Posted on 11/13/2004 6:05:41 AM PST by cpforlife.org
PRO-LIFE WARNING TO THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
We believe that abortion is infanticide, and that a holocaust of infants is taking place. We do not believe that there is any other issue on Earth that compares with abortion in moral import. And therefore, there is no policy or combination of policies you Republicans can offer, including perfect tax policies, tort reform, and every other thing that is near and dear to Republican hearts, that matters a damn if abortion is overlooked and allowed to slide by.
We know that this issue has to be settled in the Supreme Court, nowhere else. And we know that the opportunity to put new justices on the court comes once in a decade, maybe, and that the current opportunity to alter the complexion of the court is not going to come again for a generation. Therefore, the real possibility exists that abortion can finally be seriously curtailed, soon, by the Supreme Court changing Roe v. Wade or eliminating it...IF, and ONLY IF, we can get pro-life judges on that court.
To do that, we have trusted the Republicans for years. We just came out and voted for you again this time, in unprecedented numbers, because we are not stupid and we know what is at stake. Not just evangelicals either. The religious CATHOLIC vote went Republican in 2004, and they didn't do it because of trade policy or even gay marriage. Their issue is abortion.
And the overriding issue is abortion.
So, if the Republicans allow Senator Specter to get the Chair of the Judiciary Committee and he blocks pro-life nominees, or if the Republicans do not use the nuclear option to override Democrat filibusters of pro-life nominees, THIS TIME there is no place for Republicans to hide. WE KNOW that you have the power, now, because WE just voted to give it to you. We understand that you can block Specter. And we understand the nuclear option.
And therefore, we most certainly will understand that if you allow the pro-life judges to be blocked, that it will be your political CHOICE to have done so. You CAN put pro-life judges on the bench, if you expend a lot of political capital. This will offend some people - a lot of people. And that is the price you HAVE to pay to get our votes next time. You have to be willing to bet the whole house to end infanticide.
If not, we will not vote for you. We won't go running to vote for the Democrats: they're pro-abortion. We won't go out and form a third party: we're not stupid and know that won't work. We'll just stay home, just like we did in 2000. Except that in 2000 it was out of frustration and neglect, and the lack of belief that anything will change. There was no organized campaign to keep the pro-life vote home in 2000.
This time, it's different. We understand the system, and we know that you have the power. And we demand that you use the power straight down the line to fill the high court and the appellate courts with judges who will protect the lives of babies. Period. This is not negotiable. At all. This is why we voted for you. You have nothing with which to bargain with us, and if you screw us, we will stay organized and we will stay home purposely to destroy the Republican party. Because if you do not protect the babies when you have the power to do it, you are no better than the Democrats...and worse, you will have lied to us.
This means, in effect, that all of those things YOU care most about: taxation, immigration, trade and business policy, deregulation - all of those core issues that come as an economic package, are held hostage to our issue: babies. If you will not protect the babies, we will stay home and let the Democrats destroy everything that YOU believe in.
This is called "Chicken". It is called a "Mexican Standoff". And since we are fired up by the certitude that we are doing God's work in defending babies, we cannot be bought, and you cannot win so much as an election for dog catcher in this country without us.
Therefore, the solution is simple and obvious: give us what we voted for you to do. Give us pro-life judges. Use all of your power to do it. Sweep Specter out of the way: is he worth losing all the rest of your agenda? - because we really will stay home and throw the country to the Democrats if you're no better than they are on abortion, just to punish YOU for having betrayed us. When the filibusters come, and they will come, use the nuclear option to override them. That will poison the Senate, yes. So what? We are talking about babies here. And with our votes, militantly mobilized because we are winning, alongside of yours, in 2006 and 2008 and beyond, even if the Senate is poisoned, you will be able to replace it with a more Republican one.
That there is even a debate going on as to what to do with Specter is alarming, but we have had our hearts broken before, so we'll sit and pray and trust President Bush and Senator Frist and the Republicans to do the right thing.
Screw us, though, and we will turn on you and your whole agenda will go down the drain with the blood of the babies you wouldn't put your power on the line to save.
