CPAC: The gift that keeps on giving

And what Republican gathering would be complete without this classic from the "demonize a minority" section of the playbook:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) spoke after Mehlman, and he promised that on June 5 he will bring to the floor a constitutional amendment to bar same-sex marriage, and pledged a May vote on eliminating the estate tax, items high on the conservative agenda.

Frist said the amendment is needed to protect the majority of Americans, whom he said oppose same-sex marriage, from "the whims of a few activist judges" who seek to "override the commonsense of the American people." He added, "When America's values are under attack, we need to act."

As soon as more than one "republican division" story is seen in the same news cycle, here comes Bill Frist rushing in to rally the base together to combat the Pink Peril. Apparently, punting on the racial epithet question wasn't enough to earn him his hate-monger merit badge, this week. Not while America needs protecting from the menace of more formalized, committed relationships, anyway. The mission to keeping civilly unionized homosexuals from running, door-to-door, dissolving straight marriages with their magic "irreconcilable difference dust" can only be addressed at the Constitutional level. The fact that pandering to ignorant prejudices = red state red meat is just a coincidental by-product, I'm sure.

And to get the two-fer, combining gay bashing with further tax cut largesse for the wealthiest Americans? Well, in case you didn't know it was an election year, you do now.