If John McCain Picks a Pro-Abortion Catholic Running Mate, He Will Lose

LifeSiteNews ^ | 8/15/08 | Austin Ruse

[wagglebee]

LifeNews.com Note: Austin Ruse is president of the New York and Washington DC-based Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. These views are his alone and do not reflect the position of C-FAM. Ruse is also a member of the McCain Catholic Steering Committee and one of the first pro-life advocates to endorse McCain.

If John McCain picks a pro-abortion running mate, he's likely to lose. If he picks a pro-abortion Catholic as his running mate, he will definitely lose.

Right now McCain is skating on the thinnest of ice. At best, the election is tied. In many polls, he is 4-5 points down. He has yet to crack 45 percent in any national poll and is behind in key states. At worst, he is facing a blowout. Now is not the time to mess around with a guy like Tom Ridge.

The calculation is clear.

McCain figures Ridge could deliver the key state of Pennsylvania. Let's look at the record.

Ridge won statewide office in 1994 with only 45 percent of the vote. Why so low? Because he faced a third party pro-life challenger named Peg Lustig who polled a whopping 12 percent of the vote. Ridge ran again in 1998 and won with the much greater margin of 57 percent, but he did so against a very weak Democratic opponent and he forfeited 10 percent to pro-life Lustig, who ran again.

That Ridge, now, ten years later, could help McCain win Pennsylvania is far from certain. And then there is what McCain loses elsewhere for picking Ridge.

McCain is already suspect among social conservatives. And picking a pro-choicer will have the further effect of cooling whatever ardor he has been able to gin up among them mostly because of the fear of Obama. Social conservatives are largely not for McCain, they are against Obama. A lack of enthusiasm among McCain supporters could spell disaster for him come Election Day.

There is already a major effort underway to lure pro-lifers into the Democratic column.

The Democratic platform makes nice noises about motherhood and adoption. And evangelicals are getting restless to get involved in other issues. The McCain camp should not give them yet one more reason to drift.

And then there is the Catholic thing.

At the moment, McCain can expect at least tepid support among faithful Catholics, those who go to Mass at least once a week and who support the teachings of the Church on core issues like abortion. He needs this group to win the election.

He is putting them in an untenable position if he decides to pick Ridge - or any pro-choicer, but especially a pro-choice Catholic.

Tom Ridge is a public dissenter from one of the core teachings of the Catholic Church, that innocent human life must always be protected and may never be deliberately taken. McCain is asking faithful Catholics to pull the lever for someone whose position on abortion makes them sick to their stomachs.

A prediction: if McCain goes ahead with Ridge, it will lead to a public spectacle.

Wasn't McCain paying attention four years ago when another publicly dissenting Catholic ran for president? John Kerry lost the generic Catholic vote, that is, any person who claims to be a Catholic, whether he or she has not been to Mass in thirty years or even marginally agrees with the teachings of the Church.

This is an easy get for the Democrats, yet Kerry lost them. With the exception of his home state of Massachusetts, he even lost them in the states he won.

Kerry and Communion became a staple of the public debate. For the first time ever, the Eucharist was front and center in a national political campaign. There is no doubt this would happen again, perhaps this time with even greater controversy.

McCain would face the dead certainty that his vice-presidential running mate could not speak in front of official Catholic audiences or at Catholic institutions because this is forbidden by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In 1998, Ridge was told by his hometown bishop, Donald Trautman of the Diocese of Erie, that he could not speak on church property. In this year's presidential race, Ridge would be told by bishops around the country not to present himself for Communion.

This would become a recurrent nightmare for the McCain campaign week after week after week. Is that a winning message for McCain?

Finally, McCain is asking Republicans to accept a man who, if he wins, would likely be the presumptive presidential nominee sometime in the future.

This would effectively turn the Republicans away from being the pro-life party and would spell electoral disaster for Republicans for years to come. Pro-lifers certainly would have a very hard time voting for a pro-choicer at the top of the national ticket. Look at what happened to Rudy Giuliani in the primaries.

And they certainly would never support a publicly dissenting Catholic. The way of Ridge is the way of both defeat and disaster.

[Last Dakotan]

The fact that McCain would even consider a Pro-Abortion VP shows that he will also be willing to nominate a Pro-Abort to the Supreme Court.

Good point.

[fetal heart beats by 21st day]

“the last straw.”

[ncpatriot]

Exactly how I feel.

[gorush]

He was never going to get my vote anyway...I’m a conservative, the only power I have is my one little vote...McCain is beyond just unacceptable.

