Vanity: Questions regarding the Republican Platform, is it pro-life, pro-family?

[Jim Robinson]

I've long assumed that the Republican Party platform included pro-life, pro-family and pro 1st and 2nd amendment planks. Is this true or false? Or is the platform amended each election cycle to conform to the positions of the top polling potential presidential nominee (ie, the one with the most money or star billing and the MSM eye)?

If these planks are based on longstanding, sound conservative principles and are sincerely respected and upheld by the majority of the members, then I'd like to propose a motion that before being seriously considered by the official party powers that be, prospective nominees for the office of President of the United States must in the least demonstrate a solid history of being pro-life, pro-family and pro 1st and 2nd amendments, in addition to a solid history of abiding by and fighting for the other basic Republican planks, ie, national security, national defense, limited government, conservative spending, lower taxes, strict constructionist judges, local control of health, education and welfare, etc, etc.

Or is it too much to ask of the politician asking for our support for the highest office in the land to respect and abide by conservative principles and the basic planks of the party platform?

Or is there a movement underfoot to remove these planks from the platform?

[freeperfromnj]

I(and the others who express the same sentiment) am not signing up for any plan that helps to put Hillary Clinton in the white house. period, end of story.

That's exactly how I feel. Imagine Hillary (and Bill) in the White House with a Rat controlled House and Senate. We're talking irreparable damage.

[Reagan Man]

I did say, paybacks are hell. That was the inference about Spector and his support for Alito and Roberts. Btw, that was a well written reply you gave. Right on the mark. Conservative pressure on elected officials does work. Of course Bush has no trump cards left to play. He has no political capital left to spend either. Its gonna be a long two years. Hopefully the President won't capitulate to the Democrat majority and further sell out conservatives.

[EternalVigilance]

Imagine Hillary (and Bill) in the White House with a Rat controlled House and Senate. We're talking irreparable damage.

It's happened before. And the result was 1994.

No election is the end of history.

[deport]

What will you do if Rudy runs as an independent?

---

Curious..... what makes you think Giuliani will run as an independent? Where are you hearing this?

[oceanview]

I'd be looking for a retirement home - in canada - if that happened.

I defend Rudy on these threads, because I want to see a fair primary. I want to see him be able to run in the primaries, McCain too. Let's see some debates, some positions, some answers to questions, some polls, etc.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Spector could have flipped on that deal.

Are you telling me that Arlen cannot be trusted to keep an agreement? You mean the word of PA's premier RINO is not his bond?

I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to see there is gambling going on here... :-)

And yet, you spend post after post trying to convince conservatives that Giuliani - his geographic and ideological soulmate - can be trusted on judges.

Really, you (and Giuliani) have no credibility on this subject.

And I guarantee you, if Bush had sent janice rogers brown up for SCOTUS - he would have.

Judging by your tone, I can only assume you would have supported such a betrayal.

If I'm wrong, tell me so. If I am, then why are you defending it? How can you possibly believe Giuliani is any different than Specter, ideologically? And, if I'm not wrong, then why should I not work to defeat you (and your RINO candidate of choice) in the primary?

He supported Alito because he was the type of quiet candidate that republicans can get confirmed.

No. As stated in post 208, he supported him because he made a deal to support him - nothing more, nothing less. The fact Alito is from Jersey (and Specter was on record praising him in the past) would have added an additional complication to any about-face Arlen may have considered attempting.

Not openly anti-Roe (no writings or other public statements), supports the law on the lower courts through stare decisis (as he should), a constitutionalist mindset.

LOL - as if a "constitutionalist mindset" is the primary criteria for Senator Scottish Law and his "Super Duper" precedents. Please tell me you are not serious.

Sorry oceanview, but after my 2004 PA experience, I (and many like me) am done with RINOs of all stripes. If the GOP want to hang its collective hat on "electability", it can do it without my support. Shove a RINO like Giuliani (or any of the other media-created frontrunners) down out throat in the primaries, and you'll need to go forward in the general without us.

But, of course, that is precisely what you want anyway.

[freeperfromnj]

And the result was 1994.

You're right about that. But that was back when we had real Republicans in Congress. We no longer have players like Delay, Gingrich, Ashcroft, etc.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Thanks for your kind words - keep up your good posting.

[oceanview]

this one could be.

the clinton's stewardship of this nation's intelligence, defense, and justice apparatus - led directly to 9-11 just 7 months after they left office. for those 3000 americans, it was their "end of history".

give them another 8 years, and I can almost guarantee you that a WMD device of some kind will go off in a major US city. have that happen while the clintons are in the white house, and the Dems have congress - you may well see the Constitution suspended.

[cgk]

that "hardcore leftist" has been the #1 person that republican candidates from all over the country - have wanted to appear with them in their campaigns and fundraisers.

I don't know why. After the 2006 election, I recall hearing that not one of the candidates Giuliani campaigned for won. Was that incorrect?

