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Abortion Remains Important in 2010
Elections By Dave Andrusko Good evening, and thanks once again for reading Today's News & Views. Part Two combines a great stem cell breakthrough with an explanation of the evil it is intended to replace. Part Three extols a huge victory in Europe. Part Four is a closer to home triumph in New Jersey. Over at National Right to Life News Today (www.nationalrighttolifenews.org), I talk about Msgr. Pope's stirring message. We also inform you that we have a wonderful new resource on nrlc's web page. Finally we also talk about the depressing topic of Democrats and abortion. Please send your comments on Today's News & Views and National Right to Life News Today to daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you like, join those who are following me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/daveha
We've written before about the myth that the abortion issue is, at worse, a drag on candidates or, at best, a non-factor in this election cycle. This misrepresentation reoccurs periodically for obvious, and not so obvious, reasons. Clearly, the economy (and all issues related to our current tailspin) is very important to the way the electorate is approaching the November 2 mid-term elections. But the reason it gets trotted out as the ultimate trump card is either (to be fair) because proponents believe it; do not want "divisive" issues such as abortion to take away a laser-like focus on the economy; and/or are pro-abortion. National Review online has a vigorous back and forth inspired a piece that ran on its website today written by Dick Morris and his co-author (and wife) Eileen McGann. Their argument has many facets but from our point of view it's their contention that ''even as the right to lifers move toward a national majority, their clout at the grassroots level of the Republican party is waning.'" Kathryn Jean Lopez, an editor-at-large of National Review Online, thoroughly rebuts the Morris/McGann thesis. You can read her thoughts at www.nationalreview.com/corner/249072/re-morris-and-mcgann-ramesh-ponnuru. Let me highlight a couple of her specifics, which were later added to and buttressed by her colleague, Ramesh Ponnuru. "What really is perplexing to me is the Morris/McGann contention that pro-life activists have decreasing clout with the GOP," Lopez writes. "This is why John Boehner gave his first new-majority pitch speech to the National Right to Life Committee? This is why one of the House GOP Pledge items is a universal and permanent Hyde Amendment? Respect for the dignity of human life has been a consistent drive for John Boehner in Congress. He made a point to push on it at the Blair House summit on health care, for one thing, as the White House and current speaker of the House lied their way to its [the health care bill] passage. Pro-life activists not only have clout, they're well-represented in the presumptive next speaker of the House." Lopez and Ponnuru tackle the curious contentions that serious pro-life candidates have been busts in GOP presidential primaries and that even though there is a bevy of Republican pro-life senatorial candidates this year--incumbents and newcomers alike--somehow that doesn't really count because they are not "basing" their candidacy on the "social issues." "As for social issues not counting in the [Republican] primaries, let's look at the results of seriously contested primaries," Ponnuru writes. "Many of the pro-life establishment candidates won…; none of the pro-choice establishment candidates did. … In three states establishment pro-life candidates lost … but in each case to pro-life insurgents. That none of the tea-party candidates in these races has been pro-choice is a fact so obvious that we don't even think about it." He adds, "But if abortion were a waning issue among Republicans, one would expect a different fact pattern. Pro-choicers would be beating pro-lifers at least in some appreciable number of cases–but they're not." The other salient consideration to come out this morning is something that doesn't get a lot of attention, and for the very same reason the abortion issue hasn't. The Tea Party is clearly focused on a whole range of economic issues, but that not preclude them from being pro-life nor does it make them as a group libertarians. So who are they and where are they on abortion? The American Values Survey (AVS) describes what it does as "a large, nationally representative public opinion survey of American attitudes on religion, values, and politics." Among many other things it found in its 2010 survey was that those Americans who consider themselves part of the Tea Party Movement "are mostly social conservatives, not libertarians on social issues. Nearly two-thirds (63%) say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases." National Review had its own "detailed look" taken earlier this year of people who said they'd participated in tea-party rallies or "have not participated in a tea party protest but . . . generally agree with the reasons for those protests." "Most tea-party sympathizers," wrote Ponnuru and Kate O'Beirne in their analysis, "are pro-life. They are more pro-life than the electorate as a whole, although less so than Republicans." In addition, "Tea-party participants, meanwhile, are both more pro-life and more frequent churchgoers than the electorate." Good news, on both fronts. |
