Q&A Friday #99: Liberal Politicians Habitually Lie About What They Believe

by John Hawkins | December 19, 2008 4:56 am

Question: “Where does the belief come from that Obama secretly supports gay marriage? Just a guess? Based on what? I’d be more likely to believe that he doesn’t care in the slightest about gay marriage or any other gay issue. I bet such things barely register as blips on his mental radar, and that when they do register, it’s only insofar as he has to handle such issues delicately in politics due to conflicting constituencies.” — Freeman Hunt (I just ran across this question over at Althouse[1] and swiped it, which is totally cheating, but what they hey)

Answer: First off, make no mistake about it: Barack Obama supports gay marriage. Sure, he CLAIMS that he believes marriage should be between a man and a woman, but he opposes a Constitutional Amendment to protect marriage, opposes state constitutional amendments that protect marriage, opposes DOMA, and even opposes “don’t ask, don’t tell.” In other words, he takes all the same positions as the most rabid fans of gay marriage, but says that he’s for traditional marriage because that’s what he had to do to win the election.

Getting back to the larger point, that’s standard operating procedure for liberals. When they hold a position that’s unpopular with the American people, they shamelessly lie about it. Then, if they’ve got the votes to push their unpopular position through, they’ll shift on a dime and unapologetically support exactly the same position that they claimed to oppose.

They do that for three reasons.

#1) If liberals told the truth about what they believe, they would never win the presidency and they would be absolutely unelectable in the Senate outside of the ultra-left wing states.

#2) Their supporters just assume, correctly about 95% of the time, that they’re lying any time they deviate from the liberal agenda. Take Barack Obama, for example. If the netroots honestly believed he was telling the truth about his support of marriage being only between a man and a woman, they simply wouldn’t have supported him. Forcing gay marriage on the American public is every bit as much of an important part of the liberal activist agenda these days as support of the 2nd Amendment is on the right.

#3) Because the mainstream media is liberal, they react positively when liberals abandon their centrist campaign positions and move to the left. In other words, you’re not going to get pummeled for lying on the campaign trail by the Washington Post or New York Times if you’re a Democrat that moves to the left.