[oceanview]

my point is simple - if a guy like Spector can give us Alitos on the bench, so can a president like Giuliani.

we saw how well the conservative base in PA, did in returning Santorum to the senate. and Allen in VA, and Talent in MO.

[garv]

Here is a link the abortion language in the Republican platform from 1976-1992.

Here is a link to the 1996 Republican platform.

Since the Contract with America was part of the 1994 congressional elections what does it have to do with the Republican party platform?

[cgk]

Let's make it a quartet.

[oceanview]

well, 2006 was a republican blowout - what did you expect.

[Spiff]

The Republican Party is the Pro-Life Party

The Republican Party has a century-and-a-half tradition of standing for certain principles and for an identity different from other parties. This difference between the parties is essential to our process of self-government.

The Republican Party was born on the principle that no human being should be considered the property of another. That is our heritage as Republicans, and it would be a fatal mistake to abandon that fundamental precept now.

This does not mean that every Republican thinks alike. The Republican Party is not a fraternity with a hazing procedure for admission. We impose no ideological or religious tests on anyone who calls himself a Republican, and we invite all Americans to vote for our candidates. We do not demand to know the reasons why people vote for Republican candidates, and there is no space in those little boxes on the ballot to record their reasons.

The most famous political debates in American history were the Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858. During those seven debates up and down the State of Illinois, Abraham Lincoln enunciated the position of the then-new Republican Party that slavery was "a moral, a social and a political wrong," and that he "looks forward to a time when slavery shall be abolished everywhere."

The Democratic candidate, Stephen A. Douglas, argued that the Supreme Court's ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford had settled the slavery question once and for all. Saying "I choose to abide by the decisions of the Supreme Court as they are pronounced," Douglas said that everyone was bound to accept the Court's opinion that the U.S. Constitution protects an individual property right in slaves throughout the United States and its Western territories.

Abraham Lincoln did not dispute the authority of the Supreme Court to decide a particular case, but he forthrightly "opposed that decision as a political rule which shall be binding on the voter." "We do not propose to be bound by it as a political rule," Lincoln said. "We propose to have it reversed if we can, and a new judicial rule established upon this subject."

In Quincy, Illinois, Lincoln argued that we should "deal with [slavery] as with any other wrong, insofar as we can prevent its growing any larger, and deal with it that, in the run of time, there may be some promise of an end to it. We have a due regard to the actual presence of it amongst us and the difficulties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory way . . . [but] we oppose it as an evil . . ."

As authority for saying that slavery was "wrong," Lincoln sited our nation's founding document, the Declaration of Independence, which asserts as a "self-evident" truth that each of us is "endowed by their Creator" with unalienable rights of life and liberty, and that government is instituted for the purpose of securing those rights.

In reporting the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the biased press of the 1850s called Lincoln "a dead dog" walking to his "political grave," and reported Douglas's arguments as "logical" and "powerful." Lincoln lost that Senatorial election to Douglas. But two years later, in a rematch against Senator Douglas, Abraham Lincoln was elected our first Republican President -- and the verdict of history is on Lincoln's side.

"The real issue in this controversy," Lincoln said in the Alton debate, is that the Republican Party "looks upon the institution of slavery as a wrong, and [the Democratic Party] does not look upon it as a wrong." Lincoln proclaimed that the slavery issue represented "the eternal struggle between these two principles -- right and wrong."

Abortion is the right-or-wrong issue of our time. We should parallel the words of Abraham Lincoln today and say: The Republican Party looks upon abortion as a wrong, and the Democratic Party does not look upon it as a wrong. That's the crucial difference between the two parties.

In the 1990s, the Republican Party must not adopt the Stephen Douglas position that a wrong Supreme Court decision is infallible and irrevocable. It is our duty to reject the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, which legalized the deliberate killing of unborn babies.

The Declaration of Independence does not mention slavery. But, in the Galesburg debate, Lincoln pointed to the clear meaning of the Declaration's words that "all" of us are endowed with "unalienable rights," and he challenged Douglas that "the entire record of the world, from the date of the Declaration of Independence up to three years ago, may be searched in vain for one single affirmation, from one single man, that the negro was not included in the Declaration of Independence."

Likewise, the Declaration of Independence does not mention abortion, but you will search in vain for a single affirmation that the Creator-endowed right to life was to be withheld from a baby until the moment of birth. Every new advance in science, especially the DNA and the ultra-sound photographs of babies in the womb, confirms that the unique, individual identity of each of us is present, human, alive and growing before the mother realizes she is pregnant.

Roe v. Wade, combined with its companion case, Doe v. Bolton, legalized the killing of the unborn baby throughout nine months of pregnancy, and that effectively makes the baby the property of the mother. That proposition is inconsistent with respect for individual human life.

A party platform is a standard, a banner to raise on high, to proclaim our general principles and display our convictions. It is not legislation. Our Platform should be strong on strategic principle, while leaving the details and the tactics to the legislative process.

