Poor Ax, tasked here with salvaging some sort of logic from a stance which everyone knows is taken purely for reasons of political expediency. Fox News has a handy list of Obama quotes on Prop 8 and gay rights over the past few years, from which I’ve gleaned the following: (a) He opposes same-sex marriage and (b) believes that states should be able to set their own marriage rules, but (c) if a state decides to set its own rules by adopting his position, then, according to a White House spokesman, it’s “divisive and discriminatory.” (Fun footnote to that last point: During the campaign, The One told Jake Tapper that he had no problem with what California was doing.) If he thinks restricting gay marriage is perniciously discriminatory, why on earth would he support letting California do it? And if, as Axelrod says, he thinks it was “mean-spirited” to pass Prop 8, where does that leave us vis-a-vis O’s continuing opposition to gay marriage? Barack Obama — hateful hyper-federalist?
