Posted on 03/06/2007 5:39:37 PM PST by markomalley
They are saying that the next GOP presidential candidate might very well be a pro-abortion Republican who promises not to push that issue and is strong on other issues.
They hope that pro-lifers will “be reasonable,” not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and go along quietly.
We won’t.
Republicans and Democrats in 1980 took radically different approaches to the right to life. Republicans wrote into their party platform that all abortions should be outlawed. Democrats wrote into their party platform that not only should abortion be legal, but families should be forced to pay for others’ abortions through their taxes.
Democratic leaders have been utterly committed to their party platform. But there’s a movement afoot for Republicans to shrug off this plank of the party platform altogether, and give a pro-abortion politician the reins of the party and, they hope, the White House.
In particular, Rudy Giuliani has become a favorite for president of conservative talk-show hosts, and pro-war and tough-on-crime Republicans. He’s also way ahead in polls like Newsweek’s, though it’s anyone guess what such polls mean so early in the process.
The way the pro-Rudy argument goes is this: For the past three decades, social conservatives have had the luxury of insisting on purity in the Republican Party. Their clout was such that any candidate had to undergo a “forced conversion” before running for national office. But 9/11 changed that. Now, extremist Islam and the war on terror are such all-consuming issues, and we can’t be so caught up with abortion anymore.
Since Giuliani is committed to the war on terror and is a great crisis manager with a track record rooting out the gangs of New York, we shouldn’t demand that he be pro-life, but instead we should be willing to make a deal.
Rudy’s deal: He’ll promise not to push the pro-abortion agenda, and he’ll nominate judges in the mold of Samuel Alito and John Roberts. Pro-lifers in the Republican Party in return would support him, but keep insisting that the party stay pro-life, and fight our fiercest pro-life battles at the state level, where they belong.
That seems like a good deal, at first blush. We’re well aware that “forced conversions” to the pro-life fold are far from the ideal. Think of the candidacy of Bob Dole in 1996. And it is true that the fight against judicial tyranny is an immense front in the battle for the right to life. Transforming the courts is a prerequisite to victory elsewhere.
But what dooms the deal from the start is the fact that it totally misunderstands what pro-lifers care about in the first place.
When they ask us to “be reasonable” and go along with a pro-abortion leader, they assume that there is something unreasonable about the pro-life position to start with.
We’re sorry, but we don’t see what is so unreasonable about the right to life. We’ve seen ultrasounds, we’ve named our babies in the womb, we’ve seen women destroyed by abortion. What looks supremely unreasonable to us is that we should trust a leader who not doesn’t only reject the right to life but even supports partial-birth abortion, which is more infanticide than abortion.
We also see the downside of Rudy’s deal. If pro-lifers went along, we’d soon find out that a pro-abortion Republican president would no longer preside over a pro-life party. The power a president exerts over his party’s character is nearly absolute. The party is changed in his image. He picks those who run it and, both directly and indirectly, those who enter it.
Thus, the Republicans in the 1980s became Reaganites. The Democrats in the 1990s took on the pragmatic Clintonite mold. Bush’s GOP is no different, as Ross Douthat points out in “It’s His Party” in the March Atlantic Monthly.
A Republican Party led by a pro-abortion politician would become a pro-abortion party. Parents know that, when we make significant exceptions to significant rules, those exceptions themselves become iron-clad rules to our children. It’s the same in a political party. A Republican Party led by Rudy Giuliani would be a party of contempt for the pro-life position, which is to say, contempt for the fundamental right on which all others depend.
Would a pro-abortion president give us a pro-life Supreme Court justice? Maybe he would in his first term. But we’ve seen in the Democratic Party how quickly and completely contempt for the right to life corrupts. Even if a President Giuliani did the right thing for a short time, it’s likely the party that accepted him would do the wrong thing for a long time.
Would his commitment to the war on terror be worth it? The United States has built the first abortion businesses in both Afghanistan and Iraq, ever. Shamefully, our taxes paid to build and operate a Baghdad abortion clinic that is said to get most of its customers because of the pervasive rape problem in that male-dominated society. And that happened under a pro-life president. What would a pro-abortion president do?
The bottom line: Republicans have made inroads into the Catholic vote for years because of the pro-life issue. If they put a pro-abortion politician up for president, the gains they’ve built for decades will vanish overnight.
Catholic and pro-life pings to your lists...thanks!
The only reason Rudy remained a RINO was to run for President. There was no other reason to do so in the great liberal dung-heap of Hillary's New York :-). But he has missed the boat on conservatism.
He'll run into problems when it comes time to debate if they don't do the democrat thing and omit the candidates that might be a problem. (kinda like the democrats cutting Lieberman out of major debates)
Freepmail wagglebee or little jeremiah to subscribe or unsubscribe from the homosexual agenda or moral absolutes ping lists.
FreeRepublic homosexual agenda keyword search
[ Add keyword homosexual agenda to flag FR articles to this ping list ]
FreeRepublic moral absolutes keyword search
[ Add keyword moral absolutes to flag FR articles to this ping list ]
Pretty remarkable observation. I think most folks here would never believe what exactly drives the underlying resentment of the U.S. among a lot of the people in these countries.
Hardly. Many, many, many catholics vote Dem across the ballot. Rudy doesn't need you, and he's going to destroy hitlery.
If he changed his position, he'd be flip-flopping like a fish out of water ala Romney. He said he would appoint SC Justices like Roberts and Scalia.....that's enough for me.
Rudy fails to protect innocent life on 2 fronts.
Abortion and gun rights, and while I perosonally feel that the abortion debate is a state matter, The 2nd amendment isnt.
Forget Rudy
Ping to the Rudy NOT! list.
I think you just committed the unpardonable sin--hinting that there may be good reasons some other people in the world don't much like us or our culture.
Good luck with that one.
I don't understand how a person can say they are going to protect the American public, by fighting terrorism, and then support the legal slaughter of the most innocent of Americans.
Yeah, well I ain't buying a pig-in-a-poke.
And it ain't just the pro-abortion views of Rooty, either.
He wants my guns, too.
Take it somewhere else, Rooty.
You ain't no conservative, I don't care how many times you say so.
Sometimes it's lonely being right on an issue.
First of all I'm a Roman Catholic and I don't know any Catholics who reads this tripe. Second, I know many Roman Catholics who will vote for Rudy in a NY Minute. Third Roman Catholics don't like to let the church (especially the Roman Catholic Church) decide for them who to vote for when it comes to politics. We can leave that kind of stuff to the Democrats and the Black Churches.
I saw on TV where photos of Rudy in drag were showing. You can just image if Rudy were the Presidential nominee the field day everyone would have as a result of these photos being shown everywhere.
Apparently Rudy likes to dress up as a woman. This is not a good candidate for winning in 2008. Probably not even a VP choice.
I admire Rudy for all he did as Mayor of New York, but running for President is very serious business, and winning is everything in 2008.
What exactly is a "Black Church?"
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.