One frustrating aspect of watching Sunday-morning-type talk shows is watching politicians dance around direct questions and not get called out on it. It make you wonder what the point of the program is if politicians are allowed to trot out their standard talking points without being challenged.
Demagogue (via Eschaton) has a good example of a politician trying to perform a typical dance. Only this time she was forced to face several follow up questions. The result wasn’t pretty.
First, some background. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.) is one of the co-sponsors behind the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment (H.J.Res. 56), which reads:
Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.
Several legal scholars, such as Jack Balkin have made a compelling argument that the proposal’s ambiguously-written second sentence could be construed as prohibiting states from not only recognizing gay marriage, but also from recognizing civil unions for same-sex couples.
As Demagogue chronicles, Rep. Musgrave was taken to task for this confusion on ABC News’ “This Week.” The entire exchange is worth reading, but here’s an example of typical politico-dodging:
STEPHANOPOULOS: [Asking Musgrave] “What about the language on legal incidence?”
REP. MUSGRAVE: “The intent of the Federal marriage amendment is to have a Federal definition of marriage and to prevent states from exporting gay marriage.”
When directly asked about specific language, Musgrave gives a wishy-washy response about some vague intent.
Finally, it comes to this:
REP. [BARNEY] FRANKS: “It’s not in here about states’ rights, Marilyn … Nothing in here allows Massachusetts to make its own decisions or Vermont on civil unions. You say it reserves these to states’ rights. It doesn’t say that anywhere in here.”
REP. MUSGRAVE: “We’ll discuss this through the process.”
Interesting. One might think that since Rep. Musgrave sponsored this thing, she should be able to discuss it now.
It seems to me that either: (1) Rep. Musgrave doesn’t understand her own proposal (it is after all only a constitutional amendment); or (2) Rep. Musgrave is lying about what this amendment effort is attempting to achieve.