From this San Francisco publication (which has a “Duhhh, ya think?” headline):

Craig, who has voted against gay marriage, finds his political future in doubt in the wake of the charges, which have drawn national attention.

I know that some may think it relevant, and certainly a lot of people in Baghdad By The Bay obviously will, but really, what difference does it make what his position is on gay marriage? It would have made as much, or as little, sense to me to have written, “Craig, who has voted to cut taxes,” or “Craig, who has voted against more stringent gun controls.” The guy’s supposedly a conservative. How did they expect him to vote?

OK, let’s take it as a given that he’s gay. He’s married, but there was no issue from it (his three children are step-children, brought to the marriage by his wife), so he’s probably not even bi (one wonders what the arrangement is with his wife).

Where is it written that gay people are intrinsically supposed to support gay marriage? I can understand that many, perhaps even most gay people do, but not all of them do. And if they do so, it’s for personal reasons, not necessarily any particular political principle. They want to get married.

But part of the problem with America today is that there are too few people who make political decisions based on any coherent set of principles, instead only arguing for outcomes that they personally like (a classic example is support for Roe v Wade among abortion supporters, because they like abortion to be universally legal more than they like adhering to the Constitution). It’s obviously appealing to cheer for some wealth transfer that benefits you at someone else’s expense, which can be rationalized away as “taking it from greedy corporations,” or “the rich.”

If I were to indulge in such a thing, I’d argue for laws that ban rap music, laws that required everyone in the country to contribute a dollar a month to the Benevolent Society For The Aid And Support Of Rand Simbergs, laws that forced Starbucks to offer protein with their pastries, etc.

But I don’t. And not just because the chances of getting such laws passed are small, and it would be a waste of my time. I don’t do it because I have a set of political principles by which I try to abide, regardless of the impact on me personally. I believe in free speech, even for rappers, I don’t believe in arbitrary wealth transfers, even when it’s a transfer to me. I believe in the freedom of the marketplace, even when it comes to a company as evil as Starbucks.

So why should a gay person, if conservative, be expected to support as distinctly non-conservative an idea as gay marriage? I suspect that he truly does believe that homosexuality is wrong, so he has to live a tortured existence, feeling compelled by his nature to sin, and by his shame and fear of damage to his career and reputation to hide it (however pathetically). But I don’t see why he’s obligated by this accident of nature (and an unfortunate one, for him) to support others’ political agendas, and betray his own principles.

[Update in the late afternoon]

I think that Raoul Ortega has nailed the thinking in comments. Over at Instaman’s place, this morning, Greg Hlatky joked:

If Senator Craig purchased sex offsets to live a sex-neutral lifestyle, would this immunize him from charges of hypocrisy?”

To which Glenn replied:

Indubitably. But who would sell them?

Well, we now have the answer, from Raoul:

Voting for “Gay Marriage” is to Dem politicians what “Carbon Offsets” are to Algore and other Gaian worshippers. Little acts of contrition purchased to balance out all their other sins. If only Larry Craig had voted the other way, people like Offside would have no problem with his trolling among airport toilets, just like how they had no problem with their last president helping himself to his subordinates because he “kept abortion legal.”

So votes for gay marriage and keeping abortion legal are “sex offsets” for Republicans. In fact, come to think about it, it’s what kept Republican Bob Packwood in office for so long, despite his long history of sexually harassing women. Apparently, though, he apparently didn’t buy enough of them to cancel out his most egregious behavior.

In other words, as long as you vote like a Democrat, you get a free pass, just like them.

By the way, I have further Craig thoughts here, for those not viewing this from the main page.

Often, when Congresspeople get in some sort of trouble, it’s a puzzler figuring out what their political party is. Apparently, though, the WaPo has learned the error of its previous ways. They are right up front about this Senator, for some reason:

GOP Senator Pleaded Guilty After Restroom Arrest

I’m glad that they’ve finally stopped making us guess. At least until the next time. It does take some fun out of it, though.

So you won’t read it at the New York Times. Because, you know, it’s all about the narrative.

So you won’t read it at the New York Times. Because, you know, it’s all about the narrative.

So you won’t read it at the New York Times. Because, you know, it’s all about the narrative.

…at the New York Times.

…at the New York Times.

…at the New York Times.

Maybe he fired those rounds at the woman’s house.

