Is there a fine line between "rallying the troops" and creating (or stoking) a political backlash?

The reason I'm asking this question is that I've seen many an issue advanced not by its proponents, but by popular backlash against the tactics used by its opponents -- especially personal attacks and emotional, overwrought hyperbole. I discussed this recently in the context of the California same sex marriage debate.

If the level of agitation against gay marriage becomes too loud and too angry, people might get so sick of hearing about an issue peripheral to them that they might decide to vote the issue away. Similarly, if gay marriage advocates are seen as yelling at voters, they might decide to vote the issue away in another manner.

If you get to define the opposition, you can win. Provided, of course, that the opposition cooperates. One of the things that won the 2004 election for Bush was the over-the-top behavior of the usual activists in the streets of New York at the Republican convention. (That the likes of Michael Moore sat in a place of honor next to Jimmy Carter added credibility to the view that extreme leftism had become mainstream Democratic thinking, and it was a brilliant strategic move to hold the GOP convention in New York.)

But relying on the opposition to create a backlash has to be done carefully, lest they or the ordinary voters catch on. Sophistication grows. I suspect that California voters, for example, might not be so dumb as to fall for an attempt to spin Fred Phelps and the GodHatesFags.com clique as typical of the marriage amendment supporters.

A more credible approach (especially for the Big Media types who hide their bias) would be to feature a guy like my frequent emailer Matt Barber of the Concerned Women for America. In his latest WorldNet Daily piece, he doesn't merely advocate one man one woman and take issue with the California Supreme Court decision legalizing same sex marriage, but he takes aim at "gay sex" itself (in quotes, because he believes it is neither):

When same-sex friendships are twisted and sexualized, practitioners of "the sin that dare not speak its name" are forced, at every level, to merely mimic the genuine article. They jump through a series of inelegant hoops to create a fantasy world wherein two people of the same gender clumsily imitate natural heterosexual pairings properly designed for procreation and the healthy rearing of children.

Even "gay sex" (male-male anal sodomy) is a crude, man-made imitation of the natural heterosexual reproductive process. Sadly, as millions of homosexuals have had to learn the hard way, this disordered, makeshift simulation of a natural biological process is coldly rejected by the very human biology it mocks.

As the CDC has illustrated time and again, unnatural behaviors beget natural consequences. Homosexual conduct - especially among males - creates an environment ripe for infectious disease and emotional and spiritual injury. This, by definition, is perversion. ("Perversion: Pathology. A change to what is unnatural or abnormal: a perversion of function or structure." - Dictionary.com)

Homosexuality is a dead end. It's emotionally, spiritually and physically sterile. But it's not surprising that, as with most sins, those trapped in the aptly named "queer" lifestyle desperately seek affirmation of their behavioral choices. Most of us know when we're doing something immoral, let alone unnatural and unhealthy, and so we want others to convince us otherwise.

Consider comedian and talk-show host Ellen Degeneres. After recently announcing that she intended to "marry" her friend, Portia DeRossi (a woman), Ellen sought approval from presidential candidate John McCain, whom she had as a guest on her show.

I'll admit it: Ellen is a sympathetic figure with a quick wit. I'm sure she's a very nice person, and I don't dislike her at all. But she's playing with fire. Ellen compounds the sin of homosexuality by using the platform she's been given to lead others astray. She guides her many adoring housewife fans into rebellion against God's divine and explicit natural order by suggesting they celebrate sin and entertain, along with her, the "gay marriage" delusion.

Then there's the outburst against the sins of Ellen. The Bible condemns "lying with a man as with a woman," but unless you're into textual gender revisionism (which I suspect few fundamentalists are), the silence about lesbians is remarkable. The only reference to lesbianism is arguably St. Paul's utterance (in Romans 1:26) that:

For this cause [worshiping images of pagan deities] God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature.

And while I'm on this irritating topic, let's play fundamentalist gender revisionism, and rework the Leviticus prohibition to include lesbians.

Thou shalt not lie with womankind, as with mankind: it is abomination.

So let's try,

Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind, or with womankind as with mankind: it is abomination.

ACK! I hate it when I get distracted, because here I am arguing the fine points of fundamentalist textual revisionism when what I should be doing is getting to my point about the backlash principle.

Notwithstanding any of the above, my biggest worry politically is not gay marriage, or the gay issue, but whether the fall election will be determined by backlash. Will the Democrats be perceived as more over the top than the Republicans? Who will be seen by the voters as more prone to using personal attacks and emotional, overwrought hyperbole?