The easy solution, the win-win solution, is to BE as pro-life as you campaigned as being. Just do it.
I apologize for the length of this post. But it needed to be said. The Republicans do not seem to get it. They need to understand that we are more committed to saving babies than we are to the fortunes of the Republican Party. That Specter is still in play demonstrates that too many of them do not take this seriously.
Rather than test us, what you guys should do is simply cave, now, and give us what we want. Do that, and you wont hear from us again - there will be no creeping theocracy in America - because this is about the only religious issue that Catholics and Orthodox and Evangelicals AGREE on.
By the way, you are obviously a RINO because you keep trying to stick it to me with your horn...seriously, you are a RINO because it is obvious that you believe less in the party's platform than you do in having a "majority".
The way these RINO senators keep straying "off the reservation" in their voting patterns makes them worthless to me (and tens of millions of other REAL Republican voters)!
Did you get all THAT?!
You know, it's kind of strange. My family comes from what used to be Yugoslavia. The law there on abortion was very similar to what you suggest: legal in the 1st trimester, heavily regulated in the 2nd and illegal in the 3rd. The system seemed to strike a balance between allowing some abortions early on and protecting a more developed fetus. The barbarity of partial-birth abortion did not exist.
I think if the courts stopped legislating from the bench, we'd probably end up with a similar approach to abortion in this country.
BTTT.
Though, I really don't like Specter and would be happy if he didn't end up with the charimanship. He is, in the truest sense of the term, a RINO.
The Development of the Preborn Child
Author: Eugene Pivato
© 1992: The Right to Life Association of Toronto and Area
Definitions
Baby is defined as "an extremely young child; the youngest member of a group" (Webster's Third New International Dictionary, G & C Merriam Co., Toronto, 1981, p. 156). Child is defined as "infant; baby, an unborn offspring; fetus" and derives from "gelf; a swelling up of the womb" or, in Gothic, "Kilthei; womb" (Webster's New World Dictionary, 3rd College Edition, Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, 1988, p. 243).
Mother is defined as "that which gives birth to something, is the origin or source of something, or nurtures in the manner of a mother" (Webster's New World Dictionary, 3rd College Edition, Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, 1988, p. 886).
Table of Contents
"Human Being" Defined....................................................1
Fertilization and the First Week of Life.................................1
Implantation to Six Weeks................................................4
Six to Eight Weeks.......................................................6
The Third Month..........................................................7
Preborn Pain.............................................................8
"Human Being" Defined
According to Dr. Jerome Lejeune, the world-renowned French geneticist who discovered the extra chromosome in children who have Down's syndrome, a human being is "the he/she who belongs to our species . . . . no matter the amount of kilograms and no matter the amount of differentiation of tissue."1
Fertilization and the First Week of Life
The life of every human being begins at fertilization. Numerous scientific texts and scholars have affirmed this fact.
Dr. Keith L. Moore, in Essentials of Human Embryology states:
The fertilized ovum, known as a zygote is a large diploid cell that is the beginning of a human being . . .2 and again in Before We Are Born, he states: Human development begins at fertilization when a male gamete or sperm fuses with a female gamete or ovum to form a zygote. The zygote is the first cell of a new human being.3
Dr. T. W. Sadler in Langman's Medical Embryology states: The development of a human being begins with fertilization.4 Dr. Raymond F. Gasser in Beginning of Individual Human Life from a Biological Perspective states:
[E]very human being . . . began his or her unique existence in this manner, as one cell.5
In Developmental Anatomy Leslie Arey writes:
Fertilization: the formation, maturation and meeting of a male and female sex cell are all preliminary to their actual union into a combined cell, or zygote, which definitely marks the beginning of a new individual.6
And in Human Embryology Bradley M. Patten states:
It is the penetration of the ovum by a spermatozoan and the resultant mingling of the nuclear material each brings to the union, that constitutes the culmination of the process of fertilization and marks the initiation of the life of a new individual.7
Dr. Jerome Lejeune, world-renowned geneticist, testified:
[W]hen the information carried by the sperm and by the ovum has encountered each other, then a new human being is defined because its own personal and human constitution is entirely spelled out.
