Replies

Quite a few conservatives (including Karl Rove, I suspect) would like to put the abortion issue aside and got on with things they consider more important, like lower taxes, a stronger military, lifting the assault weapons ban, or whatever their particular agenda happens to be.

But abortion is the issue that simply cannot be put aside. Most of those Republicans who were elected on November 5 were elected by pro-lifers, who turned out in droves. At the same time, 19 out of 20 candidates supported by Emily's List and NARAL went down to defeat, in spite of everthing the desperate media could do. So abortion is a grave moral issue, but it's also an unavoidable political issue. Conservatives of every stripe need to learn to live with it. Conservatives who don't care about the abortion issue need to respect and work with those who do, or they will never accomplish any of the rest of the conservative agenda.

That was true even in California. Simon could have won if he had had better support from the pros. The pro-abort candidate, hand-picked by Karl Rove, never could have won. This split in the Republican party was responsible for putting Gray Davis and a whole slate of Democrats into office--even more Democrats than there were before. Now Gray Davis has nobody to keep an eye on his corrupt dealings.

The big-tent Republicans are under the illusion that pro-lifers should compromise deeply with them. But they never will. You can't compromise about murdering babies. So, if the conservatives who don't much care about this issue don't begin to see the light and lend their support to those who do, they will continue to sabotage the country's movement toward conservatism and hand it right back to the Democrats.

On this issue, Trent Lott is right for once. We need a partial-birth abortion bill, and we need it soon. Not only will it please the pro-life base, but polls have shown that it is overwhelmingly popular (though the media desperately conceal that). Frankly we also need a strong bill banning human cloning, because this may be the last chance to pull the plug on it. Banning human cloning is an issue that presently also has the support of a huge majority of voters, and the opposition of only a small but rich and influential group of medical entrepreneurs and radicals. Human cloning--which involves Nazi-like experimentation on living human beings--can be completely banned now, before it gets loose; but we only have a year or two to do it, and then it will be too late.