The pro-life position of the Republican Party Platform was arrived at through the democratic process and has been consistently maintained through seven Republican National Conventions. Speaking through its Platforms adopted in 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, and 2000 [and 2004 -spiff], the Republican Party has consistently upheld the right to life of unborn babies ever since the Roe v. Wade decision. The text has remained remarkably constant ever since 1984 and offers the voters a clear difference from the Democratic Platform.

The media clamor for Republicans to abandon -- or at least modify -- their pro-life position. To do that would not only be wrong, it would not only be a betrayal of our honorable tradition, but it would be politically stupid. Since, in politics, perception is reality, waffling would be perceived as abandonment. The Republican Party cannot afford to make the mistake President George Bush made when he reneged on his 1988 campaign promise ("Read my lips -- no new taxes"). More importantly, the pro-life constituency has been a major, even decisive, factor in the unprecedented growth of the Republican Party in the 1980s and 1990s. Dozens of Republicans in Congress were elected only because they were steadfast in their pro-life position.

Despite naive hopes, abortion cannot be removed from public controversy. It is a moral issue because it confronts fundamental issues of right and wrong, of life and death. It is a social issue because it goes to the most deeply held of human relationships and our respect for the worth of our fellow human beings. It is a political issue because, every year, dozens of bills pertaining to abortion are introduced into the Congress and state legislatures, and public officials must vote aye or nay on those bills.

Furthermore, abortion is a fundamental issue that affects so many other current problems. Roe v. Wade is the fountainhead of the now-imperial federal judiciary that has violated, not only the rights of the unborn, but American rights of self-government. Roe has led activist federal judges to presume to overturn state laws and referenda designed to protect babies, mothers and parents from the most egregious demands of the abortion lobby, including partial birth abortions. Abortion is a perennial issue in the appropriations process. The legislative process is manipulated every year to secure the spending of taxpayers' money for thousands of abortions.

The Republican Party must continue to uphold the principle that every human being, born and unborn, young and old, healthy and disabled, has a fundamental, individual right to life. Like Abraham Lincoln, we rely on the Declaration of Independence for our authority to assert that every individual human being has a Creator-endowed right to life, and that it is the duty of government to protect that right. In the tradition of Abraham Lincoln, we assert that no human being, born or unborn, can be considered the property of another, and we repudiate the Roe v. Wade decision which presumed to give some individuals the so-called "right" to terminate the life of others.

Republican National Coalition for Life

[wagglebee]

my point is simple - if a guy like Spector can give us Alitos on the bench, so can a president like Giuliani.

Spector was coerced into allowing Bush's nominations through, it was the price of getting to remain committeee chairman.

There IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY TO FORCE A PRESIDENT TO NOMINATE CONSERVATIVES and NO REASON TO BELIEVE THAT GIULIANI WOULD ABANDON HIS LIBERAL PRINCIPLES AND DO SO.

[xzins]

Or is there a movement underfoot to remove these planks from the platform?

I think you're onto something here.

How much flexibility should a party have before we have to call it a different party?

[EternalVigilance]

So what. Any liberal, of either party, is going to produce similar results. In fact, a "Republican" liberal tends to be able to forward the liberal agenda more easily. The proof? Look at Massachusetts. Could any Democrat, even in that liberal state, have pushed through gay marriage and socialized medicine like Mitt Romney has?

[EternalVigilance]

You're right about that. But that was back when we had real Republicans in Congress. We no longer have players like Delay, Gingrich, Ashcroft, etc.

Well, it's time for others to step up to the plate. Our bench is deep.

[cgk]

first you must examine how the merit appointment system of judicial picks in NYC works to understand this. the mayor does not act unilaterally in making these picks, he chooses from a slate that an advisory board generates. NYC has a 9:1 Dem registration, you can imagine what decades of Dem rule means to the composition of these panels. The idea that some republican mayor could just get elected and sweep all that away, and start appointing Scalia clones to NYC judgeships - its just can't happen.

Giuliani served as NYC Mayor beginning Jan 1, 1994. It took him 7 months to do what you say he could not have done.

Remarks by Ed Koch (he who set up that Merit-selection System back in 1978) on the Independence of the Judiciary, 1996

MAYOR GIULIANI ON JULY 20, 1994, GUTTED THIS MERIT-SELECTION SYSTEM BY PROVIDING THAT HE, HIMSELF, COULD EXERCISE THE AUTHORITY NOT TO REAPPOINT A SITTING JUDGE, EVEN IF THE COMMITTEE HAD RECOMMENDED REAPPOINTMENT OF THAT JUDGE. THE MAYOR HAS, IN FACT, EXERCISED THAT AUTHORITY WITH RESPECT TO TWO SITTING JUDGES BOTH OF WHOM HAD BEEN RECOMMENDED FOR REAPPOINTMENT BY BOTH THE MAYOR'S JUDICIARY COMMITTEE AND THE CITY BAR ASSOCIATION.