If a fertilized egg is not by itself a full human being, it could never become a man, because something would have to be added to it, and we know that does not happen.8 In the United States Tennessee circuit court case of Davis v. Davis, Dr. Lejeune reported that fertilization as the beginning of the life of a human being is now an experimentally demonstrated fact in light of three findings over the last four years.9
1. The manipulation of DNA: a special DNA probe was invented by Dr. Alec Jeffreys, in England. The probe, when used to analyze a thread of DNA, would reveal a minute bar code. The probability of finding the code, only a piece of an individual's DNA, identical to another person's is less than one in a billion. It is no longer a theory that each human being is unique from fertilization onwards.
2. Using a system called PCR, one molecule from one cell can be reproduced into billions. In doing so we can see again a complete "demonstration of uniqueness" in one cell--one nucleus of an individual.
3. An understanding was obtained of why methyl (CH3) is on the DNA base cytosine. Cytosine transforms in methyl. With methylation one gene is "knocked out" but if demethylated on the next cell division it communicates information again. Lejeune describes the process by stating: [In] the expansion of the primary formula which is written in the early human being, nothing is learned but progressively a lot of things are forgotten. The first cell knew more than the 3-cell stage and the 3-cell stage knew more than the morula, than the gastula, than the primitive streak, and the primitive nervous system. In the beginning it was written not only what is the genetic message we can read in every cell, but it was written the way it should be read from one sequence to another one.
It cannot be said that the first cell is a non-differentiated cell. It must be said now the first cell is knowing how to differentiate the cell progeny.10
These and other findings are detailed in various texts and studies.11-17 (Several of these studies have shown that androgenetic-parthenogenetic chimaeras do not develop since they lack the genetic constitution of a new individual human being.)
Within a day from the moment the human father's sperm contacts the human mother's ova, a fusion of the two sets of 23 chromosomes occurs and the information of the young individual is complete in reality and existence.18 This information reveals that the individual is of the species homo sapiens and that he or she is unique, with a fully defined physical constitution including hair, eye colour, skin pigmentation, facial features and body type.19
The first cell division occurs approximately 30 hours after the sperm enters the ova--the first of many that will occur in the lifespan of the young human being.20
Implantation to Six Weeks
By the end of the first 7 days of life the young human being sinks into the nutrient wall of the uterus where she implants herself.21
At the end of two weeks a primitive streak appears; it distinguishes the different germ layers of the individual. Over the next three weeks these layers give rise to specialized tissue and organ systems.
a) The ectodermal layer gives rise to the organs and structures that maintain contact with the outer world:
i) central nervous system
ii) peripheral nervous system
iii) sensory epithelium of the ear, nose and eye
iv) skin, including hair and nails
v) pituitary, mammary and sweat glands, and tooth enamel.
b) The mesodermal layer gives rise to
i) somites (resulting in muscle tissue, cartilage and bone, and the subcutaneous tissue of the bone)
ii) vascular system (heart, arteries, veins, lymph vessels, and all blood and lymph cells)
iii)urogenital system (kidneys, gonads)
iv) spleen and suprarenal glands.
