Marriage-Gate (Did Bush steal the Election through Bigotry?)

"On November 2, 2004 (Election Day), the same-sex marriage movement suffered a severe setback, and the traditional marriage movement a major victory, when state constitutional amendments prohibiting same-sex marriage were passed in eleven states: Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ohio, Oregon, and Utah (see: Utah Constitutional Amendment 3). The measures in Oregon, Mississippi, and Montana bar same-sex marriage only; those in the other states bar civil unions and domestic partnerships as well; and Ohio bars granting any benefits whatsoever to same-sex couples. Every state that had the "definition of marriage" amendment on the ballot passed the constitutional amendment."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_the_United_States#Bans

AR - S
GA - R
KY - R
MI - S
MS - R
MT - R
ND - R
OK - R
OH - S
OR - S
UT - R

4 of the 11 Swing States had Marriage Amendments on the Ballot.

Of those 4 (Ar, Mi, Oh, Or), Bush won in two.

In the R states (Ga, Ky, Ms, Mt, Nd, Ok, Ut), Bush won in all.

There was heavy involvement from the Far Right to get these Marriage Amendments on the ballot.

Question - Why did Ohio need a Marriage Amendment?

It already banned marriage from between 2 people of the same gender.

So does the Constitution of Kansas.

So, in some places there was no need for a Marriage Amendment.

Anti-GLBT Bigots voted for these things simply out of Bigotry and then they voted for the most Bigoted Candidate and then they called it 'moral values'.

This is how the Far Right stole the Election for Bush, through Bigotry.

Though it may have mobilized some of the fanbase, the exit polls differed wildly and voter suppression complaints were widespread.

Maybe a multi-pronged attack happened with some hot-button issues, but ignoring the mountains of other evidence is ridiculous.

I am just making a post focusing on this one thing, I don't wish to ignore Voter suppression and the exit polls.

It says a lot if Bush needed Bigotry, Voter suppression, AND Diebold to help him 'win' (and it's starting to look that way)

And if that's true then in a way we have still won.

so when they stole the election they could point to the gay marriage issue as the cause. This created a smoke screen which satisfied the bigots and prevented the few honest repukes from taking the Dems claims seriously and looking too closely at the vote rigging.

It fits with the dixie-crat screen and the Amish vote screen in PA.

certainly put up other smoke screens--like Cheney/Rove talking about their "invisible" get out the vote campaign, and the vaunted voter registration in churches. All baloney, as far as I can see. And I think that is a Rovian tactic, laying out an anticipatory smoke screen.

On the other hand, what I see in the election is that they had to work very hard to steal it. Plan A was Diebold and ES&S. But that wasn't enough. So they implemented Plan B, overt voter suppression in Ohio (and other such old Rovian tactics) (Why else would they risk riling people up in this way--if not because they HAD to?). Add to this, gay marriage amendments strategically placed, possibly to stem the tide of Republicans voting for Kerry, and we have a picture of desperation by the Bushites, and a very big win for Kerry.

The only thing they didn't use was phony "terrorist alerts"--well set up before hand--(except in Warren County, where they did use it). So Kerry's win was quite big--a margin of about 10%--but not in the stratosphere that might be indicated by Bush's truly dismal approval ratings recently, around 40% approval. If an honest election were held today, I think Kerry would win by 20%. The difference (in the size of Kerry's win) might be partially attributable to the gay marriage amendments.

If you haven't go to PBS.org and watch their documentary on Karl Rove, the first segment is what is telling to me. It's called "The Architect".

there is a lesson from holocaust studies that I think applies to
understanding the o4 election.

The most common interpretation of the Holocaust is Hannah
Arandt "banality of evil' thesis which when tweaked is basically
the Holocaust represents the zenith/nadir of modern administrative mentality, so the horror is in how it all worked
like clockwork. Then the counter interpretation takes this apart:
pointing out that in truth on the ground the process was messy
and chaotic.

The 04 election is similar--you want to find one grand design and then the more you look at it the more you see a lot of operations all operating in different ways, delivering victory
as best they can for Bush.

The one thing that has always frustrated me is that when citing
the values/marriage amendment as the fuel to the victory
no pundit stops to think that they are citing the POLLS when they
dutifully repeat the bit about values being the No. 1
reason for the voter to vote for a specific candidate. Oh, so trust the polls to tell us why we
voted but not who we voted for??