Did Democrats Cause the New Jersey Gay Marriage Bill To be Defeated

Besides the Catholic Social Justice Issue of gay marriage I do fin the politics of this interesting.

Now President Obama and the national Democrats really did not have much directly to do with the defeat of this bill. There was a lot of hard work done my opponents of this marriage in educating people. Though there is a lot more work to be done. For instance people need to be aware of the concrete ways this effects them.

That being said I think the United States is a "conservative" nation. I don't mean that in a political sense in the way I am talking about it in this post . I mean on the whole we are afraid of rapid change. Which on the whole is good.

I recall that Roos Douthat noted this post back in January of last year where liberals were dreaming dreaming dreaming. This was in regards to the stimulus bill but I think it shows a much larger miscalculation

Well, sure. This is the basic liberal calculus at the moment: The stimulus bill is thick with non-stimulative spending increases because it's a chance to, well, pass spending increases that Democrats think are worthy. Which is fair enough; they did, after all, thump the GOP two election cycles in a row. But surely even the most deficit-happy liberal ought to worry a little about how all of this is going to be paid for - and by extension, whether a spending binge on existing programs today will make it harder to pass, say, an expensive overhaul of the health care system tomorrow. At some point, barring an economic miracle, the GOP will be able to get at least some traction by playing Ross Perot and arguing against out-of-control spending. Maybe the whole liberal wish list will be passed into law before that happens: As Yglesias says in a subsequent post, it's possible that at a time like this there's no "fixed sum of political capital" for liberals to spend down, and so the thing to do is go for broke, quite literally, instead of trying to prioritize health care reform over Pell Grants, or climate change legislation over Head Start. But there's also a chance that the Democrats will look back on the stimulus bill as an instance where they gained ground in the short run, but at the expense of their longer-term ambitions.

Now some conservatives/ Libertarians make the same mistake on their side too when they get into power. They imagine too the populance wants a great revolution. WHY IS THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION NOT BOARDED UP!!

This is often not the case at all.

Still Americans I think have a reaction against massive change. Needless to say from National Health Care , to spending, to cap and trade, to card check and host of other matters we are talking MASSIVE change.

It is no wonder that perhaps some evidence of the shift in the gay marriage debate are people not sure in the midst of all this they want to change the dynamics of this ancient institution.

IN the end I am not sure that if the GOP wins in 2010 it is the result of massive agreement with all GOP policies. I think the alternatives are still be thought out. I think it will be because Americans want to slow things down.