c) The endodermal layer provides the epithelial lining of the gastrointestinal tract, respiratory tract and urinary bladder. It forms the parenchyma of the thyroid, parathyroids, liver and pancreas. The epithelial lining of the tympanic cavity and Eustachian tube are lined by epithelium of endodermal origin.22
Toward the end of the third week the mesodermal cells in the villus core differentiate into blood cells and small blood vessels, thus forming the villus capillary system.23
By the 18th day after fertilization, the young human being's heart is already beating its first strokes. By 21 days the heart is pumping through a closed circulatory system, blood whose type can be different from that of the mother.24
At 35 days the heart can be clearly discerned by ultrasound and the beat is double the mother's rate.25
At 4 weeks the preborn has a body comprising a head and a trunk. The arm and leg buds are evident and the heart is pressed up against the mouth.26
In the 5th week the upper part of the neural tube becomes the brain; the lower part becomes the spinal cord. The major divisions of the brain can be identified. Nerves begin as collections of neural crest cells.27
After 33 days the cerebral cortex is recognizable.28
In the 4th week the internal ear, having originated from the optic vesicle, splits off from the surface ectoderm.29
The eyes begin to develop as a pair of optic vesicles on each side of the forebrain at the end of the 4th week.30
Six to Eight Weeks
"Thirty cell divisions, or 2/3 of the 45 generations that encompass the total development of an individual's life will have taken place within 8 weeks after fertilization." 31
At 8 weeks all organs and body systems are in place and will mature over the next 14 years.32
Visible under a microscope are his unique fingerprints, never to change except in size.33
The creases on the child's hands are also visible. External genitals appear.34
At 6 weeks the eyes, nose and mouth are evident yet only at 8 weeks do the nose, chin and outer ear become prominent.35, 36
Although teeth do not appear until 6 to 24 months after birth, all 20 milk teeth buds are present at 6.5 weeks.37
The baby first moves between the 6th and 7th weeks.38
If the lips are stroked the child bends the upper body to one side and makes a quick backward movement.39
This total pattern response involves movement of most of the body.
At 8 weeks, tickling the preborn's nose will cause him to flex his head backwards away from the stimulus.40
Tapping the amniotic sac results in arm movements.41
The preborn swims in the amniotic fluid with a natural swimmer's stroke.42
At the end of the 7th week the child's central nervous system has reached a highly developed state. Dr. Harley Smyth, a neurologist at Toronto's Wellesley Hospital, stated:
[A]t 6 weeks there is the possibility of recording electrical activity from the nervous system already so highly organized that it can subserve . . . purposeful and even co-ordinated movements.43
At merely 40 days the skeleton begins to develop in cartilage.44
The movement of electrical impulses through the neural fibres and spinal column takes place between 6 and 7 weeks and at the end of the second month most parts of the adult skeleton can be identified, as well as most named nerves and muscles.45, 46
At only 40 days after fertilization electrical waves as measured by the EEG can be recorded from the baby's brain, indicating brain functioning.47, 48
The Third Month
The preborn is breathing fluid at 11 to 12 weeks.49
This breathing aids in the development of the organs of respiration. The thyroid and adrenal glands are functioning by the 9th and 10th weeks.50
By the end of the 3rd month all arteries are present, including the coronary vessels of the heart. Blood is circulating through these vessels to all body parts.51
Heart beat ranges during the fetal period from 110 to 160 beats per minute.52
At 11 weeks blood cells are produced by the liver and spleen, a job soon taken over by the bone marrow. White blood cells, important for immunity, are formed in the lymph nodes and thymus.53
At 8 to 9 weeks the eyelids have begun forming. Hair appears.54
By the 9th or 10th week the preborn child sucks her thumb, turns, somersaults, jumps, can squint to close out light, frowns, swallows, and moves her tongue.55
If you stroke a preborn's palm at 9 to 10 weeks she will make a fist. At 9 weeks she will bend her fingers round an object in the palm of her hand.56
At 11 weeks the face and all parts of the upper and lower extremities are sensitive to touch, as well as the genital and anal areas.57, 58
Sex hormones are present at 11 weeks, and by 12 weeks the child's sex is easily identifiable.59, 60
Fingernails have developed by the third month as well.61
Preborn Pain
Functioning neurological structures necessary for pain sensation are in place to a degree as early as 8 weeks.62
The first detectable brain activity in response to noxious stimuli occurs in the thalamus between the 9th and 10th weeks.63
Collins states:
By 13 and a half weeks responses are sufficiently elaborate and avoidant to warrant the definite conclusion that the fetus responds aversively, not reflexively. They evidence an integrated physiological attempt to escape noxious stimuli.64
..........
Cool.
The response to Abortion is simply not irrational, nor is it "Talibanist," nor is it religous saber rattling for personal self-aggrandizements.
The issue is huge, and not going away, but merely increasing in its adherents. For the GOP to build a history of burnning bridges with Pro-lifer's on this, especially when they have a very real shot of at least mitigating it, would be very ill advised.
