I love me some single-issue voters. Not!
Okay, this should have been continued over at Alarming News, but the comment section broke down at a response to a point I raised, and since I think it's an important point, I am re-publishing the last two comments followed by my rebuttal over here.
myrna, Rudy has said he would appoint strict constructionists to the Court. Do you think he's lying? (Yeah, I know the rap that the judges he appointed in NYC "leaned left", but consider the talent pool he had available, please.)
And as an aside, the fetishization of abortion is one of the reasons I refuse to call myself a Republican. (The flip side is the fetishization of abortion is one of the reasons I refuse to call myself a Democrat, too...)
Everyone keeps trying to resurrect Reagan. Well someone tell me exactly what the Gipper did to fight the wave of abortions sweeping the land in the 1980s.
Anyone?
It's a wonder there's been any children born at all in this country since Roe v. Wade.
Posted by: Mark Poling at April 9, 2007 02:03 PM
Well Mark, you can worry about the 'fetishization' of the abortion issue, and I'll worry about its 'trivialization'.
I wonder how a person who supports Roe v. Wade can be taken seriously when he says he will appoint strict constuctionist justices. Aside from overturning Roe, there are a number of ways a President's politics can affect abortion policy - parental notification, partial birth, etc.
Posted by: myra langerhas at April 9, 2007 03:02 PM
Begin original content....
Until Roe is overturned, it is the law of the land; that's what the Constitution says, and if there is one thing Rudy is it is a stickler for the law. Rudy didn't say he was a strict constructionist, he said he would appoint strict-constructionists to the bench. A subtle distinction, but I think an honest one.
There is of course a way to overturn Roe that doesn't require holding the Republican Party hostage; get organized and a Constitutional Amendment passed protecting the rights of the unborn. Or even federal laws that explicitly define what is and is not legal. And then let the Court decide the Constitutionality of those laws.
But the problem with that of course is someone on the other side might also get around to trying to draft real laws coming from the other side, and the REAL problem is the single-issue voters on both sides know that most Americans are somewhere in the middle on the issues. And something tells me that a federal law (or Constitutional Amendment) that allowed abortions through the 20th week wouldn't meet with your personal approval (or, to be fair, with the approval of NOW either) even though most Americans would be satisfied with it as a compromise solution.
So, instead we get organized intimidation of Presidential candidates on an issue that most people put down around 10 or 12 on their priority list. You're perfectly within you're rights to say most people are moral retards, but that's definitely not the way to win elections. So say hello to President Hillary! in 2008 for me, will you?
(Clinton, slime snake that he was, hit the perfect pitch with his "Safe, legal, and rare" construction. To quote a wise rodent, "Sounds very significant without actually tying you down to meaning anything at all." That was our boy Bill.)
Myrna, I'm sympathetic to your cause, believe it or not. You mention partial birth abortion (definitely against it) and parental notification laws (definitely for it, but if anyone who has a personal need it as a parent has f**ked up). If you're asking for real-world solutions to specific cases, I'm all for it. If you're demanding that the candidate start by promising to appoint judges who will overturn Roe without saying what your post-Roe world would look like, well, for me and a lot of others that is simply a non-starter.
I worry the Pro-Life Movement's absolutist positioning and tactics has the perverse effect of making the world less safe for my unborn twins. When you add on top of that that I think the fight is futile and in many cases actively counter-productive even within the narrow confines of simply reducing the number of abortions that occur, and I hope you might understand my sense of frustration.