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.
Siobhan gave a good answer in #75, and I'll let that be mine.
One presumes you are not calling the author of this website -- who has incisively expressed his beliefs on the four longest Giuliani threads this month (here, here, here, and here) -- a "disruptor".
Except I left out a word, should read: "undermining" the very things that make the WOT worth fighting...
> I an shocked by what someone posted earlier (may have
> been you) about the U.S. building or helping to build
> Iraq and Afganistan's first abortion clinics.
It'd be even more shocking if it wasn't bull%$@#.
US government funds can't be used for abortions or even used by people who mention the word abortion outside the US.
Unlike you, I do happen to know the facts.
Quite so. I did follow your train of thought nonetheless and found it exceptionally well conceived.
It's from the article, first I'd heard about it. Do you know for a fact that it is untrue? Just asking.
God rest his soul.
So are the majority of the others running. How does he differentiate himself from the others on those?
So in other words, rather than go with someone who says he's changed his positions to match yours, you'd rather go with someone who hasn't in the hopes that he's changed them without saying so!?
Even in my liberal days I would have had some difficulty making sense of that logic (though in my liberal days I could probably have managed it).
That was in Mark's post of the article itself, perhaps he can provide an additional link.
"Clearly not a very devout one (Roman Catholic), if you support abortion... And since Rudy's your man, you do support it indirectly anyway if not directly."
The Roman Catholic Church is against capital punishment too. If you're a Catholic does that mean you must oppose it too?
Unlike you, I do happen to know the facts.
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Then, O Great One, show us where we are wrong with THE FACTS. If you can change what Rudy has DONE AND SAID, which is how any one should be judged, then I will listen. Otherwise, keep supporting Rudy and be happy with your liberal candidate.
Really ..?? I'm not Catholic .. and I can think for myself!
Illegal immigrants from Mexico get public housing, food stamps, free college tuition, affirmative action on citizenship, daisy chain their relatives in for Social Security, swell our prison population, etc., etc., ad nausea...
The welfare plantation foe illegals is good for business? If you are in the business of socialism?
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