Further support comes from the work of Fitzgerald (1987, 1994), who has reviewed the biological development of the fetus and examined the possibility of fetal pain at each stage of development. At 7.5 weeks’ gestation, reflex responses to somatic stimuli begin, and touching the perioral region results in a contralateral bending of the head.
The bottom line is that we should give these children the benefit of the doubt - we should err on the side of caution, should we not?
Let's work together to eliminate all abortions after the 6th week. Then we'll start discussing what to do about those before the 6th week.
You: "The issue is huge, and not going away, but merely increasing in its adherents. For the GOP to build a history of burnning bridges with Pro-lifer's on this, especially when they have a very real shot of at least mitigating it, would be very ill advised."
That's it. That hits the nail on the head.
Fortunately, the GOP hasn't actually made any mistakes yet. President Bush and Vice President Cheney have clearly and strongly stated the pro-life position of the party. The Republican Party holds itself out as a pro-life party, and as far as we know, it IS a pro-life party.
Arlen Specter put his foot in it. He made the mistake. The party can correct that mistake by preventing him from getting a powerful post where he will have the ability to frustrate the pro-life agenda of the party.
That's why he should be blocked by the party.
If the party does NOT block that nomination, it will be alarming. Why would the party alienate a core constituency over a guy who was clearly out of line, but who clearly will use his power against the policies of the party?
Are we pro-lifers just chumps? Are we dopes who've been roped?
If Specter doesn't get the job, the answer will clearly be no, the party is pro-life. Things are as they seem. If Specter does get the job, everyone will be on his guard and watching to see what happens. If then the pro-life strict constructionist judges are not forthcoming, that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach that maybe we're the Republicans' "Black Bloc" will be the dawning of truth.
As of right now, with Specter still not holding the gavel, there's no reason to expect the Republican Party to do the wrong thing. Trust them. Trust Bush and Cheney, Frist and the rest of the Republican leadership to not cut the ground out from under us and betray us. Why would they?
Thanks, but I couldn't possibly care less about what "Syncro" does or says.
Unless you are chronically stupid, you had to have known that I was responding to ladyinred's remark
"I belong to a local pro life group who helps women in crisis pregnancy"
when I said
The vast majority of pro-life people that you and I know and work with are just like you are
because SHE works with crisis pregnancies; since I don't, I didn't feel like I should say I did. Unlike you, I don't presume to speak about things I don't know directly.
For three days, you've claimed I am pro-abortion and, evenafter being asked at least three times, you still have not produced ONE WORD that I have posted that would indicate I am.
Those of us who are reading this thread can see for themselves who the liar is.
That being said, I do agree with her when she said:
And they are giving me a bad taste. This is the first abortion thread I have been on, and I am just biting my tongue to keep from getting banned! :-)
Now, she WORKS with a pro-life group who deals with women during crisis pregnancies; if you're giving HER a bad "taste," maybe you should rethink your technique.
Unless, of course, you want to call her pro-abortion like you have done me, your usual MO.
oops, I meant to write that Specter is pro-choice, not pro-life
Dear JeffAtlanta,
A quick look reveals there are a number of vulnerable Dems as well as Republicans. And Dems are defending two more seats than Republicans (three, if you count Jeffords).
I think that there are three or four vulnerable Dems, even in nominally blue states. Conversely, the only really vulnerable Republican appears to be Santorum (PA).
But your argument can be played both ways.
We are truly unlikely to pick up any significant number of seats in 2006, and could lose seats. We need to strike while the iron is hot, while we have a majority.
The legitimate uses of political power are not merely to continue in power.
Sometimes, you have to actually use that power to achieve important ends.
"I believe that Specter is totally on the same page with this. He may be pro-life, but he is not opposed to strict constitutionalist. His only objection is to outwardly apparent pro-life judges."
I disagree. Nothing on the record shows that Mr. Specter favors strict constructionists on the court. His expansive pro-death views, his views on the rights of trial lawyers, his "Scottish" verdict in the impeachment trial, his pandering to the likes of George Soros, and of subjugating US law to an international court demonstrate that Mr. Specter doesn't actually give a wit about the US Constitution.
