Posted on 11/16/2007 9:07:47 AM PST by dschapin
Fred Thompson and the NRLC
It is interesting that the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) has chosen to endorse Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson, a man who once offered legal advice to a pro-choice group, voted against key pro-life issues in the Senate and now espouses convoluted reasons for rejecting constitutional protection of the unborn.
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Recently, Mr. Thompson refused to support a constitutional amendment that would protect innocent life by restricting the availability of abortions. The sanctity-of-life amendment was a core plank in the Republican Party's 2004 election platform, and yet Mr. Thompson said he could not support it, saying his objection stems from his federalist views.
However, in 1995 he voted for a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning. If he were concerned about states rights he would have let them issue their own laws on the matter. Also, if Mr. Thompson were concerned about cluttering the constitution with superfluous amendments, he would not have supported a 1997 constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget.
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(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Your post is condescending and annoying, and does nothing to encourage others to support your candidate. If it makes you feel good, that’s about all it does, and if you feel good by demeaning others, that is something you should think about.
I won’t discuss your choice of ping phrases again. My position is clear, and you are free as a person is to dismiss my opinion, either of the meaning of your phrase (I doubt you can disagree with me on that point), or it’s effect, or whether you should care about it’s effect.
My standing on which to make the observation is as a person who urged Fred to join, who sent him money, who is on his mailing list, and is collecting signatures to get him on the ballot in Virginia. If your posts make ME think less of your candidate, I believe they could not possible have LESS of an effect on others.
I find it so ironic when those who compromise principle blame those who won’t compromise principle for the result of their own compromises.
They seem to think our other candidates have an equal problem, except probably Rudy (their "exception").
The hyper-hypocrisy on this issue of the Romney campaign aside, here’s why “I’ve always been for life” Mitt didn’t get the National Right to Life Committee endorsement...
They remember what he did to the last pro-life group that tried to endorse him, the last time he ran for public office.
Massachusetts Gubernatorial Debate
November 2, 2002
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_w9pquznG4
Watch the whole amazing thing, or to see how Mitt feels about being endorsed by a pro-life group in particular, fast forward to 3:45 of the video.
BTW, does anybody know which two votes the are saying Fred took that were NOT oppose to pro-choice?
My guess is his votes for Title X.
And apparently NRLC did not think those votes were anti-pro-life votes.
But I don’t know.
I just posted that a prohibition on abortion is not a matter of criminal law, but about prohibiting government from passing a law (allowing abortion) that takes away the inalienable rights of the pre-born.
Have you ever thought about it from that perspective, rather than from the rights of the woman to kill her baby?
I happen to think that pulling down ANY of the candidates who profess conservative viewpoints doesn’t do ANY of us any favors, and that we should trust that conservatives will be swayed to our candidates by the positive message of conservatism they espouse, and their ability to reach out to the masses and gain support.
It would be nice that, when we have a candidate, that candidate won’t go into the general election with a mortal wound inflicted by his opponents or their supporters.
If Fred had that history, he'd be the perfect Republican candidate.
We shouldn’t define our princples by what is passable and doesn’t divide the nation.
IN 1973, we didn’t have 4-d ultrasound, we didn’t have detailed knowledge of the human genome, we hadn’t figured out how to clone things, and we rarely saved a baby born much before normal gestation.
We know a LOT more about the personhood of the pre-born than the founders knew, or than we knew when Roe hit. Roe is an enshrinement of scientific illiteracy.
Each candidate has a differing level of consistancy. Anybody who is not supporting God for President probably should not give others too much grief for their compromises.
It could be McCain-Feingold. As I've pointed out to the folks who like to tout the NRLC "scorecards" of Thompson not being perfectly rated, McCain-Feingold was pretty much universally a "negative" scorecard mark for all advocacy groups, making the vote really neither inherently pro- or con- any particular position not directly related to the CFR issue.
My guess is you won’t let anybody else do your thinking for you, despite your claim otherwise in this post.
Your analysis seems to me to be an attempt to call action non-action and non-action action.
Even if you see a constitutional amendment upholding the rights of the unborn as something that prohibits the government from action, to truly protect the unborn does require government action, namely, positive law that makes it clear that it is a crime to kill unborn human beings.
“I just posted that a prohibition on abortion is not a matter of criminal law, but about prohibiting government from passing a law (allowing abortion) that takes away the inalienable rights of the pre-born.”
Even if, for the sake of argument, one says that the “prohibition on abortion is... about prohibiting government from passing a law (allowing abortion) that takes away the inalienable rights of the pre-born,” one can’t say that it isn’t a matter of criminal law.
Of course it’s a matter of criminal law. The rights of the unborn can’t be vindicated without recourse to criminal law.
sitetest
If everybody who said that sent Hunter money, he might not be running out.
You will NEVER catch me saying compromise is a dirty word. But haven’t you ever faulted me for “compromising” by my support with Romney? If not, you’d be almost the only fred supporter who hasn’t.
BTW, just to be clear, not pushing HLA because it won’t pass is a rational compromise. Publicly opposing it because you think violating the rights of pre-born children is a “states rights” issue is not, it’s agreeing with the enemy.
So I don’t think Fred is compromising there, he is wrong.
However, I WILL compromise and vote FOR Fred, while faulting him for his WRONG position, if it comes to that.
I don't think you've compromised (as a dirty word), I just think you're mistaken in your evaluation of the candidates. As I've pointed out on another thread today, different reasonable folks can react differently to the same information.
To a certain degree, we all compromise on a candidate (though some folks delude themselves into believing they've found a "perfect" candidate) -- the only way to perfectly represent yourself would be to run yourself, and that's assuming you would never compromise, even a little, on a principle to achieve a pragmatic result.
Do you think NARAL thought of M/F as a pro-choice bill?
I was talking about NARAL’s press release that said he voted against them 44 our of 46 times.
So I’m just trying to clarify, I know NRLC at one time thought that vote was anti-pro-life, but do you think NARAL counted it as pro-choice?
The former is Thompson's position, not the latter. That's one of the factors that went into the NRLC endorsement, according to articles in the last few days.
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