In 2004, Kentucky House Democratic legislators inexplicably voted to put on the so-called Marriage Amendment. The most often cited reason by the “moderate” (i.e., conservative) Democrats was that they felt they had to vote to allow it on the ballot.
Seven months later, it was those conservative Democrats who were the victims of the venom that flowed from the get-out-the-vote for the amendment. The amendment passed, and the collateral damage were several Democratic incumbent legislators who were voted against by those very voters who came out for the amendment.
Six years later, Democrats in Kentucky would be well served to remember that lesson—it wasn’t the liberal Democrats who were taken out by the trend. It was the conservatives who bowed to the trend by enabling it as a weapon. A good example this year is the bizarrely-named crackpot group known as Coal Fed Families. And if any Democratic candidate thinks they can ever be crazy enough or Republican enough to not be collateral damage, they are making the worst political mistake of their lives. Coal Fed Families put down their dinner plate of bituminous long enough to endorse Rand Paul.