Frankly, it worries me that the election is already being framed as whether America is "ready to have a black man as president." That's because I think the question is disingenuous. America is perfectly ready to have a black president. What is being missed is that the vast majority of voters are no more interested in Obama's race than they would be in the race of Colin Powell, or Condoleezza Rice were they on the Republican ticket.

The vast majority of Americans don't like ad hominem attacks and personal invective either. John McCain knows this, and he's tried to put the brakes on excessively personal Obama-bashing, because I think he knows that he doesn't need to do it to win, and that if he is perceived as doing it, he may lose. He wants the Hillary vote, which is today's equivalent of the Reagan Democrat vote, and let's face it, Hillary voters, while they may be leery of McCain, they are not leery of him in the WorldNetDaily conservative sense. They don't get outraged over his hobnobbing with Ellen Degeneres, nor would they especially care that his daughter was seen wearing an Arab keffiyeh. [AKA "shemagh."]

While McCain can rely on the anti-Obama groundwork already done by Hillary supporters, he has to be careful to avoid the extreme Obama bashers like the plague, and he has to purge any hint of it from his campaign. The goal of McCain's opponents, naturally, will be to tar McCain with the tactics of his supporters, in the hope that he can be made to look like them, and that they can be made to look like bigots.

Whether it works will depend on McCain's credibility in distancing himself from them, and in the intelligence of the voters in being able to make the distinction. I fear that it will be a very tricky business, and I don't envy John McCain.

For, while Hillary's supporters can find common cause with McCain, they have little or nothing in common with the WorldNetDaily crowd, and to the extent that the latter engage in extreme Obama bashing, they might be successful in driving these timid new GOP arrivals away.

Do far right Republicans (I don't mean to single out WND Republicans, but those in the far right camp generally) care? It's a question the more thoughtful people in their ranks might want to ponder -- especially those who don't want Obama to be president.

As to those in the less thoughtful camp, the more irrational and extreme their attacks on Obama, the more Obama will benefit. Were I working for Obama, I would consider the far right critics to be the best possible allies, for not only can they be relied on to frighten the grudgeholding Hillaryites back into the fold, but the more extreme among them can be put in the media spotlight to advance the proposition that Obama's enemies on the right are a bunch of racist cranks.

What are the implications for those conservatives who so despise McCain that they want him to lose? In my darker moments, I put myself in their place, and I realize that the best strategy is not to attack McCain (for this only makes McCain look good to the moderates and independents), but to launch the dirtiest, sleaziest, most dishonest, and most over-the-top attacks possible against Obama, in the hope of creating a backlash in Obama's favor.

Few people, I admit, are cynical enough to behave that way deliberately, but think of the benefits to those who are. Their hands will be completely clean, and they can even claim that they were only trying to "help" McCain (who was of course too much of a wimp to tell the truth). That's a win-win. And if the ferocity of their attacks force McCain to denounce them, why, in their minds, their hands (and consciences) will be even cleaner. That's a win-win-win. And if McCain loses despite all their "help," it will be a win-win-win-win.

For them, and Barack Obama.

MORE: Please bear in mind that while I try to admit my biases, my primary argument here involves strategy, and not the merits of the various positions. Thus, if the goal is to defeat same sex marriage, denouncing "sodomites" is probably not the best way to go about it -- no matter how evil the opponents of gay marriage might believe homosexuality is. Similarly, if the goal is stopping Barack Obama, denouncing him as a secret Communist or Muslim is not the best strategy -- and the question of whether he really is and whether the denouncers believe he is becomes largely irrelevant. (Likewise, if those on the other side think their opponents are fascistic Christianist bigots and deranged racist loons respectively, they'd be best advised not to say so.)

Nothing fair about any of it.

MORE: Via Ann Althouse I just learned that al Qaeda terrorist mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad is hopping mad over gay marriage:

He particularly took issue with a society that allows "same-sexual marriage" and other things that "are very bad." He said he could not accept a U.S. lawyer because the nation is "still in Iraq and Afghanistan and waging their crusade."...

MORE: A Drudge headline today reads "Tom Delay calls Barack Obama a Marxist."

But does that mean he doesn't want Obama to be president? The reason I can't decide is that he's on record as saying this:

Hillary Clinton as president may be the best thing that ever happened to the conservative movement and the Republican Party.