As so many have noted, this isn’t Mike Pence’s first dance as it exalts plainly purposeful discrimination, and as As the Indy Star’s Matthew Tully succinctly observes, Pence is “out of his league as governor.”
When you have to “clarify” a horribly damaging piece of legislation that you raced to sign, when you dodge a question on national TV about whether discrimination is legal in your state, when you deal your state a crushing economic blow, when you seem incapable of understanding the role you have played in creating this mess — well, that makes clear that you are not in the right job.
I’d place our state senator, the bizarrely oblivious Ron Grooms, in the same category. He isn’t governor, so he gets a pass? He shouldn’t. First tolls, now RFRA; is Grooms intent on sealing the border with the bulk of the metro Louisville market?
Back to Tully on Pence:
As a politician he is above all an ideologue, one whose actions and distractions have made clear that he doesn’t truly understand what it takes to take on the state’s massive challenges. He thrived while representing a gerrymandered congressional district, one where he could safely walk an ideological line and live largely in a partisan bubble. He has failed to understand that a governor’s job is to represent a much more diverse state.
Old white guys living in bubbles. Spare me. Here is Frank Rich with more national ramifications of the Hoosier Stain.
Indiana, Arkansas, and the GOP’s Disastrous Anti-Gay Bigotry, by Frank Rich (New York)
… Other defenders of these laws, like The Wall Street Journal editorial page, are predictably pleading victimization: The real victims of bigotry, according to this argument, are Christians, who are being punished for unfashionable beliefs. The Bible has a long history of being cited in America to justify second-class citizenship for women and blacks, among others, in their struggles for equal rights over the past century. It didn’t fly then, and it won’t fly now. A GOP presidential field that supports transparent discrimination is not only on the wrong side of history but the wrong side of the present-day American electorate. There will be consequences far beyond the economic punishment that is already being inflicted on Indiana.
