Now that L’Affaire Du Kim Davis is receding into the past, let’s try to figure out who, if anyone, came out on top.
I suppose you could say that the gay couples won, though the stress of being repeatedly shunned before a national audience probably wasn’t much fun.
You might say Kim Davis won, because she got to make a big show of her principles, though the scrutiny of her alleged adultery and suspicious salary will probably lead to more unpleasantness in her personal and professional life.
You might say that Liberty Counsel won, but they’ve been exposed as so incompetent that it’s hard to imagine anyone taking them seriously after this. (Fox News called Kim’s lawyers “stupid” and “obtuse.”)
So did anyone come out on top?
Well, yes: TV personality and gimmick-candidate Mike Huckabee, who is using the election to build his audience. When he saw that there were TV cameras pointed at Kim Davis, he glommed onto her like a sugary cereal stuck in a rear molar.
And of course he couldn’t resist hogging Kim spotlight. Mike’s built a sizable portion of his career on anti-gay animus, but he’s no dummy: he can see that the market for that rhetoric is dwindling. So now he’s switching to the talking point that “Christians are persecuted,” and Kim provided the perfect opportunity to pivot.
The cutest part of the Huckabee/Davis TV special is watching the other kids try to sit at their lunch table. Ben Carson tried to elbow his way into the conversation, telling Fox News that we should provide legal exemptions to laws to Christians but not to those pesky Muslims because “this is a Judeo-Christian nation.”
Obviously and of course, this is not a Judeo-Christian nation. It is a pluralistic nation with an Establishment Clause. But Ben Carson has no more reason to care about the Constitution than Kim Kardashian does — he’s just another reality TV confabulation, groping for his next catch phrase.
And hilariously, Ted Cruz tried to sad-clown his way up onto the stage at Kim’s Fresh Outta Jail rally, but Huckabee staffers physically blocked his way. Of course they did — the purpose of that rally wasn’t to celebrate religious freedom, or a victory for their principles. The purpose was to reinforce Mike Huckabee’s brand with Kim Davis credentials, essentially sticking Mary Lou Retton in an ugly sweater on a box of homophobic Wheaties. (“Dolores Umbridge in real life,” one of my viewers called Kim.)
The GOP clown car will have a few more months to wease the Kim Davis juice — because of Kentucky’s nutty laws and Kim’s stubbornness, the whole affair could stretch out until January.
But I wouldn’t expect the “candidates” to try to spend much more time on Kim. Like any reality TV stunt, this one’s run it course, and viewers are already getting bored. According to Google Trends, we hit peak Kim Davis on September 8th at 3 in the afternoon, and her star’s been sliding ever since. The only way she’ll continue to be in the news is if she pulls a Sarah Palin, and starts generating daily troll-bait.
But there is a very real danger that we’ll have countless Kim Davis clones to deal with at some point. Congress is considering what Republicans are calling the “First Amendment Defense Act,” but I’ve renamed “The Kim Davis Cloning Act.” It would essentially let anyone, or any business, do what Kim’s doing — and would bar the government from stopping them. It has no chance of passing in Congress, but copycat bills could be successfully exported to individual states.
With interest in Kim now waning, Huckabee’s moved on to the next stunt — making a confusing comparison to Dred Scott that’s so dumb it’s not worth explaining. That’s not bad, but it lacks the pizazz of the Kim Davis circus. If Mike really wants some attention, he’ll need to go full Real Housewife and throw a drink in someone’s face. Might I suggest Ted Cruz? He already looks like a wet cat.