Another triumph of MSM fact checkers. It’s one thing to not know the difference between an automatic and a semi-automatic, but geez. I guess guns are one of those things that only the yahoos would know anything about…

[Evening update]

Here, in real reporting, is a view of the enemy.

I think that this is supposed to be a news story about Karl Rove’s resignation. But this belongs on the editorial page (and it’s unlikely that one would find it on the editorial page of the newspaper in which it appears):

Mr. Rove established himself as the political genius behind the rise of George W. Bush and the brief period of united Republican rule. But he did it largely through highly divisive policies and campaign tactics, such as the attacks on Democratic rival John Kerry [in] the 2004 campaign. That strategy appears finally to have backfired, as seen in the Republican loss of Congress in 2006, and Mr. Bush’s low poll numbers.

This is not facts. It’s extremely biased opinion. And in fact not just biased, but politically clueless. It is not just a viewing of recent history through a fun-house mirror–it is a rewriting of it.

Karl Rove “attacked” John Kerry? This is written as though Kerry ran a high-minded campaign, above the fray, ignoring the supposed mud slinging coming from the Bush campaign, putting forth reasoned, coherent policy positions that were drowned out in the public debate by the Bush noise and slander machine. As always, it was only George Bush and Karl Rove who were “divisive,” not the gentle, noble Democrats.

This is, of course, a description of the 2004 campaign that could come only from someone living on Bizarro World. It ignores all of the incessant Bush bashing from the Democrats, and Kerry, whose only message, and claim to the presidency (other than that he was a Vietnam war hero), was that he wouldn’t be George Bush. Every campaign speech, every policy paper emitting from the campaign was “Bush policies have been disastrous. If it’s a Bush policy, I’ll do the opposite.” There was rarely an actual specific policy proposal, and when there was, it was never without reference to Bush.

I also suspect that the reporter is conflating the actions of the Swift Boat Vets with Karl Rove’s campaign, though there was never any evidence of coordination, and the former had plenty of their own reasons to not want to see a President Kerry, which they stated many times. They may have “attacked” him, but they were up front about why they did so.

But no, in the minds of the MSM, it is George Bush who is the “divider,” not the Democrats and the left who have been vilifying him for over six years now as an election stealer, a warmonger, a chimpanzee, a torturer, a war criminal–despite his acquiescing to (in partnership with Ted Kennedy) much of the liberal political agenda, with an expansion of Medicare, federal control over education, a new amnesty for illegal immigrants, and a general expansion of government on almost all fronts. All of which was pushed by the evil mastermind, Karl Rove.

And the notion that it was Rove’s “divisive” campaign tactics that were the cause of the Republican loss of the Congress last year is an analysis so simplistic (and wrong) that it would be embarrassing to see it in a college newspaper, let alone the new crown jewel of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.

To the degree that Karl Rove was responsible for the loss of Congress, it was because of the degree to which Bush had lost his base due to the (Rove-initiated) big-government and big-spending initiatives described above, and the frustration of the country with the poorly managed war in Iraq (which is not to say, of course, that the country wanted us to surrender, despite the Democrats’ fantasies).

If George Bush was the right-wing maniac of popular myth, he would never have hired Karl Rove, because Rove’s philosophy was to gain political power for Republicans by co-opting what he perceived to be the Democrats’ superficially appealing issues (taking some lessons from Bill Clinton and Dick Morris in “triangulation”). He thought that by making conservatism “compassionate,” he could repackage it to sell to the independents. But he underestimated the degree to which it would alienate the core base, particularly when he and Bush called them “bigots” and xenophobes because they simply wanted to see the law enforced fairly.

But no. In the mind of a liberal Democrat reporter (and no other type could have possibly written the quoted paragraph), only Republicans are “divisive.” And that “divisiveness” is the source of all evil in the country. If only the Republicans had been more bi-partisan (perhaps by embracing Maxine Waters and Dennis Kucinich in addition to Ted Kennedy?), they wouldn’t have lost the election last year.

Of course, the truly sad thing is that the Journal apparently has no editors who can catch such things, either. You’d think they’d have at least caught the missing preposition in the second sentence. Another demonstration of superiority of the vaunted layers of editors and fact checkers of the MSM over us lowly bloggers, I guess.

[Update in the afternoon]

Rove has a higher approval rating than Congress. But then, who doesn’t?