I’m for Hunter or Thompson. But if Thompson loses this thing, it can be blamed on his failure to simply endorse the Human Life Amendment and the Federal Marriage Amendment. All he had to do was say, “yes, I support those amendments”. They aren’t a matter for the president to have to deal with, so why not just endorse them and move on? Instead, by opposing them he made a lot of people wonder about his commitment to pro-life and pro-family causes and that allowed Huckabee to exploit those concerns.
I understand the states’ rights argument on those issues, but there’s no constituency for it. People either think human life and traditional marriage are worthy of constitutional protection, or they support Roe vs. Wade and would like to see a similar ruling forcing same-sex “marriage” on the whole country. Nobody wants to see a situation where same-sex “marriage” is legal in Illinois but illegal in Indiana. That would lead to government and businesses in Indiana constantly being dragged into court over some issue arising in the neighboring state. Or where there are twenty abortion mills in Camden, NJ to “service” women from Pennsylvania, where abortion has been banned.
States’ rights will simply never work on those two issues. It would have been fine for Fred to say, “We don’t have the votes right now to pass those amendments, and they’re really outside the scope of the executive branch, but I want to foster a positive culture which will start us down a path which will eventually lead us to a society where life and family are once again sacred”. But he didn’t and he may lose the nomination because of it.
Then he would not be Fred, and he would be lying to make people happy. He would simply be pandering.
I thought we were trying to avoid that, indeed it appears we have more than enough of that from some others in the race on both sides.
If there was truly a question of Fred's dedication to life, he would not have received the endorsements from the Right to Life groups.