Earlier I mentioned Ehrlichs divisive "let's all work together" state of the state message last week. But of course it is all grand politics from a man whose whole party is developing the mastery of rhetoric and the big lie as a "matter of course."
Here the Governor is pushing anti-homosexual buttons with his efforts to outlaw gay marriage before it ever occurs by passing a constitutional ammendment. Here the Governor is a deeply corrupt (in the moral not the legal sense) man, Heck let me quote:
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=260097
"On November 18, the press office of Maryland's Republican governor, Robert Ehrlich Jr., sent a memo to all state public information officers forbidding them from speaking to two Baltimore Sun reporters, State House Bureau Chief David Nitkin and columnist Michael Olesker. The governor was unhappy with some reporting critical of his administration the two had produced. He claimed they had engaged in "noncontextual innuendo" in writing about his administrations formula for evaluating Maryland's surplus public lands, including a charge that the governor was employing state-funded advertising for personal political gain. Nitkin was accused of authoring a story that included an incorrect map of state lands, while Olesker appeared to imply that he had been present at a state hearing that he had, in fact, failed to attend."
"Ehrlich has seen little reason to defend his decision, and has so far refused to meet with representatives of the paper to outline his objections to their coverage, telling a local Baltimore radio station, "[The ban is] meant to have a chilling effect on them. They have no credibility. It's clearly meant to have not only chilling effect...but a very serious effect on these two writers." ‘Chilling,’ indeed."
The Baltimore Sun is not a particularly "liberal" newspaper -- but it is an old fashioned muck-racking Newspaper that loves good stories about corruption in high places. And unfortunately Ehrlich is following the example of this predecessor rather than any of the dozens of other more progressive examples he could have chosen from; Spiro T. Agnew. I don't know if you are old enough to remember that mans polarizing words, but Ehrlich has picked up quite a following here by following his example. And it is based on Gambling interests (the Mob), Social Conservatives (right wing Christians and right wing Catholics), homophobes, city-phobes, and others for whom "modern society" is too modern and who'd like to roll it back, people who prefer 1920's or 1950's style un-freedoms to what has been the norm since. You know where "liberty and justice for all" means "liberty and justice for us but not them".