I’ve just written a column for this week’s Times complimenting former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee for some sound reasoning in the current government budget hostage crisis. In short, he says, Republicans don’t have the votes. Live to fight another day.

I wrote this knowing full well that Huckabee politics have a much darker side, particularly including his steadfast resistance to the tide of history that will bring equality for gay people some day, no matter how many outrageous metaphors he throws up against it.


But it was a little disappointing to see his daughter, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, taking up the anti-gay cudgel. I may be wrong. And I certainly don’t know Wyoming. But I’m not sure beating up on Senate candidate Liz Cheney for being insufficiently anti-gay (she says marriage should be up to the states) is a winning political strategy. If anything is working in favor of sexual minorities today it is their public faces and mainstream acceptance. Do you really gain points by beating up on a a woman who has a good reason to be reasonable on gay marriage — a lesbian sister? Family values?

A new ad released in Wyoming attacks GOP Senate candidate Liz Cheney of being pro-gay marriage despite several instances where she said she opposes it, NBC News reported. Cheney, daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney, is running for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in Wyoming against incumbent Sen. Mike Enzi — much to his dismay. The advertisement was launched by the American Principles Fund, which is headed by Sarah Huckabee Sanders — daughter of former Arkansas governor and onetime presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. It portrays Cheney is a social liberal despite a statement suggesting otherwise when she said she was “strongly pro-life and I am not pro-gay marriage” earlier this year. “The unilateral truce on social issues within the GOP is bad for our party and wrong for our country – our core values are under attack, and we will stand for those who stand for what’s right,” Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.

Unilteral brotherly love is the theme of a book that Bro. Huckabee quotes now and then. Just never about gay people. It’s a shame his daughter also rejects The Book when it comes to gay people.


Sympathy for a Cheney? I’ve truly gone down the rabbit hole.

The American Principles Fund is a conservative super PAC whose mission is an “integrated conservatism” meant to “break the unilateral truce on social issues within the GOP by demonstrating that social issues are winning issues, especially when combined with an economic message that addresses voters’ most urgent concerns.” The Hill says Sanders is a spokesman for the PAC and that her father is not “directly” involved, though he might be used in future ads. I bet. Politico describes her as executive director. The Washington Post provided what’s known so far on finances:

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