{"id":7302,"date":"2006-05-03T09:10:34","date_gmt":"2006-05-03T13:10:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7302"},"modified":"2006-05-03T09:10:34","modified_gmt":"2006-05-03T13:10:34","slug":"danforth-is-still-telling-the-gop-what-it-needs-to-hear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/danforth-is-still-telling-the-gop-what-it-needs-to-hear\/","title":{"rendered":"Danforth is still telling the GOP what it needs to hear"},"content":{"rendered":"

The [tag]Republican Party[\/tag] is lacking in sensible elder statesman who can share words of wisdom when the party strays too far into nuttiness. Thankfully, former Sen. [tag]John Danforth[\/tag] seems to be auditioning for the role<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Former Sen. John Danforth says a conservative push to ban [tag]gay marriage[\/tag] through a constitutional [tag]amendment[\/tag] is silly, calling it the latest example of how the political influence of evangelical [tag]Christians[\/tag] is hurting the [tag]GOP[\/tag].<\/p>\n

Danforth, a Missouri Republican and an Episcopal priest, made the comments in a speech Saturday night to the [tag]Log Cabin Republicans[\/tag], which support gay rights. He said history has shown that attempts to regulate human behavior with constitutional amendments are misguided.<\/p>\n

“Once before, the Constitution was amended to try to deal with matters of human behavior; that was prohibition. That was such a flop that that was repealed 13 years later,” Danforth said.<\/p>\n

Referring to the marriage amendment, he added that perhaps at some point in history there was a constitutional amendment proposed that was “[tag]sillier[\/tag] than this one, but I don’t know of one.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not too long ago, Danforth considered himself something of a mainstream Republican. During his lengthy political career — which includes stints as a three-term U.S. senator and Bush’s Ambassador to the United Nations — Danforth wasn’t even known as a left-leaning moderate.<\/p>\n

And yet, in recent years, few of his stature have been as assertive in criticizing the GOP’s direction. A year ago, Danforth wrote a blistering New York Times op-ed<\/a>, criticizing what he saw as the transformation of the GOP “into the political arm of conservative Christians,” and pleading for the party to “rediscover our roots.”<\/p>\n

Last fall, Danforth was still at it<\/a>, telling students at the University of Arkansas, “I think that the Republican Party fairly recently has been taken over by the Christian conservatives, by the Christian right. I don’t think that this is a permanent condition, but I think this has happened, and that it’s divisive for the country.”<\/p>\n

Keep in mind, just a year ago, none other than George W. [tag]Bush[\/tag] described Danforth<\/a> as “a man of strong convictions, unquestioned integrity, and great decency. He is a man of calm and judicious temperament.”<\/p>\n

I suspect Bush wouldn’t repeat these praise today, which is a shame. Danforth is telling his party what it needs to hear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The [tag]Republican Party[\/tag] is lacking in sensible elder statesman who can share words of wisdom when the party strays too far into nuttiness. Thankfully, former Sen. [tag]John Danforth[\/tag] seems to be auditioning for the role. Former Sen. John Danforth says a conservative push to ban [tag]gay marriage[\/tag] through a constitutional [tag]amendment[\/tag] is silly, calling it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}