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.
Not sure some of them rise to the level of college student recently.
Spiff, I'm completely on your side in this debacle, but I've gotta say, I think that graphic is pretty funny. Wear it as a badge of honor. I wish I were well-known enough on FR that someone would make a graphic about me.
I would cheer for making abortion totally illegal. I, for one, do not believe that a little bit of murder is OK.
I also believe that if you allow an exception for rape or incest that you are executing the wrong person. You should be executing the guilty father and not the innocent child.
As for the life of the mother exception - I believe that is a straw dog. The numbers of abortions that would be allowed for that exception would far exceed the number of mothers whose life would actually be in jeopardy. Besides, we are stepping on God's turf when we take upon ourselves to decide which life is worth more than another.
"If you seriously believe that, then your problem is a larger one than immaturity."
The only problem I have is with pretend conservatives on FR promoting a liberal candidate. Hillary appreciates your support.
I'm going to have to drink heavily in order to stomach sitting through a debate between those two.
"some people never learn". Do not try to mind other people's business any more than absolutely necessary, especially on "moral" grounds. If you are so overcome with heartburn/morality reflux that it overflows, then remember the injunction about a beam in one's own eye and direct your moral efforts to self-improvement.
see # 446.
Yeah, let them die. Might as well repeal laws against murder. None of my business.
Laura Ingrahm is just finished reaing this article on the air.
"I have a real problem with Mormons"
Why?
None of your business, absolutely correct. See # 446 and take care of the beam in your own eye before attempting to play an ophtalmologist.
Proud of that dead-soul are ya?
Secondly, there is a Republican candidate in the race who CAN defeat Hillary or Obama and is running on a conservative plank, Mitt Romney.
Why?
Personal experience with their non Christian doctrine and their bait and switch evangelism.
How many here who are against abortion have ever helped out in a clinic or financially supported one? I know our church has one and rather than yell and scream about who's anti-abortion or pro-life, it would be much better to help out those women who at this very moment are contemplating whether to end a human life or not. I have never thought we would change the issue up at the government level - it is a moral, heart issue that needs local efforts, changing the hearts of the women who are making this decision.
The poster's argument is a typical appeal to Catholics to ignore the conscience that was shaped by Catholic teaching.
People used to marry when the consequences caught up with them. There will come a day when that practice again becomes preferential to abortion.
>> 1) No single position should be a "disqualifier".
>
> For better or for worse, 2nd Amendment advocates disagree
> with you.
There are lots of single issue voters who hold "this" or "that" to be inviolable and refuse to ally with anyone who doesn't support their point of view in its entirety.
I'm sure it gives them warm cockles of self-righteousness all over their insides.
It's also a recipe for getting beaten like a red headed step child at election time.
As a Catholic, I find the twice divorced, thrice married, pro-homosexual union, pro-choice Catholic Guiliani despicable.
I support the candidacy of the once married, never divorced, father of five, grandfather of ten, MORMON Romney.
What kind of clinic do you mean?
"it would be much better to help out those women who at this very moment are contemplating whether to end a human life or not. I have never thought we would change the issue up at the government level "
I believe the issue has to be fought at EVERY level, and at various points in my life have fought it at EVERY level.
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