[Casloy]

I could vote for Condi over Hillary even with the "mildly pro-choice" statement. My big concern is what this does to the conservative base. Hillary will fire up her base by sticking to some core liberal principles (although don't ask me what those are). If Condi loses the conservative base with waffling about abortion she is going to have a tough battle. You can't rely on the anti-hillary feelings to win an election. You have to make people want to vote for you.

[HitmanLV]

Ultimately the conservative base that is fixated on abortion as their sole or major issue has to ask some tough questions and answer them honestly:

1. How has their strategy helped move the status quo in a direction that they want?

2. How has their strategy helped move the status quo in a direction away from where they want?

3. What other ways can they combat abortion, besides making it a legislative issue?

The truth is that in the 30 years since the Roe decision, there have been over 40 million abortions in the USA, and we are at about 1.5 million abortions a year.

I am pro life but it's clear to me the strategy isn't a very good one. I'm afraid the most vitriolic pro life advocates have changed their mandate from stopping abortions (a noble goal) to making a lot of ineffective noise and 'sleeping soundly at night.'

That's a frequency of narcissism that I see more on the political left. It's interesting to see it pop up on our side of the aisle - it's just human nature, I suppose.

In any event, it's obvious to anyone with an ounce of clarity that there is no significant movement amongst Americans to change the basic status quo of abortion in 2005. This is for a number of reasons.

The pro life movement's strategy to doggedly pursue a legislative solution to the abortion problem has got us where we are now - not a good place, as far as the status quo and abortion goes.

The question is do they have what it takes to recognize their failure and change strategy?