Long after I’d given up hope of seeing anything even close to a principled stand by a Republican, something incredible happened. It’s amazing to me that the party responsible for my wonderment is the same attorney who represented George Bush in the Bush v. Gore election caper, former Solicitor General, Theodore Olson.

Last year, Ted Olson joined with David Boies, the opposing lawyer in Bush v. Gore, and a staunch Democrat, to bring a federal lawsuit against Perry v. Schwarzenegger challenging Proposition 8, the California constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage. This odd couple of ideologically opposed lawyers, of course prevailed in overturning Prop. 8.

This morning on Fox News Sunday, Olson appeared with Chris Wallace to discuss the recent defeat of Prop 8 in a California courtroom.  I find Chris Wallace to be the single toadiest, most craven, ass-licking employee of Fox News. That’s really saying something, I realize, but Chris Wallace is a nauseating one-man wind-up toy of Republican talking points. He’s not a journalist, he’s a weenie. He’s not a conservative, he’s a Republican and as Olson proves in the following clip, there is a very big difference between the two. Republicans used to have a credible reputation for being anti-statist and wanting to keep the government off the backs of the people and out of their lives. That was then and this is now. Now, who the fuck knows what they stand for except for the interests of the ruling class and abject stupidity? If the Republicans got smart and ran someone brilliant like Olson instead of ignoramuses like Sharron Angle and Sarah Palin, maybe they’d have a chance in general elections, but that’s not going to happen, not for a long time:

Olson: (to Wallace) Well, would you like your right to free speech? Would you like Fox’s right to free press put up to a vote and say well, if five states approved it, let’s wait till the other 45 states do? These are fundament constitutional rights. The Bill of Rights guarantees Fox News and you, Chris Wallace, the right to speak. It’s in the constitution. And the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the denial of our citizens of the equal rights to equal access to justice under the law, is a violation of our fundamental rights. Yes, it’s encouraging that many states are moving towards equality on the basis of sexual orientation, and I’m very, very pleased about that. … We can’t wait for the voters to decide that that immeasurable harm, that is unconstitutional, must be eliminated.