I know what I like, and I like what I know; getting better in your wardrobe, stepping one beyond your show.

(List from Proceed At Your Own Risk blog, which seems to be on hiatus)

Rick Moran at the never ironically named Right Wing Nut House continues on his personal quest to become . . . not a right wing nut:

I have made no secret on this blog of my distaste for the Republican strategy of pushing opposition to abortion and gay marriage as litmus tests for GOP candidates and as “wedge” issues to use in campaigns.

While I acknowledge there are many millions of sincere, devout Christians (and other social conservatives) who see these issues as vital to the moral fiber of the nation and thus worthy of standing them up front and center as the party’s main identity, from a personal standpoint, I strenuously disagree.

Abortion, I can understand. The religious underpinnings that can rationalize life at conception are well known to me, having grown up Catholic. But the Republic or the “sanctity of marriage” being in danger because two people in love want to get married? That’s a stretch. There may be other reasons to keep gay people from marrying but the more I think about it, the more I believe that it’s really no body’s business who loves who and what sex they are. There may be sticky legal issues involved but I’m no lawyer and can’t speak to them. All I can look to is common sense. And common sense tells me that gay people should be able to do anything in this free country that anyone else can do.

In-freakin'-deed. Welcome to the realization that real conservatives, as well as liberals, want personal decisions not controlled by the state. In this way, the right-wing of the Republican Party has turned into the true advocate of a "Nanny State" where Dobson et al are the arbiters of morality for you and me, and the State has to save us from terrorists with baby formula bottles on airplanes by sending American soldiers into the meat grinder of Iraq.

Except, whoopsies:

Beyond common sense, there is politics. And while I am not calling for dropping these planks from any GOP platform, these issues are no longer “wedge” issues. They are “loser” issues. They are “recipe for electoral disaster” issues. They are driving people away from the Republican party.

So you have distaste of GOP "wedge issue" framing, but please, oh please, don't drop it from the party platform. Because then it can still be so wedgie.

This is really the worst kind of pandering to the nutball base: "I don't like that you think about stuff that I think is stupid, but I want you to still think about it."

Can't have it both ways, fool. But he goes on about Sen. Larry Craig's (R-Closet) little "issue":

The point really isn’t whether he’s guilty or innocent. The point is that this sort of thing becomes a huge issue because of the way the party talks about gays and the way many GOP stalwarts like Reverends Robertson and Dobson talk about sex. The perception that Republicans are a bunch of bigoted blue noses stuck in the 19th century with Victorian sensibilities about the bedroom turns off a lot of voters – especially the young.

Damn straight. That's the way Ayatollah Dobson wants it, that's the way your Right-Wing will play it. And those with semi-enlightened minds like yours, or Andrew Sullivan's, will be marginalized and ignored on this issue, while closet cases like Craig & Dreier score points by voting against Hate-Crimes legislation for gays, and for Defense of Marriage Acts.

Because that's what it is, an act. Because they can't come to grips with their own acts (pun fully intended).

Bastards.