As Republicans continue to look for ways to become more of a Big Tent party, leaders are scrambling to keep their potential national candidates from falling out of the tent they currently maintain.
“Clearly, we’ve got a Family Values concern, especially among some members we have been considering as possible presidential candidates,” said Lloyd Braun, former adviser to New York mayor David Dinkins, and now a top Republican strategist. Braun is also a private investigator for a prominent California divorce attorney.
Without naming names or citing cases, Braun said recent prominent Republican leaders are forcing the party to broaden its definition of what exactly constitutes a strong commitment to Family Values that can still be backed up by both moral posturing followed by tearful confessions. A small task force of influential party operatives, strategists and media specialists are said to be working on such a restructuring of the current definition.
“We’re currently looking at a Values position that takes into account the reality of the kinds of political, power marriages that are prevalent in today’s world,” said Braun.
The so-called Hiking the Appalachians Initiative is attempting to develop language to expand the definition of the sanctity of marriage to account for the reality of many political marriages today. The task force is taking a page from the playbook of a similar effort by the Democrats during the 1990s that sought to develop an array of definitions to explain more clearly what the meaning of is, is.
“We’re thinking of something like re-defining marriage as a sacred bond between a man, a woman and the occasional fling,” Braun told the Bubble News.
Braun reported that the group is looking at the various methods of measuring degrees of transgressions as a kind of Family Values Sliding Scale.
“We could assign numerical values, for example, to transgressions that crossed the line, those that didn’t cross the line, and whether or not there were meaningful attempts to try and fall in love with the original wife again.”
Braun said bonus points could be awarded when the wife shows up at the podium for the sorrowful admission. “A value of 10 would mean the candidate could still be considered a viable presidential candidate,” Braun said.
When apprised of that number, Sarah Palin reportedly responded by saying, “Then I’m in. Heck, I’m already a 10!”
