A bold move by the GOP?

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has come out publicly in support of gay marriage. Meanwhile President Barack Obama and the rest of the leadership of the Democratic Party have come out in favor of Civil Unions instead. While Obama could single-handedly end "don't ask don't tell" and integrate the military, he refuses to do so.

Could Cheney’s announcement be a ploy to win over the homosexual constituency away from the Democratic Party?

The Democrats love to divide people into categories, because doing so make it appear they have a demographic advantage – given that every group except White Heterosexual Able-bodied Christian Males is considered a constituency of the Democratic Party. This is done to present a case that the Republican Party is dying for demographic reasons and had better embrace all of the Democratic Party’s race baiting policies (known for Orwellian reasons as "Civil Rights") or die as a party because, unlike the “robust” Democratic Party, the Republican Party represents just one demographic.

But in spite of the absurdity and inherent racism of politicking by demographics, there are those who believe it. And those will try to make policy around it.

About the only good thing that can be said about Neoconservatism is that since it originated in the Democratic Party those who follow that belief system have little interest in laws that mandate morality. Neoconservatism is a distinct political ideology from the Religious Right. True, the Neoconservatives want a police state, but they want to police loyalty, not morality. Thus they actually are in a unique position to advocate that the Republican Party change its position on homosexual issues.

How would they do this? It would not be an easy sell. The Religious Right caucus wants nothing to do with homosexuality. While selling them on gays in the military can be done more easily the harder sell would be gay marriage.

Gays in the military can easily be covered under the need for manpower. Endless war is a Neoconservative objective, and the belief that the United States has some divine mandate and the idolatrous way the Religious Right views the government can be tailored to advocate integrated service. Greater manpower is needed to fulfill the divine mission of the United States – or so would the Neoconservatives say when selling this to the Religious Right. The Neoconservatives won't believe it, they view the Religious Right as dupes, but that’s how they would sell it.

But Gay Marriage is the major hurdle. The entire debate would have to be reframed. The Neoconservatives would have to frame it as "monogamy versus promiscuity." Given that the Religious Right believes the only appropriate sexual behavior for homosexuals is either abstinence or conversion to heterosexuality, reframing the debate in this manner would be very difficult.

That doesn’t mean that it cannot be done. It could.

And given that, one state at a time, gay marriage is becoming the norm in this country. Civil Unions, once the progressive position, is now seen as the regressive position. It is also the official position of the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party has long taken many of its core constituencies for granted because "who else will they vote for, the Republicans?" If Cheney is indeed making that play for that voting block, the answer to that question would become "yes."