I think he’s confusing two things, states rights and abortion rights.
Yes, as Fred Thompson said, we should repeal Roe v. Wade and return the argument to the states. Absolutely. And then we can proceed from there.
But it’s still not right to kill innocent people. Nobody has a “right” to an abortion. That sends a vile message. None of the states permitted abortion legally until shortly before Roe v. Wade, as a result of a well-organized liberal campaign by the Rockefellers and other liberals.
And the country did a hell of a lot better before all that happened, with fewer divorces, fewer broken families, fewer perverted kids, even aside from the question of whether it’s right to murder babies.
Steele screwed up. He shouldn’t have gotten all “nuanced” in this interview.
There is nothing to be gained by playing dipsy-doodle with the left. He should have used this as an opportunity to instruct the folks on the reality of abortion and why he is opposed to “this choice”.
Now he is going to spend another month off the issues.
I totally agree with what you said; but as a matter of strategically reclaiming our nation, conservatives have to come to terms with the reality that today's young and even middle-aged voters have never known a world without easy legal abortion. We cannot afford to try to "go back." We must find ways to go forward, and those ways may be by increments, legally and politically.
Only when you have gotten someone's attention and heart can you convince them that what they take for granted might be a bad, bad thing. Perception is everything in politics, as the last election clearly showed.