[Vision2020] The Right’s Righteous Frauds

[Art Deco]

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May 14, 2012
The Right’s Righteous Frauds By FRANK
BRUNI<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/frank_bruni/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

Say what you will about Bristol Palin, she’s a quick study. It didn’t take
her long to master the ways of her elders on the censorious right and
decide that personal circumstance and past error needn’t prevent someone
from claiming righteous leadership. Uncle Rush must be proud.

Soon after President Obama stated support for same-sex marriage, Bristol
publicly weighed in. Because, you know, the world was on tenterhooks.

In a blog post<http://www.patheos.com/blogs/bristolpalin/2012/05/hail-to-the-chiefs-malia-and-sasha-obama/>she
focused on the reference that Obama made to his daughters — and to the
same-sex parents of some of the girls’ friends.

“It would’ve been helpful for him to explain to Malia and Sasha that while
her friends (sic) parents are no doubt lovely people, that’s not a reason
to change thousands of years of thinking about marriage,” wrote Bristol,
making her heady debut as the new Dr. Spock for a nascent millennium. She
added that “in general kids do better growing up in a mother/father home.
Ideally, fathers help shape their kids’ worldview.”

Fathers like...Levi Johnston? It’s with him that she conceived her child —
out of wedlock, at the age of 17 — and by most accounts, his relationship
with her and the Palin family isn’t any warmer than Juneau in January. A
mother/father home is not what he and Bristol have succeeded in creating.

What’s more, she has made sure that their son, Tripp, will at some point be
treated to a worldview-shaping image of Dad as something akin to a date
rapist. That’s the description of him immortalized in her memoir, one of
her many efforts to monetize her surname. It recounts the loss of her
virginity as a result of getting drunk and blacking out in the company of
Levi, who pounced. What a gift that narrative is to Tripp, now being hauled
into a TV reality show, “Bristol Palin: Life’s a Tripp,” already in
production. Little children are known to thrive in such environments.

I hesitated before picking on Bristol because she’s an easy target. It’s
like shooting moose from a helicopter flying low over the tundra.

But she so perfectly distills the double standards and audacity of so many
of our country’s self-appointed moralists and supposed traditionalists:
hypocrites whose own histories, along with any sense of shame, tumble out
the window as soon as there’s a microphone to be seized or check to be
cashed.

She proves that they’re not going away anytime soon — a new generation
rises! — and that they haven’t been daunted by the ridicule justly heaped
on Newt Gingrich during the Republican primaries, when he dared to cast
himself as a religious conservative.

Certainly Rush thunders on. Last week he bellowed that Obama had decided to
“lead a war” on traditional marriage. Seems to me Limbaugh started those
hostilities long ago, if not with his first divorce then certainly with his
second and third.

For entertainment at Wedding No. 4, to a woman 26 years younger than he is,
he hired Elton John (who very questionably took the gig). Gays shouldn’t be
allowed to tie the knot, but they sure can carry a tune.

More interesting than the tired, press-a-button condemnations from Bristol
and Rush was Mitt Romney’s comportment. He didn’t hasten to turn same-sex
marriage into a wedge issue, the way Rick Santorum urged him
to<http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/12/santorum-to-romney-step-up-and-use-potent-weapon-of-same-sex-marriage/?hpt=hp_t2>,
or use his commencement speech at Liberty University to fan the flames of
hellfire.

He instead held back a bit, no doubt partly because his need at this
particular juncture, as he recovers from the compromising and brutalizing
primaries, is to pivot to the center, not cling to the right. I think Obama
and his tacticians counted on as much.

And I think that the extent to which Romney continues to hold back will
have enormous consequence for the Republican Party’s destiny.

Within its uppermost ranks are many champions of small government who
squirm at the small-mindedness of the scowling theocrats in an increasingly
uneasy coalition. These fiscal conservatives take advantage of the
religious right’s political muscle but have reservations about its
hectoring piety, and their own views on social issues are often moderate or
somewhat liberal. Recall that Republican money played a pivotal
role<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/nyregion/the-road-to-gay-marriage-in-new-york.html?pagewanted=all>in
the successful campaign for same-sex marriage in New York.

It came from donors who don’t want to see Romney take up an anti-gay mantle
and who understand that a reputation for intolerance and bigotry imperils
the future of the party, which they would like to orient away from stone
throwers in glass houses. They’re Rush-fatigued. Palin-weary.

Bristol’s recent parenting advice to the Obamas extended into the realm of
TV. She seemed to question whether they were watching “too many episodes of
‘Glee.’ ”

“Life’s a Tripp,” starring a single mom who once sold a family revelation
to Us Weekly, will be more edifying, I’m certain. And it will showcase a
woman who’s a shining testament to conventional, old-fashioned families.

•

I invite you to visit my blog <http://bruni.blogs.nytimes.com/>, follow me
on Twitter at twitter.com/frankbruni and join me on
Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/frankbruninyt>
.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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