It is a mistake to let this POS become chairman of the Judiciary Committee. After having made the mistake of supporting Mr. Specter over Rep. Toomey, after being knifed in the back by the POS, I hope the president and the leadership don't make this next mistake. If they do, I hope it turns out for the best, and Mr. Specter is unable to harm any strict constructionist / pro-life nominees, especially for the Supreme Court.
But if Chief Justice Rehnquist goes and is replaced by someone who ultimately does not vote in favor of the Constitution, including to overturn Roe, then the White House and the Senate leadership will have lost fatally. A Rehnquist replacement could last 30 years.
They will have shown that they are incompetent to get the job done.
sitetest
LOL:-)
I can't believe this thread is still going........
Just some observations to report that I feel are worth writing down for the sake of clarity.
This exercise of verbal exchanges is occurring post election and is a good example of some of the problems we have internally in the Republican Party.
I saw this after the 2000 election and the mid terms as well and it concerns me greatly.
When you stand back from it, what you see is a family that is in distress. Some members feeling left off the Christmas card list are lashing out at the rest, not really knowing why they are doing it or who exactly is responsible for the bad feelings.
But looking at the repartee, we are all....all of us....are most certainly on the same page!
The differences are only superficial or a matter of degree. Some here are activists for a particular point of view, some here believe in that point of view yet have so many other concerns that activism in only one area is impossible, and still others are the quiet majority that stays informed, participates when time allows and stands back from the fray on most occasions.
But we all, every one of us share the same goals and have the same wants and desires. The only problem I see here is the same exact thing that occurs when a group of single issue advocates feels the need to somehow convince the rest of the family to share their passions.
This caused grief, every single time on every subject where it occurs. I see it on the immigration threads (regarding amnesty), the financial threads (regarding Greenspan) the science threads (regarding NASA) and of course the political threads.
Since our common enemy is now defunct, (John Kerry) we once again turn our passions against each other. Frankly speaking, it is a real insidious and self destructive thing to do. Arguments are one thing, but when they get personal, as some have done here, the original points and premises are lost in the fog of emotional hyperbole, canned rhetoric and insulting jabs that are meat to do only one thing, and that is to divide the family into warring camps so that a more prolonged battle can ensue.
A battle over what???????????????
I suggest we all cease this madness and reconfigure our targeting array to locate the issues, the people, the organizations and the socialist progressive political groups who threaten our Republic.
Not each other.
This is far too counter productive to continue for even one single minute.
I don't think I disagree with the overall strategy, in the sense that it might work.
In particular, I agree that the President should NOT just put judges up there on the claim that they're "pro-life". Bush campaigned on "Strict constructionists". We all know what that means, and it includes, but is not limited to, overturning Roe v. Wade, because Roe v. Wade is not defensible as a reasonable construction of the constitution.
Anyway, I think Bush, Cheney and the White House gang are pretty sophisticated folks, and wouldn't just send up a one-issue rube to be a lifetime Supreme or Appellate court justice.
That said, the President can't send up any avowed pro-choicers - Specter types - to the Supreme Court. "Strict Constructionist" may not equal "Pro-life". A strict constructionist may be utterly indifferent to unborn babies and think abortion is a good thing, but he cannot rationally defend Roe v. Wade on strict construction grounds.
But again, this is the world of hypotheticals. Bush isn't going to send up a pro-Roe appointee.
So, I can't disagree with you that playing down the pro-life litmus test is a bad idea. "Strict constructionist" means "pro-life", or at least "anti-Roe", for all practical purposes. If strict constructionists get up there and defend Roe, it will be a monumental betrayal not just of political allegiances, but of legal logic itself!
It does occur me that the doctrine of the lesser of two evils and the white lie might make it possible for a judge nominee to, nudge wink, say that he supports Roe on the basis of stare decisis, etc. (very O'Connor-like), get onto the court, and then change his mind. I'm not exactly advocating skulduggery, just noting that judges do sometimes change their minds when they get on the bench...
So, I can follow you all down the road and agree that, if this is the strategy, it's a reasonable approach, and it may be about all we can do.
