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MugwumperyOctober 22, 2006 Swing voters piss me off, mainly because I'll never be one. You know: mugwumps. People with their mugs on one side and their wumps on the other. Round election time parties come courting the mugwumps, offering them the sun, moon, and stars if only their mugs and their wumps will line up on the same side long enough for them to cast their ballots. In political currency, true, promises to mugwumps are worth about as much as promises to anyone else, but it's the principle of the thing: why should the balance of power be held by people who either don't know what they think or don't dare say it out loud? The other day I read an interesting article in the online Washington Post: "Hill Republicans Air Out the Closet," by Post staff writer Jose Antonio Vargas. It was about gay Republicans who work for the kind of congressman who swears that he'd never have a gay person on his staff. Such people are as incomprehensible to me as mugwumps. I couldn't help noticing that no lesbian Republicans were quoted in the story. I hope this is because no lesbian of any party affiliation would be caught dead working for that kind of prick. One David Duncan was quoted as saying: "You have to separate the marketing from the reality. The reality is, these members are not homophobic. For the most part, they're using this marketing [pledging allegiance to the religious right, opposing gay rights, and generally yammering about the "homosexual agenda"] to play to our base and stay in power. They have to turn out the votes." See, this is why I'll never be a swing voter. How could opposing gay rights in order to pander to the religious right be "not homophobic"? How can one work for a man or belong to a party that encourages this crap? Said an unnamed "Republican strategist": "Most of these Congress members would be perfectly happy if they didn't have to vote on another gay issue. For some it is an issue. For some. But the truth is, a lot of members are more tolerant than their voting records would have you believe. Look at Blunt, Cantor, Putnam. They know gay people. They have gay friends. But they speak out against gay rights. They have to. That's where the votes are." Being Christians, these fellows will probably understand the allusion when I say I can hear the cocks crowing. These people sell out their friends for the sake of some votes. One wonders how much respect they have for their constituents, and whether the constituents know it. On the same day the online Boston Globe carried an op-ed by Peter Stone, "The GOP Ethics Mess." Jack Abramoff and Mark Foley were prominent constituents of the "mess." Intriguingly, the David Duncan quoted in the Post story used to work for Republican representative Bob Ney of Ohio, who is among those convicted in the Abramoff murk. Rest assured: I don't believe that those who hire gay staffers are more likely to take bribes than those who don't, or vice versa. But I do wonder about elected officials whose mugs can utter preposterous platitudes about the "homosexual agenda" while their wumps are being guarded by gay employees -- how far a leap is it from that to giving lip service to democratic ideals while taking bribes from fat cats? Do these people understand that there really should be some connection between what one does and what one professes? I suspect not. What they profess seems to depend on what they think will get them elected, and what they do is whatever they damn well feel like doing. Which is to say that their mugs are so far up their wumps that they've lost all sense of perspective.
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