Charlie Sykes: It Is Time To Pull the Trigger

Charlie, I read your article Overreaching On Gay Marriage?

A suggestion: come out squarely against the amendment and do it now. 

If the amendment passes by a narrow margin, you will hate yourself in the morning. It it fails without your taking a position, despite your analysis you are irrelevant.  If the amendment fails with your unequivocal and timely opposition, we are going to all owe you a debt of thanks, and you will have done the right thing.

There are several critical points you make about the proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage:

• the political motivation to turn out more conservatives than liberals backfired
• the wording is poorly thoughtout and too broad
• this has invigorated the left with implications that go beyond November

There are many points where I disagree with your analysis and conclusions.

But there is one central part of your thesis which deserves repeating:

But it increasingly looks as if the GOP miscalculated,making at least three major strategic errors:

• First, they overreached, by making the amendment far broader than it had to be, including a ban on civil unions and perhaps on an array of other domestic benefits...

Charlie, a review of your other commentaries indicates you are not comfortable with the amendment; all of Wisconsin knows that.

Succinctly put: The amendment is not necessary, and the consequences of denying health, retirement and related benefits to domestic partners can have an adverse effect on individuals, and on Wisconsin's efforts to retain and attract quality businesses. There are no benefits if the amendment passes.

Comments

[jody]

Wow. Who's the beast?

"despite your analysis you are irrelevant"

I haven't called anybody irrelevant yet, but now that I've seen it I just had to put it on my To Do List. Someday...

[Paul]

Gee, Jody, now you made me feel bad. It wasn't like I was trying trash him. It is just on this issue of fairness In Wiscosnin, the usually persuasive Sykes, is not a force and is not impacting the vote.

Sorry, Charlie.