The second Republican debate wasn’t anything to write home about. The set was impressive with that vintage Air Force One. Back in my flying days I managed to score some Air Force One in-flight service cocktail napkins and Reagan-era wine glasses. Anyway, the debate was somewhat more focused than the first, but nothing really new came of it. The general consensus is Carly Fiorina “won.” Runners-up included a tempered Donald Trump, the ever-duller Jeb Bush and John Kasich.
For Republican LGBTs, the debate didn’t do much to harden conviction one way or the other. Interestingly, the Log Cabin Republicans organization seems to be at a loss to respond to any of the present scrum of presidential wannabes. I thought there might be a running debate on the group’s social media site. But there isn’t. How could there be? The only acknowledgement of LGBT issues candidates have offered has been negative. Still, in the first debate Kasich gave a relatively positive response to a gay question. Trump has shrugged off marriage equality as a done deal.
But who could gay Republicans actually back? Locally, judging from their social media comments, one can begin to get a picture of their political tendencies. I guess that initial mass Facebook “friending” process, in which I accepted practically anyone who requested it, has paid off. It’s given me a rather broad spectrum of LGBTs to follow. They represent width and breath of our demographic spectrum. It’s interesting to get to know friends and strangers through their posts. Many give a running chronicle of the tedium of their lives: how much laundry they folded, their lactating ups and downs, old pets they put down and all the rest. They also offer their political rants. Any of those could be reason to unfriend them, especially looking at my pile of unfolded T-shirts. But, despite the temptation, I don’t. It’s actually more fun to sit back and watch.
So, amongst my assorted online gays, I’ve amassed a forum of local virtual pundits. Most are white and male. There’s rampant racism, of course. That’s a given in Milwaukee. There’s virulent Islamophobia, too. That gives traction to any candidate who dismisses the Black Lives Matter movement, calls for walls to defend the nation’s borders against the invading Hispanic hoards (and the Canadians) and wants to bomb Iran. Still the homophobia spewed by the vast majority of current Republican presidential hopefuls makes it an agonizing choice.
Taking those out of the equation leaves Trump, Fiorina and Kasich. Kasich will go nowhere. Among the frothingly rabid, crazed Dominionists like Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee, he comes across as too nice a guy. I’m not sure how Fiorina fares, but then there’s Trump. He has appeal. His vision of trainloads of Mexicans and Muslims deported back to where they came from certainly gives him an edge. And, drag queens love his hair, attitude and caustic wit. The last is just like reading the drag art of insulting the competition. It’s a very sad testament, isn’t it?
