Via the Examiner, what are the odds that Joe Biden and Arne Duncan and, oh, 99.9 percent of the rest of the liberal intelligentsia support legalizing gay marriage but The One doesn’t? It’s getting harder every day to sustain this charade, which is why Axelrod is suddenly eager to change the subject:
Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod on Monday pivoted sharply to Mitt Romney’s views on gay marriage when reporters pressed him on the president’s stance on the issue.
On a conference call with reporters, Axelrod said there’s a “clear distinction” between Obama’s views on gay-rights issues and the presumptive GOP nominee’s views.
“There couldn’t be a starker contrast on this issue than with Gov. Romney, who has funded efforts to roll back marriage laws in California and other places,” Axelrod told reporters on the call.
In turning to Romney, Axelrod ducked a question from a reporter on whether Obama supports gay marriage.
Actually, I can’t decide whether the back-to-back Biden/Duncan endorsements are a case of those guys going rogue or something they’re coordinating with O’s campaign to test the waters on Obama himself possibly backing gay marriage. He wants to avoid that if he can lest his position alienate a key constituency (he’s already in trouble with seniors), but maybe he can’t avoid it. Like Chuck Todd says, the less “Wall Street money” Obama takes in, the more important “gay money” and other fundraising sources become. Beyond that, if the economy continues to stall, The One will become increasingly desperate to change the subject — so much so that he might prefer to roll the dice on backing gay marriage in hopes of creating a sensational distraction. It’d be a risky play, but if the new post-austerity Europe performs the way everyone expects, the odds of the U.S. economy recovering before November will deteriorate and he’ll be a very long longshot to win. A culture-war campaign could be his Hail Mary pass. Anyone seriously believe it would work, though?
Two clips here, one of Tapper and the other of Carney once again trying to explain Obama’s position on same-sex marriage. I think he’s saying that O supports civil unions and that he opposes any state attempts to repeal domestic partnership rights once they’ve been granted, i.e. a one-way ratchet, but I’m not sure Carney’s 100% confident that he understands Obama’s position on this either. Oh, and as for Axelrod’s point about Romney opposing gay rights, here’s a PDF reminder of where Mitt stood circa 1994. Is the real Romney a gay-marriage opponent who was pretending to support “full equality” then in order to get elected in a blue state or is he a gay-marriage supporter who’s pretending to oppose full equality now in order to get elected in a purplish nation?http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7407796n
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