But all that said, Specter has done damage here. He is the one who antagonized a core Republican constituency by flipping us off to our faces in the very moment of our victory. Your strategy requires a lot of "trust me" on our part, and the guy we have to trust is the guy who just told us on election day itself that he is going to oppose us. This does not inspire confidence at all.
I note that when Trent Lott said less inflammatory things at Thurmond's funeral, and the black coalition - who don't vote Republican anyway - was up in arms, the Republicans were quick to unceremoniously dump their own Senate Majority Leader. Here we've got one Senator publicly vowing to do the opposite of the platform, and giving the finger to a core Republican constituency, but we are asked to quietly sit down in the back of the bus.
We probably will, if we're forced to.
If the party rams this jerk down our throats and says "Trust us", we don't have much choice.
But a lot of us are going to be EXTREMELY unhappy about it, and the "trust me" card will have been played out. There's no more "trust me" in that deck if, as we feared - reasonably too, given Specter's record - the guy does block the (nudge-wink) strict constructionists from the bench. Or worse, if the President nominates anybody BUT strict constructionists.
And then there is the matter of the nuclear option.
Nominating judges doesn't do any good if they are all blocked by a rump of Democrats. And the leaders of the pro-life movement, at least, understand that nuclear option. We know that, if push comes to brutal shove, a Senate Majority can do exactly what LBJ did and force through a rules change to get judges a floor vote. It's not going to be good enough to shrug your shoulders and say "We tried. Filibuster rules, you know." Because we know that you CAN, in fact, get around the filibuster in a few ways, if you want to.
I don't know why the Republicans want to spend that "trust me" card on Arlen Specter. I do know that it is alarming to the pro-lifers. When I speak of that sick feeling in the pit of our stomachs that we have been turned into the Black Bloc chumps of the Republican Party, it is not a rhetorical device.
And when I say that the difference is that pro-lifers won't vote, over time, like the Black Bloc, but will pull out in disgust if they are told forever that they cannot have anything that they want on pro-life because "it's not the time", I am not threatening something ominous. I am matter-of-factly describing the pro-life people that I know.
I'd ask you to look at it from a different perspective. When has the Catholic Church in America EVER stuck its neck out in an American election? Never before. This time, the word came down from Rome itself that bound Catholics to vote for pro-life candidates where there was a choice. That is pretty serious stuff. Now, I recall Republicans arguing even more aggressively, that the Church should deny Kerry Communion, and make a public spectacle out of highlighting his pro-choice stance and its incompatibility with Catholicism. So, when it suited their election purposes, Republican operatives were willing to urge the Catholic Church to intervene even more aggressively in the political process.
But then on election day, one idiot Senator shoots off his mouth, and now the whole pro-life movement, including, presumably, the authorities of the Catholic Church, are expected to be quiet as churchmice and accept the march of procedure and precedent. You don't engage a sophisticated and careful organization like the Catholic Church and then expect it to go away a day later. Catholics voted for Republicans, this time, for the first time, in unprecedented numbers because the Catholic Church essentially told them to...without ever saying it. Republicans don't believe that they picked up 44% of the Latino vote all of a sudden because Hispanics suddenly became free-marketeers, do they? This was the Catholic Church.
Specter getting on that committee is a slap at pro-lifers. No amount of shucking and jiving will change that fact. Whether it's a mortal slap or not depends on what happens when candidates come up, but that slap could be avoided if Specter is denied the chair. Let Hatch keep it for a couple of years. There are many options, and the Republican party has the power to use them. It did not long ago to toss out a Senate Majority Leader, and Specter's not as important as Lott was.
The Catholic Church stuck its neck out, and moved a substantial number of Catholics' voting patterns from the traditional social welfare focus of Catholics. It made a major difference in this election. If the Republican Party does not deliver on that, the Church is not going to risk alienating its own parishoners to stick its neck out again. The Church took a real risk. The Republicans cannot play it safe and hope for the best. They have to meet the people who worked for them halfway.
And the easy way to do that is to bork Specter, and save the "trust me" card for another, better cause than him.
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