Roger L. Simon to Social Conservatives: Give Up, Or Join The Islamists

Roger L. Simon doesn't speak for Rudy Giuliani, and that's a damn good thing. Giuliani's people are making a reasonable effort to reach out to social conservatives and not insult them. Simon, ordinarily an excellent and sagacious blogger, isn't being quite so careful. He thinks Rudy will play well with social conservatives because social conservatives have simply lost their battles and the country has moved on.

The problem comes when Simon illustrates that point with two examples of leftward drift on social issues. On gay marriage, he points out that gay couples' cohabitation is more widely accepted across the country than it has been in the past. And then this, bolding mine:

If this bothers you, it's already happened. Get used to it. It's not going to go backwards, not a chance. Oh, yes, there is one way it could change - Sharia law. If you don't like gay America, root for the Islamists.

The issue of marriage is also over. Substantially anyway.

I support a traditional conception of the nuclear family. I don't see where the government is required to alter a time-tested institution to fit this minute's definition of equal protection. I don't think the government gets to say who you can live with, but it doesn't have to update its definition of marriage because activists are demanding it.

On the other hand, I don't think gay people should be crushed under stone walls and then run over by bulldozers, as they were by the Taliban. There's a little crack of daylight, I think, between me and Sayyed Qutb.

But wait, there's more, about abortion:

...the repeal of Roe v. Wade is another matter and I don't think most people, again deep down, really want it. The complications would be tremendous because it would not even remotely stop abortion, unless you want to see our own version of the Basij (Iranian religious police) roaming the streets. Otherwise the rich will continue to have their abortions by flying somewhere or other and the poor will be back in the modern equivalent of Victorian back alleys with their own grisly solutions.

Again with the Islamist theocratic fascist imagery. If you want to repeal Roe, you're looking at turning America into Iran if you want to stop abortion.

I expect these smears about "the Taliban wing of the Republican Party" from wacked out loonballs on DU. Roger L. Simon knows better. He understands the hatefulness and totalitarianism of Islamism, and I hope he understands that people in America who are one step to the right of him on these issues may still have more in common with him than with the head-hackers. That language is pointlessly inflammatory.

I'm not even saying Simon's wrong. He may have a point. But if the Taliban analogies are already coming out, this is going to be a long and bitter election season. So far we've managed to avoid the libertarian-conservative split, and as I've written there's no reason to think we won't continue to do so. But contempt like Simon's makes it sound like preserving it will be an awful chore.