regulatory process.”
Critics blasted Trump’s statement.
314Action, which says it is “the only organization in the nation focused on recruiting, training, and electing Democrats with a background in science to public office,” wrote: “To tackle the climate crisis, Congress needs to pass and enforce bold, evidence-based legislation. However, Donald Trump doesn’t believe that billionaires should have to follow the law. In his world, they can pay-to-play and bypass crucial environmental protections. That’s why we’ll always fight to #ElectScientists who will fight back against his anti-science agenda and hold these bad actors accountable.”
“A government of oligarchs that will exist to solely serve the interests of oligarchs while distracting working people with culture wars. Foreign corporations & persons can loot & pollute the US and bypass regs that protect the health of Americans as long as they got lots of cash,” observed MeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski.
Journalist David Leavitt asked, “How many animals will go extinct because of this? How much quicker will this hasten the destruction of our planet?”
READ MORE: Hegseth Successfully Gaslights on Women in ‘Combat’
Image via Shutterstock
The Secretary of Defense nomination of Pete Hegseth, the ex-Fox News weekend co-host under a cloud of allegations ranging from sexual assault and sexual harassment to abuse of alcohol to financial mismanagement of two charities, appears to have turned around after several media appearances, and the support from key Republican Senators, especially Joni Ernst, who is being subjected to a “swarm of MAGA attacks,” Politico reports.
Senator Ernst, a combat veteran who sits on the critical Armed Services Committee and initially appeared skeptical about Hegseth running the world’s largest and most lethal military, has opened the door to the possibility of giving him the thumbs up.
Ernst “previously said she wasn’t ready to back Hegseth. But after their second meeting on Monday, she said she’d be ‘supporting him through this process’ — though she would not say whether she would ultimately vote in favor of his confirmation,” ABC News reports.
Meanwhile, Politico reports Ernst’s possibly changed stance may have something to do with the extraordinary pressure she is receiving, thanks to Trump’s transition team and MAGA allies.
READ MORE: Hegseth Successfully Gaslights on Women in ‘Combat’
“In recent days, allies of Trump adopted an approach that is not novel for the president-elect and his followers: Make life extremely uncomfortable for anyone who dares to oppose him. The swarm of MAGA attacks that Sen. Joni Ernst has experienced is a warning of what’s in store for others who express skepticism of his personnel choices.”
Politico adds that “the palpable shift demonstrated how grassroots pressure, combined with the influence of Vice President-elect JD Vance, helped bolster Hegseth only days after Trump was drawing up contingency plans to tap Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis instead.”
“People in Trump’s orbit believed that if Hegseth’s nomination was ‘sacrificed’ to Ernst, it would become a ‘feeding frenzy’ with the president-elect’s other controversial picks.”
Senator Lindsey Graham, who served in the military for decades, on Tuesday appeared dismissive of the numerous allegations against Hegseth, claiming that they were made anonymously. He seemed prepared to afford the nominee the same civil rights as if he were being prosecuted and tried in a court of law, and not a presidential cabinet nominee to head the Pentagon, which has a budget of just under $1 trillion.
“The accusations are anonymous, the police report I’ve read uh, right now, he’s in pretty good shape,” Graham told CNN’s Manu Raju (video below). “I think he’s very smart, I actually was with him in Afghanistan what he’s doing is his duty, I was over there very briefly as a reservist. So, the accusations about mismanaging money and about, um, nonconsensual behavior, if they come forward, I will listen to those accusations, but they have to be credible and they have to be presented in a fashion that Pete can rebut.”
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“So he’s much better off this week than he was last week,” Graham said.
Raju reports there currently are no GOP Senators who have said publicly they absolutely will not vote for Hegseth.
But Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal “says a number of his GOP colleagues are opposed to Pete Hegseth’s nomination to be Defense Secretary,” reports CBS News Congressional Correspondent Scott MacFarlane. “But he says GOP colleagues might still vote for Hegseth because ‘Trump is a bully and a tyrant.'”
Watch below or at this link.
Lindsey Graham, who said last week that Pete Hegseth would have a “difficult” time, says: “Right now, he’s in pretty good shape.”
He said he would “listen to those accusations” about alleged misconduct if “if they come forward…but they have to be credible.” pic.twitter.com/fKuWMLK9xO— Manu Raju (@mkraju) December 10, 2024
READ MORE: ‘I Love His Charisma’: Republican Lauds ‘Man of Integrity’ Hegseth Who Will ‘Get Rid of DEI’
Image via Reuters
He’s been called the “least qualified nominee in American history,” and has insisted to reporters that his confirmation battle will not be played out in the press, but Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, after multiple appearances before the cameras, appears to be gaining ground on what some assumed last week was a nomination that was dead in the water.
