Instapundit watch:

In other words, a pointless exercise driven by social conservatives to fire up their base. But I wonder if people are thinking this through. If the amendment fails, as expected, isn't that going to be read as a defeat for the anti-gay-marriage folks, and as implicit permission for states to go ahead? It seems to me that it will be (which is fine with me, since I'm okay on gay marriage), but that makes me wonder why anti-gay-marriage folks are doing this. Am I missing something, or are they being played for suckers?

UPDATE: More thoughts here. And Eric Scheie has this observation: "I think that the proponents are more cynical than they might appear. I think they know they are going to lose, and therefore they'd rather lose in a big public way -- before the election."

Many neocons who favor Bush seem to think this way. They are Iraq hawks and favor tax cuts for the rich, but they can't quite believe Bush means what he says on social issues. Myself I would consider being willing to use the trust of those who rely on you against them something of a character issue. At any rate, the evidence is against calculated betrayal. If anything, some of the stuff quoted here risked offending religious supporters with hubris. If Bush is really pandering to the right with some of his statements - rather than humoring the center with the rest of them - I haven't seen an analysis to prove it, or even a serious attempt to make a case for it. It just seems natural to people who share his political beliefs but have no personal contact with serious evangelicals.

Why is Glenn Reynolds so willing to believe 'straight talker' Bush is involved in setting up some of his supporters, if not an odd combination of blind faith in some of his politics and the idea that he could not seriously believe a certain set of his religeous protestations? I disagree with them, especially the political positions often derived from them, but would require strong evidence to call someone who professed them a hypocrite.