Posted on 07/13/2018 9:12:09 PM PDT by Morgana
Popular Republican journalist Jonah Goldberg angered his base Wednesday by claiming people can be conservative and support abortion.
Goldberg is a senior editor at the National Review and a New York Times bestselling author. On Twitter Wednesday, he made the comment about fellow conservative journalist Tomi Lahren who has been openly critical of pro-lifers.
“Honestly, I think you can support abortion and still be a conservative. I just have a problem when you’re stupid about it or use left wing arguments for it — or both,” Goldberg wrote in the post, linking to one of Lahren’s recent comments.
Goldberg continued his thread to buttress his thesis that being a conservative is not about a single political issue:
No one would argue with Jonah that one could be an atheist and be a conservative or the many other things and be a conservative. But it is very difficult to be a conservative when you deny the most fundamental right to life there is and that is the right to life.
Thomas Jefferson, ironically the founder of the Democratic Party, understood that the number one goal of good government was to protect the right of life of its citizens. Conservative political philosophies are all about putting in place principles to make the lives of the nation’s citizens better by relying on freedoms and liberties free of undue governmental influence as opposed to government control. But it is impossible for citizens to enjoy any of the rights or freedoms under a conservative government if they are not alive to enjoy them in the first place.
Conservatives certainly can disagree about political policies like taxing and spending or foreign policy. President Ronald Reagan understood that Republicans can disagree on some political philosophies and policies and still be united as Republicans when they agree on 80% of the major issues of the day. But the pro-life former president clearly understood that human beings have a fundamental right to life they can’t be abrogated by government.
Mr. Goldberg has taken this news outlet to task for publishing this article. But the issue of the right to life and its primary place in the Republican or conservative political movements is a long-standing one. There have been decades worth of debates about keeping the Republican Party a pro-life party and having a strong pro-life position in the party platform, for example.
So the question of whether or not the Republican Party or the conservative movement rests on the fundamental right to life is a very important one for a considerable number of conservative Republican voters. To merely label this discussion as “clickbait or sloppy” is to do a great disservice to the merits of this very substantive and important debate and the considerable number of pro-life conservative Republican voters for whom it is the most important or one of the most important political issues they consider when voting.
In fact the issue of the right to life and its place in the Republican and conservative movement is so important that millions of Democrats who formally aligned with the Democratic Party are now Republicans/conservatives specifically because the Democratic Party and the liberals who control it moved in such a radically pro-abortion direction. To say that conservatives can be pro-abortion undermines the very reason so many people are conservatives in the first place.
When it comes to the debate over abortion in the Republican Party, Lahren has been openly critical of pro-life conservatives. About the debate about the open U.S. Supreme Court seat, Lahren told Fox News: “Implying that we’re sending a Supreme Court justice to the bench to carry out religious judicial activism is a mistake and unconstitutional. It’s not what conservatives stand for.”
While certainly not flattering to Lahren, his post did upset a number of his Twitter followers.
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NO REAL Conservative could possibly SUPPORT KILLING BABIES!
HA! I would LOVE it if some candidate tried that (especially if they were running in a RAT party primary and tried to pretend they were avowedly supportive of abortion-on-demand even though they plan to vote to ban it at the earliest opportunity)
You have so many scumbag pols trying to reverse tactic (like that creepy Paulbot Austin Petersen in Missouri pretending to be a "pro-life" candidate because says he PERSONALLY feels abortion is murder and morally wrong, even though he plans to vote AGAINST any restrictions on it, because he can't "force his views on others")
You shouldn’t listen to extremists. Perhaps these people shun antibiotics and other “unnatural” medical interventions, it doesn’t mean you should put any value to such opinions in your life.
If they want to take that extreme view of things let them keep it amongst themselves. Don’t let it effect you and your family.
Not qualified to frame himself as a “conservative writer”. He supports those who call themselves conservative, but hate their voting fodder.
How do we save the nation if we embrace those who slaughter the pre-born?
Actually, no. You can’t. Individual lives and family are bedrock for conservatives.
And that would make you a "science denier" - pro-abortion is the ending of a human life. You can think that that is OK, but cannot debate what it is.
I can’t see how the God in heaven will admit anyone who has promoted abortion. It would seem incompatible with scripture.
“A conservative writer..” REALLY? Goldberg?
Jonah Goldberg has a base? Must be comprised of people who do not have a life.
Funny how so many so-called conservatives have been driven out, for the leftists they are (always have been), over the past three years.
Well, you can vote Democrat (pro abortion) and still be a Catholic. You can even be a pro abortion legislator and still receive communion in the Catholic Church.
You can be John McCain, or Jeff Flake, or Mitt Romney, etc..... and call yourself Republican.
You can call a dog’s tail a leg, but the dog still doesn’t have five legs.
In conclusion, you can call yourself anything you want and still act the opposite.
“I despise rape and child molestation. But none of these sins or crimes will go away, no matter what the courts say, no matter what laws are on the books.”
Do you believe rape and child molestation events would not increase if laws against such were removed?
“If you are trying to legislate morality it just won’t work. Human nature is too powerful. Sin will always be with us.”
If you legislate, or as the case is with most of the immoral law we have seen made here in America, create immoral law, or “rights” from the bench, the incidents of this immoral behavior becomes much more common, as accountability for this once illegal immoral behavior is removed from our justice system. With your reasoning, why have any laws at all?
She was just suspended during the bug zapper thread, but she quit posting.
If she is banned then she must have come back and did something else later.
Jonah outed himself two years ago.
This is just one more shred of evidence.
He’ll have a great career as one of the “kept republicans” for some network panel or other media outlet.
He’s a younger version of George Will.
...and we need every vote that we can muster.
There appears to be a flaw in your logic.
I remember long ago Rush one had a guest host who said something like this:
“I’m a conservative, but I support abortion, and I support gun control, and I support gay marriage, and I support...”
He lasted one day, and Rush never made that mistake again.
In a word: No. Conservatives CONSERVE.
Can you be a liberal and a conservative at the same time?
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