Hegseth has put to use his decade of experience as a Fox News host and leveraged his ties with his former employer to turn the ship around.
In addition to charges of being “wholly unqualified,” Hegseth is attempting to overcome numerous damning allegations, including tattoos that reflect an affinity for Christian nationalism, alleged “aggressive drunkenness,” possible alcohol intoxication on the job, alleged sexual assault of a woman who attended a Republican conference with her husband and children and says she was trapped by Hegseth in his room, and alleged financial mismanagement of two charities that support veterans.
He is also trying to change the accurate perception that he opposes women in combat roles. Women have been in combat roles in the U.S. Armed Forces since 2015. But Hegseth has long been opposed to women in combat.
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Last month, Hegseth took heat after declaring, “I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles,” and that “men in those positions are more capable.”
Pete Hegseth 5 days ago: “I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles.” pic.twitter.com/0W3LDSakud
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 13, 2024
“Rather than fight, women are best suited to ‘carry the banner of Christian love’ into war as nurses and support staff members, Hegseth writes,” opinion columnist Carlos Lozada reported at The New York Times last week, citing passages from Hegseth’s book. “Women’s physical shortcomings compared with male warriors — in terms of bone density, muscle mass and lung capacity — would make the U.S. military ‘softer’ and easier to defeat. He also emphasizes that women are naturally ‘life givers,’ so do we really want to train them to become killers? Besides, if men grow accustomed to treating women as equal targets in wartime, he reasons, ‘then you will be hard-pressed to ask them to treat women differently at home.'”
Even top news outlets and political pundits appear to have been hoodwinked after Hegseth’s appearance on Fox News’ “Hannity” Monday night.
Telling Sean Hannity he had a “great” meeting with U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) on Monday, the fast-talking Hegseth launched into apparently pre-scripted remarks (video below):
“I mean, people don’t really know this. I’ve known Senator Ernst for over ten years. I knew her when she was a state senator, running to be the first female combat veteran, and we support her in that effort and have continued to, because, you get, you get into these meetings and and you get, you get to listen to senators as an amazing advise and consent process, and you hear how thoughtful and serious and substantive they are on these key issues that they pertain to our Defense Department, and Joni Ernst is front and center on that, so able to have phone calls and meetings time and time again to talk over the issues is really, really important.”
“And the fact that she’s willing to support me through this process means a lot, and I also want an opportunity here to clarify comments that have been misconstrued that I somehow don’t support women in the military.”
“Some of our greatest warriors, our best warriors out there are women, who who serve raised their right hand to defend this country, and love our nation, want to defend that flag, and they do it every single day around the globe. So I’m not presuming anything, but after President Trump asked me to be his secretary of defense, should I get the opportunity to do that, I look forward to being a secretary for all our warriors, men and women, for the amazing contributions they make in our military.”
READ MORE: ‘I Love His Charisma’: Republican Lauds ‘Man of Integrity’ Hegseth Who Will ‘Get Rid of DEI’
What Hegseth did was change the framing of the controversy.
Hegseth isn’t under fire for saying he doesn’t want women in the military, he is under fire for saying he does not believe women are capable of serving in combat—even after nearly a decade of them doing so.
And yet, that’s exactly what he said on Monday, when he conflated “warriors” with combat soldiers, saying, “I also want an opportunity here to clarify comments that have been misconstrued that I somehow don’t support women in the military.”
And he’s getting help from the media.
Here’s CBS News on Tuesday morning, almost using his words as their own reporting: “now clarifying comments he made that women should not serve in military combat roles.”
His “clarification” did not state he now believes women should serve in combat roles.
Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s embattled nominee for defense secretary, is now clarifying comments he made that women should not serve in military combat roles.
Hegseth is making his case on Capitol Hill, including in a meeting with Sen. Joni Ernst, the Senate’s… pic.twitter.com/Ql9BW8aavZ
— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) December 10, 2024
NBC’s “Today” show on Tuesday published a report on YouTube titled, “Pete Hegseth appears to reverse views on women in combat.”
David Axelrod successfully served as Barack Obama’s chief strategist for both of his presidential campaigns, and as a White House Senior Advisor to the President. Now a CNN senior political analyst, here’s what he wrote on Tuesday:
“Watching Hegseth proclaim his appreciation for women in combat, months after denouncing the idea of women in combat, is reminiscent of the SCOTUS nominees who told skeptical senators that Roe v. Wade was ‘settled law.'”
And while he is correct about the justices, the only woman he proclaimed his appreciation for being in combat was Senator Ernst, who largely holds the key to his confirmation.
Watch Hegseth’s “Hannity” interview and the other videos above, or all at this link.
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