On the surface, the most startling comments surrounding the controversy over John Ashcroft, President Bush's nominee for Attorney General, have come from a gay leader. Specifically, from the leader of the gay Republican group, the Log Cabin Republicans.
While virtually every other gay organization, partisan or not, has joined the opposition to Ashcroft, Log Cabin Republican leader Rich Tafel praised the man.
"You've got to applaud him," Tafel said recently.
This would seem strange, even shocking, if you didn't know that Tafel was fighting for his political life as much as Ashcroft was.
Just about any other gay leader would say we need to flog Ashcroft. Or maybe dog him with protests. But applaud one of the political point men of the Christian conservatives who makes even Jesse Helms look like a moderate on gay issues?
Yep, that's what Tafel would have us believe. Tafel's praise, he tells us, is solely based on Ashcroft's testimony during his confirmation proceedings. During those hearings, Democrats grilled Ashcroft on his record toward gays and lesbians, specifically his role in attempting to block James Hormel, an openly gay man, as ambassador to Luxembourg. The issue was used to raise the question of whether or not Ashcroft would discriminate in employment against gays and lesbians—and as attorney general, if he would promote policies and laws that did the same.
At the time, Ashcroft refused even to meet with Hormel, and is widely believed to be one of three senators who placed an anonymous "hold" on Hormel's confirmation proceedings, indefinitely stalling Hormel's appointment. It wasn't until Clinton invoked his authority to appoint Hormel while the Senate was in recess that the stalemate was broken.
Furthermore, while a senator from Missouri, and a former governor of that same state, Ashcroft opposed every single bill or initiative aimed at supporting gays and lesbians.
During his confirmation hearings, Ashcroft denied he opposed Hormel because he was gay, but refused to say why, exactly, he was so adamantly against Hormel's appointment. A candid observer would say that Ashcroft perjured himself in his testimony about gay and lesbian issues in general, and the Hormel fiasco in particular.
Even many Republicans, particularly moderate ones, flinched at Bush's nomination of Ashcroft for attorney general.
But not good old Rich Tafel.
So why is Tafel so quick to stand up for this hard-core conservative Bush appointee?
He may be playing the role of ultra-patriotic Republican in solidarity with President Bush in hopes of hanging onto his title as leader of the gay Republicans, who presumably will want some kind of a dialogue with the new White House.
But other gay Republican leaders overwhelmingly insist that Tafel's days as the spokesperson for gay Republicans are over.
"He's got to go," one prominent gay Republican told me of Tafel. "New [ Log Cabin ] leadership is absolutely essential if we're to have a positive relationship with the Bush administration."
I spoke with five nationally prominent gay Republicans. While all of them spoke on condition of anonymity, they each echoed the sentiment that Tafel could no longer lead the Log Cabin group under a Bush presidency.
"There's just too much bad blood," one said, referring to the ill feelings sowed between Tafel and Bush early in the presidential primaries. When Bush initially said he probably would not meet with gay Republicans, Tafel carried the torch for challenger John McCain, who readily sat down to talk to the group. Under Tafel, the Log Cabin Republicans raised $40,000 in support of McCain. But even worse, say insiders, was the highly critical and "opportunistically public" tone Tafel took in confronting Bush.
When Bush finally did meet with a group of gay Republicans in the summer, it is significant that Tafel was not invited to the gathering.
Despite Tafel's eventual support of Bush in the general election, animosity continues to plague Tafel's relationship with the Bush White House, gay Republicans say.
"There is continued infighting between Rich [ Tafel ] and members of the Bush camp," one gay Republican leader diplomatically told me.
But another was more blunt. "Bush absolutely despises Rich [ Tafel ] ," this gay Republican leader said flatly. "There's nothing [ Tafel ] can do to mend this. He's burned too many bridges."
If the five gay Republican leaders I spoke with are any indication, the gay Republicans wish Tafel would gracefully resign and hand over the reigns to someone without so much baggage.
But that seems highly unlikely. When, just before the November presidential election, I tried to broach the subject of the friction between Tafel and Bush—and thus between the Log Cabin Republicans as a whole, and Bush—spokesman Kevin Ivers dismissed the idea out of hand. "I'm not going to get into that," he said, refusing to address my questions. "I'm not going to get into things like that that don't have any foundation at all. It's ridiculous."
What may be most ridiculous, now, however, is the position the Log Cabin Republicans find themselves in with respect to the White House. During the campaign, the Log Cabin group made nice-nice with the Bush team, at least publicly. While many gay Republicans privately conceded that Bush was not up to par on gay and lesbian issues, they contended that only by supporting him could they hope to gain access to Bush should he become president. Once that happened, they insisted, they could work "from the inside" to improve Bush's stands on gay issues.
Now that Bush is in power, however, there is little to indicate that he has much intention of opening up to the Log Cabin group. Indeed, what I was recently told seems to indicate just the opposite is true. And while much of the tension between the Log Cabin group and the Bush administration may have its roots in personality conflicts involving Rich Tafel, it is not clear at all that Tafel is the only obstacle. New developments seem to suggest that the Bush administration simply doesn't want to deal with gay Republicans who are going to force issues beyond polite public handshakes.
Evidence of this comes in the form of the Republican Unity Coalition, a recently organized group of gay Bush pals. Word is that Bush will favor the Republican Unity Coalition over the Log Cabin Republicans as his connection to the gay community.
But don't expect the Republican Unity Coalition to play hardball. The group has explicitly said that it does not intend to be a gay-rights or advocacy group, like the Log Cabin organization. Instead, it's purpose is to "make sexual orientation a nonissue in the Republican Party"—which is distinctly different from raising gay issues to the attention of the Republican Party.
The group also emphasized that it is a coalition of both gay and straight Republicans.
From the sound of things, it might even be the kind of group that John Ashcroft would join.
MubarakDah@aol.com
