NOM BLOG

Haine on Why Obama's Evolution Was Either "Alarmingly Befuddled" or "Merely Lying"

 

Today on Public Discourse, Tom Haine traces the evolution of President Obama's views on marriage and concludes that he was either seriously befuddled or simply lying:

The electorate will often forgive--and can even embrace--a clean conversion story, where a politician honestly changes his mind and admits to it. But on marriage, such a story should not be available for the President, who was either alarmingly befuddled for several years or merely lying.

After his big announcement on May 9, President Obama now has some serious questions to answer about his position, the first of which is simply, what is marriage? But we should not start this substantive discussion just yet. The president probably believes he can successfully present himself as a sincere new convert to marriage equality who just changed his mind. He was a reluctant bigot, his supporters could even say, but now he has sincerely seen the light (and so, he seems to imply, should we). But if we focus on the timeline of the last few years, any nice conversion story becomes patently absurd.

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