You see, Squid, people like Eternal Vigilance assume the role of Gatekeeper. They proceed from the assumption that any candidate must pass muster with them. In their Republican Party, pro-choice people, even those who are barely pro-choice like Condi, get ridden out of the Party on a rail. Condoleezza Rice may be a resolute, indeed, an uncompromising supporter of Second Amendment rights. She may have stood foursquare against Political Correctness and Grade Inflation at Stanford (unlike Harvard, Stanford continued to maintain a standard of uncompromising excellence during her tenure as Provost, much like my own University of Chicago. In truth, Stanford is the only college that we U. of C. people consider as a peer.). She may have enunciated a foreign policy based on a sound assessment of American national interest, not on what might sell to the Eurotrash (thus, the rapproachment with Russia, a policy of her devising and a strategic coup of the first order: Beijing is not happy.). But none of that matters. Only abortion matters to people like EV. Rice may believe (this is my suspicion, and it's a very good educated guess) in restricted abortion rights and an abolition of partial birth (there isn't anyone around Bush who is pro-partial birth, and if she was, Al Gore would have found out about it and used it against Bush in the campaign.).
Their's is a prescription for disaster. If you read my long Reply to Eternal Vigialance, you saw that I laid it out for him chapter and verse. He will still not understand. I am not trying to convert him. Indeed; I agree with his stand against abortion. Sadly, however, he fails to recognize that any Republican candidate faces two opponents in a general election: the Democratic Candidate and their outriders in the Major Media.
Now we know what the Democratic Candidate will do.
However, it is the job of the Media to paint any Republican candidate as "outside the mainstream". That's their role. You have to understand that in election years, indeed, in most any year, it is the job of the media to serve as an instrument of agitation and propaganda for the Democratic National Committee. And guess what, if the truth were told, I bet the Rats and the Media talk to each other (ask anyone here who went through the campaign about how the Democrats were able to get the "Rats" commercial story out of the back pages and to page 1: these things don't happen by accident). Any Republican candidate has to be able to sell at least a "moderately pro-life" position that recognizes that while he disagrees with pro-choice people, he doesn't cast them out. Keyes made that mistake. Bush didn't. But Bush almost lost because Gore was able to convince enough people that Bush wanted to take America back to coathangers and vacuum cleaners. Oh, and because he was a drunk back in 1976.
Remember, although Bush is wildly popular right now, I'm not sure that that will last through 2004. Remember also that Gore and Nader together got a couple of percentage points more than Bush. This is the environment in which we must win elections.
And remember what a lot of the single-issue anti-abortion folk did to us in 2000. They ran off and voted for Buchanan-Foster. They probably cost us Iowa and New Mexico. And possibly, just possibly, Oregon. Not EV. He voted for Bush, iirc. But enough of his confederates did to kill us in several states. Perhaps even enough to have made Florida matter.
We can't afford to run anyone out of the party. And we can't afford to take a pass on good people who have so much to offer. Especially one such as Rice whose talents for the Presidency are so apparent. We have to be able to disagree with pro-choice people who are Republican without threatening them with excommunication. Pro-choice Democrats we write off simply because they reek of the brownshirt and the diesel dyke.
At bottom, whenever I see one of these "Condi Rice is a Crazed Pro-Choicer with a Vacuum Cleaner" threads, I'm reminded of the story that Lincoln told. The 16th President was asked how it felt to hold that high office. Abe responded by telling the story of the man who was being ridden out of town on a rail.
Well, the man was tarred and feathered, and was asked by someone in the crowd how it felt up there on that rail. The man responded:
"Well, if it weren't for the honor of the thing, I'd rather walk."
Be Seeing You,
Chris