All Quiet on the Conservative Front

I’ve been a bit taken aback in the past day or two at the near utter silence on the right-side of the cheddarsphere concerning the proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex civil unions and marriages in Wisconsin.

I’m reading a lot of hype about the revenue restrictions amendment, a decent amount of school choice commentaries, a handful of Jensen defenses, a few swipes at the UW System, etc., but there has been very little on the marriage and civil unions ban. By no means do I read all of the conservative Wisconsin blogs, but I do check out a fair share.

The only post on the topic I could find came from Shark and Shepherd—and Rick doesn’t exactly lend his support to the amendment, he just tries to theorize the issue in such a way that lends credence to it as a point worthy of discussion (Rick has a couple of decent points that make the post worth the read, but be sure to do so along with the comments that challenge some other points made along the way).

But the virtual silence from many others on the right suggests that a public discussion isn’t really the point of this amendment--after all, the point of the amendment is really to stifle any possible public discussion on the topic of legalized same sex unions in the future in Wisconsin. And I don’t think the “activist” judges on the east coast have much to do with it either. As I and others have pointed out, the timing of this amendment’s placement on the ballot—just as a Dem governor and attorney general are up for re-election—speaks volumes.

If the righties of the cheddarsphere—who are not exactly a shy bunch—aren’t even running to pump this amendment on the day of the final Assembly vote on it, how much of a home run is this going to be for the GOP in November?

Maybe they just felt it was such slam-dunk in the Assembly today that it wasn’t worth mentioning. Or maybe even they are finding it difficult to defend the supposed need to defend marriage.

I guess we’ll find out as election day gets closer.

UPDATE: Xoff has a post that makes it pretty clear, at least from the perspective of the Republican Party, the real purpose of this amendment and its timing.