If Todd Akin had said, instead of his wacky comment, simply, "This has been settled for 40 years. There is nothing a sitting Senator can do about it." - we would be saying, "Welcome, Senator."
That's what I mean about the message.
The Pro-Life lobby has had this backwards for four decades now. They've been looking for an immediate political solution when the real answer is to work on the hearts and minds of the people.
Its working ... slowly. A bare majority are now pro-life.
To make this change, you have to have about 60% on your side, then the politicians can simply say, "Well, the people demanded it" -- but you have to have the politicians in place so that when that demand comes, it slides right through.
Its a cart before the horse thing. You have to have demand from the populace before you can make it happen politically.
Right now, today, we don't have that.
So what is the smart solution to this issue? You've already outlined it. Keep at it in the conservative media. Get the hearts and minds. Then, when the people demand it, it happens naturally, politically, and everyone wonders how it came about.
But in the interim, take this weapon away from the media so they can no longer use it.
You don't have to compromise your principles one bit and you can win the election still the same. You do have to be smart about it, however, and so far, it isn't being done the smart way.
Does that make sense? What I outlined above gets you where you want to go and doesn't force you to compromise your principles. It does, however, require you to be smart in your messaging.
No. Akin should have said that “we never murder the children of felons no matter how heinous their crimes. As your Senator I will do my utmost to protect all children equally regardless of whether their fathers are rapists or saints.”
The problem is that’s not how the Dems are succeeding on same-sex marriage. They are putting it on the ballot relentlessly and no matter how many times it loses, they keep trying until it passes. They are pushing their party to take stances in favor of it and they succeeded at both getting Obama to abandon DOMA and to put it into the party platform this year.
Yet you’re asking for some kind of stealth passivity on abortion. We’ve been trying that for decades and the needle is not moving much. Revolutions don’t need a majority of people behind them. They can be driven by a minority of people who are very forceful in their actions. Most people are passive and will cave in to a minority of people who put up an intense fight.
You’re saying candidates should dodge the question in interviews. They’re never going to get away with that. They’ll look weak, untrustworthy, wishy-washy, very Mitt-like. That doesn’t win elections. If they answered the way you suggest, no one would even know what their position on abortion was, liberal or conservative voter alike. Sure, they can state the limitations of their power to do anything about it, but they’re going to have to say what they believe and why also.
Nobody thinks Akin or Mourdock couldn’t have phrased their answers better. I wouldn’t bring God into the answer myself. I don’t want to alienate any voter on the subject, even atheists. To me the secular arguments against abortion are just as strong as the religious ones.
I’m pretty sure when you drill down into the pro-life polls, there isn’t enough real support for a true pro-life position. There might be people who would never have an abortion themselves, but not necessarily want to ban abortion. Obviously we need to work on changing hearts and minds. But sometimes the political change comes first. A political campaign is a powerful bully pulpit.
Because we don’t have the media on our side, we may need politicians even more than the liberals do. Just listen to the way Ronald Reagan argued the merits of capitalism. He wasn’t following popular opinion with his finger in the wind. He was trying to educate and to change hearts and minds.
It’s passed the time when we can just wait for judges to overturn Roe vs. Wade. We need to seriously put forth a constitutional amendment to get the job done and push politicians to back it.