Not vetted and was a heartbeat away if McCain had won. MyBad.

But the Hasan analogy just doesn’t work as a valid argument.

The GOP base, whose largest bloc is evangelicals, turned out as always–but the GOP got swamped by defections from Independent voters.

That wasn’t true in 2000 and 2004.
In those years, the evangelicals turned out in sufficient numbers to deliver key states like Ohio to Bush.

So all we’re saying is that if the GOP doesn’t have a positive, winning message on those issues, it will lose Independent and swing voters to the point that it can’t count on massive turnout from evangelicals and social conservatives to win the day.

In the two big wins the GOP had recently–NJ and VA–the winning Republican candidate downplayed social issues and presented a positive economic message. (Ironically, it was the liberal Dem Corzine in NJ that emphasized social issues to try to compensate for the corruption and economic problems with his administration. And he lost.)

I simply meant that equal protection wasn’t part of the original Constitution. Many of the Framers feared popular democracy, because they feared it would degenerate into demagogic mob rule. Hence the original Constitution limited popular power. The Senate, you’ll recall, was originally elected by the state legislatures, not by the people.

BTW, the Supreme Court had an opportunity to hear a case on whether same-sex marriage violates the 14th Amendment: Baker v. Nelson. They refused to hear it on the grounds of a lack of a substantive federal question. That has become a legal precedent.

Until you liberals get a chance to pack the court like you did under FDR.

so……are you saying that there should be a *religious* litmus test for all presidential candidates? Major Hasan was not only mentally unstable, and many people around him for a long time knew that, he also was subscribing apparently to Muslim radicalism.

So my question to you is…. are you going to be comfortable only with Christian (Catholics too?) or Jewish candidates and not American Muslims? Are you also implying that every American Muslim is radical? Are you going to plead a religious litmus test for agnostics and atheists too?

I would assume that ANY candidate for the office of the Presidency would be thoroughly vetted, no? That his/her morality and intelligence on the issues would be primary consideration, not what religion or church they attend. And if there was any hint of radicalism and/or nefarious behavior, mental instability, etc…he/she would be immediately ousted as a serious candidate.

Your arguments have been heard over and over again: lurch leftward on social issues! If you do not, you will forever be ’sidelined’! Um, did social issues lead to the major GOP losses in 2006? Did they lead to Obama’s win in 2008? They had almost nothing to do with either result. It usually is the case that the people who want the GOP to lurch to the left on social issues are socially liberal themselves. This is not an accident.

The GOP is not about opposing change. But is must also stand for truth, and affirming truths that stand the test of time. If our society thinks it can survive while detaching itself from truth, it has a big problem.

“Centrist NYer- We all know very well what this nation was founded on, but that does not mean that every time somebody claims that they have a “right” to do something we have to grant it to them.”

This is the kind of reasoning that is going to sideline the GOP for a long time. As long as the slippery slopers can scare up ridiculous scenarios (If we let men marry men, then we have to let men marry penguins), we need never acknowledge or address the fact that there are some people whose legitimate rights are being denied.

If the Republican party chooses to retreat into its “we’re just defending the status quo” defense and fight any and all reasonable change, it will cease to be a credible entity.

You’re kidding, right?

Unless you consider the 14th Amendment to be a modern argument, you’re wrong. The 14th requires equal treatment for similarly situated individuals. As you know, it was the 14A that the Court relied on in reversing many of the injustices that conservatives defended throughout this country’s history.

The fact that the Founding Fathers did not personally live up to the standards of the Constitution or imagine that the Constitution would be used to protect the rights of women, racial minorities or homosexuals is not surprising or relevant since they were all dead before the 14A was even enacted.

Unless you’re making the arugment that the 14A is not part of the Constitution, what the drafters of the original version of the Constitution may have personally felt in their own minds or done in their personal lives is totally irrelevant to the equal protection clause.