yeah. of businesses. i mean, paul, you can address that, but i don t think these are typical requests that are coming into campaign. i checked with steve schmidt, who ran the mccain campaign. nobody who has done this at that level has any idea what the hell they were doing. and there s no benign explanation. none of us who have done this in either party in my lifetime can point to anything like this, and this is both parties. but paul you ran a campaign before you had e-mail where people were sending e-mails but you did have phones, right? think of the list. so now this mr. dearborn, who i don t know and maybe it s a benign explanation, but he joins a long list of paul manafort of donald trump jr. of jared kushner, of sessions, carter page, michael flynn. many of them had meetings. not dearborn. let me tell you i ran a presidential campaign.
frankly. my dialogue with the rnc and the campaign committees are ongoing. not every member of the republican party, not every republican office holder is on the same page, but that s the whole point of why we re having dialogue. if i can get a member of congress to at least agree to certain aspects like employment non-discrimination, that begins a dialogue or if they agree to repeal of don t ask, don t tell, that s another foothold into the dialogue. some members of congress want to start out by talking tax equity in the next session of congress. we ll take that. the ball is moving forward. and the party is getting back to basics. where it s not moving forward, i was watching the glenn beck rally the other day and i ve got to tell you the christian right under palin and under the banner of palin and beck, trying to take that party from its secular roots, almost like a matchup with the middle east politics and try to turn it into a christian right party with some jewish conservatives
saying opposition to gay marriage would not be a litmus test for membership in the gop and more conservatives are making the case that they know more want government in the bedroom. and i do believe on behalf of your cause, clarke, which i support, i think the more people come out and express themselves in terms of their orientation, the more that families become openly aware of it and become somewhat protective and basically become allies in this cause, and as it spreads and spreads and spreads, republicans as well as democratic and independent families join the cause for equality here, but is the republican platform going to change by 2012, sir? well, we re working on it and we re not only just working on it from within the party but just we re talking about grass roots. many of our chapter leaders in log cabin republicans across the nation are delegates to the convention. some of them are actually rnc eagles or the high donor level within the party. the dialogue is already there,
republicans and the voices coming forward speaking out for marriage. you ve got the tea party which at least outwardly has gone to great lengths to avoid a discussion of social issues and then you ve got, you know, the far right who have for a long time now been really the only voice out there against marriage equality offering up all sorts of reasons why it s a bad idea. yeah. and i think what is refreshing and helpful is a new chorus of voices coming forward countering that, and then you add to that the case in california for the first time where they had to bring evidence forward to suggest that marriage equality was a bad idea and as we saw they had nothing to offer, so, you know, you talked about the grass roots. it is true that among republican voters generally were lagging, you know, about 20 points or 30 points behind democrats, 20 behind independents. and again, as people like ken melman and others come forward, you ll see the numbers start to move because there s been no
and i ve got to tell you the christian right under palin and under the banner of palin and beck, trying to take that party from its secular roots, almost like a matchup with the middle east politics and try to turn it into a christian right party with some jewish conservatives but mainly a christian right party. they are trying to turn it into that based upon god and jesus and all this in an incredibly un-american way turning a political party into a religious institution. i don t think it s going to help marriage equality. my thoughts now. what are yours? well, glenn beck for starters actually is fine with marriage equality, so, we re not going to get in here and talk about semantics about some libertarian movements or some other voices within the republican party. we can, but if we re talking about marriage equality, you happened to raise mr. beck s name. he s actually in support of it. i guess i don t hear that sound coming from the rally types, but your thoughts, joe. how do yo