[fetal heart beats by 21st day]

There are 12 articles of faith and a whole body of doctrine that Catholics must accept in order to remain Catholic.

Any Catholic that knowingly supports, promotes, or endorses abortion is automatically self-excommunicated.

They still want to call themselves Catholic, but a skunk is not a rose.

[firebrand]

If he picks a pro-abort Catholic he will have no running mate, because there’s no such thing.

[fetal heart beats by 21st day]

Exactly! But, we do. We must be ready with a replacement at the convention.

We have so many good conservatives who are fighting now- Theodore McCarrick of Michigan, Pence, McHenry, Inhofe, Palin, Hunter, Chris Smith* of NJ,... We really could go on a while.

Our problem is we hurt ourselves by listening to libs and Rinos tell us we have to pick someone with money, good looks, name recognition, etc., who fits their definition of electable, and while we’re blinking, they’ve chosen somebody for us.

[fetal heart beats by 21st day]

Abortion is an absolute gateway issue for rosary-praying Catholics. Proaborts do not pass.

[cpforlife.org]

Seen here at 24 weeks - six months from conception, the unborn child is covered with a fine, downy hair called lanugo. His tender skin is protected by a waxy substance called vernix. Some of this substance may still be on the child's skin at birth at which time it will be quickly absorbed. The child practices breathing by inhaling amniotic fluid into developing lungs.

Pro-Life PING

Please FreepMail me if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.

You cannot be both Christian and pro-choice on abortion. The two are diametrically opposed—polar opposites. If you think you are both you are living a lie.

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

“Finally, McCain is asking Republicans to accept a man who, if he wins, would likely be the presumptive presidential nominee sometime in the future.”

There’s the key point, more so than with most presidents if McCain is elected. Anyone who is prolife in his heart would choose his running mate carefully— especially when he’s not particularly young. Judicial nominations tend to be more left leaning than the VEEP choice due to the ABA and senate pressures. It took pressure to get Alito and Roberts.

[RPTMS]

If he wants someone from Pennsylvania, how about Rick Santorum?

[Theophilus]

If "pro-life" is just a position or a preference or a political label while millions of little American people just continue to be slaughtered endlessly, then I don't care what McCain does.

I'm going to stop describing myself as "pro-life" and start describing myself as pro-creation. My descendants and the myriad of other pro-creators will finally outnumber the reprobate evil doers and we will overthrow the murderous child-sacrificing regime of abortion.

Too bad it will probably happen after economic collapse and military defeat all because the heralded red-blooded American men didn't love their wives enough. We have massacred our future.

[hershey]

McCain will lose for sure if he picks a pro-abortion VP. Catholics and conservatives who would have voted for McCain on his anti-abortion stance alone would rightly view this as betrayal and stay home. If he picks one of his Liberal pro-abortion pals, he’s out of his mind. Meanwhile Barry O is lying to one and all, saying he was never a Muslim, when we have school records to the contrary. He’s cozying up to the middle, and God help us if the Evangelicals fall for it.

[hershey]

This afternoon, Rush exposed Ridge to thirty million listeners — what Ridge is and has been...against Reagan’s build up of missiles in Europe, against Star Wars, pro-abortion, and he wasn’t merely passive. Ridge worked hard to undermine and defeat the strategies that eventually caused the collapse of the Soviet Union. He’s bad news. Given half a chance, he’d defeat everything we’ve fought for...including conservative judges on the Supreme Court.

[fetal heart beats by 21st day]

Sounds like the RINO choice to me.

[okokie]

So, at what point does McCain actually start earning our votes?

[JavaJumpy]

I think this is a bone they threw out to gauge reaction.

And I think they’ve received their answer!

[Lexinom]

Does the name “Warren Rudman” ring a bell, anyone? Another name as a hint: Michael Reagan.

[RKBA Democrat]

Sorry folks, I disagree with the premise of this article; that if Sen. McCain picks a pro-infanticide running mate that he will lose the election as a result of it.

The reality is that the vast bulk of “conservatives” will vote for anything and anyone, so long as it has the Republican label attached to it. Oh, they’ll cuss and fuss about it for sure. But “conservatives” will be there in November, lined up to vote for whatever lousy candidates the GOP selects. And the GOP knows it. Conservatives are truly the battered wives of American politics.

Sen. McCain will be the GOP nominee and he is relatively free to pick whomever he wants. And what conservatives want, pro-life or otherwise, will be of little consequence.

[RKBA Democrat]

“McCain thinks he has us, because we fear the Obamination so much.”

Bingo. Four legs good, two legs baaaaaad.