Today, Tony Snow said at the daily White House press briefing that his boss was right last week to say that the United States is "winning" the war in Iraq. Is that so? A few days ago, I sent an email to an acquaintance working within the US embassy on communications matter and asked for his/her thoughts on recent developments. The reply:
So far, the book by the former Washington Post Iraq reporter, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, seems the most accurate picture of what is happening here. He writes about everyone coming to Iraq with good intentions and then being trapped in a surreal cocoon and becoming part of the problem. I spend every day trying to make sure I avoid that bubble syndrome, but I fear it is already happening. We are speaking to an audience [in Iraq] we do not understand. All the communications trickery and flack magic in the world cannot fix that.
Does the White House understand that?
FANNING FLAMES. I spoke to Mike Rogers, who runs BlogActive.com. In mid-October, Rogers outed Senator Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican, as gay. (Craig's office said the allegation was "absolutely ridiculous.") Rogers tells me he has been busy since then calling social conservatives--such as leaders of mega-churches--to tell them about Craig and other leading Washington Republicans who are thought to be gay. "I'm trying to reach out across aisle," Rogers says, "and build coalitions with huge right-wing mega-churches across the country and call out the guys who covered up the Foley scandal. I'm telling these conservatives about the men who are living what the conservatives call the 'homosexual lifestyle' but who are asking the religious conservatives to follow them into the polling booth." In short, he's trying to provoke a clash between the social cons who oppose gay rights (and who, in some cases, demonize gays) and a Republican Party that is a home to in-the-closet gay legislators and staffers.
To prove his point, Rogers, a gay activist, has been playing for the social conservatives what he says is an audiotape of a man who claims to have firsthand knowledge of Craig's sexual orientation. Rogers will not make this tape--or the name of the man--public. But he is doing all he can to convince religious right supporters of Craig and the Republican Party that they are being led by hypocrites. Is Rogers trying to exploit the antigay bigotry of Christian conservatives to undermine the GOP? And does this sort of pot-stirring play to (and thus reinforce) the biases of the antigay right? Rogers says no: "People have a right to their private lives; it's the hypocrisy they don't have a right to."
A gay-hunt within the Republican Party certainly would not help the GOP. And some non-Republican gay politicos, in the wake of the Mark Foley scandal, have been trying to foster such an internal squabble, just when the GOP has been trying to mobilize its base for the coming congressional elections. (As I've previously reported, these people circulated a list of gay staffers on Capitol Hill.) With only days left until Election Day, it does seem the GOP has avoided a nasty public fight on this front (and also avoided more disclosures about other Republican legislators and pages). But this internal conflict--or contradiction--is not going away. Rogers says he's working on other GOP outings for the future.
Posted by David Corn at November 1, 2006 12:51 PM
