On June 11 CBS News moved pro-abortion KS Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to the top of the list of Barack Obama’s prospective running mates.
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Pro-lifers await the day, as a Kansas City Star editorial columnist surprisingly got right on July 10. Recall Planned Parenthood bestowed its Maggie Award to the KCS in 2006 “for editorials supporting reproductive justice, family planning, and the right to confidential health care.” So KCS is no friend, making this candid assessment of an Obama-Sebelius ticket remarkable….


Sebelius has used the power of her office to waylay criminal investigations of infamous late-term abortionist George Tiller as well as Planned Parenthood.
Could the ironic consequence of Sebelius’ love of abortion and abortionists be that she is passed by as a VP pick by the most pro-abortion presidential candidate in history? Or that a combined ticket strengthens the odds that abortion brings them both down?
Here’s Shelley’s piece:

Google “Kathleen Sebelius” these days and you’ll find a steady stream of analysis weighing the pros and cons of the KS governor as Barack Obama’s potential running mate.
Pro: She’s a successful blue governor in a red state.
Con: Her fireside rebuttal to President Bush’s State of the Union speech this year sent the nation into a snooze.
Pro: She’s female.
Con: Maybe too female. Some pundits are worried that she and Obama might look too much like a couple.
Overall, the national media are taking the prospect of an Obama-Sebelius ticket seriously, and Obama has done nothing to discourage the notion.
“I love Kathleen Sebelius,” he said recently. “I think she is as talented a public official as there is right now.”

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Most analyses peg the KS Democrat an accomplished public servant who would bring minimal baggage to the campaign.
But the safe pick is a dangerous assumption.
There are two kinds of political baggage. One is the kind the candidate packs herself. In that regard Sebelius travels light.
Then there’s the baggage your enemies dump on you. And for that, Sebelius’ adversaries in the anti-abortion camp are fully loaded.
Go back to your Google search and, along with Sebelius’ name, type in the word “abortion.”
Here you’ll find a different kind of analysis.
“A vice president for abortion,” is the headline on a widely circulated column. An Internet site that describes itself as “dedicated to issues of culture, life and family” labels Sebelius as “the most extreme pro-abortion Catholic governor.”
These accusations are at best overblown and at worst blatantly false. They stem from frustration at Sebelius’ refusal to cooperate with right-wing groups and legislators who want to use unconstitutional measures to limit abortions and shut down a Wichita clinic that performs late-term abortions.
It would be nice to dismiss these allegations as the rantings of a few extremists. Polls show only a sliver of the electorate is preoccupied enough with abortion to use it as the sole basis of a voting decision.
But in the glare of a presidential race, Sebelius’ problems with the anti-abortion movement have the potential to blow up into a huge distraction.
Catholic networks have been spreading the word for months via Internet sites and newsletters that Sebelius is “anti-life.” They illustrate their case with photos of the governor, at a reception, standing alongside George Tiller, the physician who performs later-term abortions in Wichita.
If other conservative groups with church connections pick up on that kind of coverage, it’s not difficult to imagine a scenario in which a vote against an Obama-Sebelius ticket is portrayed as a religious obligation.
We saw a similar situation in Missouri, with the 2006 campaign to grant scientists in the state the freedom to practice all forms of stem-cell research permitted under federal law.
Early polls showed overwhelming support for a constitutional amendment protecting medical research. But conservative religious groups opposed the measure, and professional manipulators moved into the state with a dizzying barrage of spin and lies. (Millions of vulnerable women will be exploited for their reproductive eggs! Remember that one?)
The constitutional amendment passed by a hair, but the campaign was a case study in what happens when a political issue gets twisted into a religious crusade.
Who knows? Maybe Obama’s team and the national Democratic Party would be skilled enough to keep the focus on Sebelius as a moderate, pragmatic governor who stood up for clean air when her administration denied permits for construction of coal-fired energy plants in western KS last year.
Maybe Sebelius isn’t as serious a vice-presidential prospect as some of the pundits make her out to be.
But that business of the Kansas governor as a safe pick? It’s risky.

[Photo of Sebelius and late-term abortionist George Tiller and wife, courtesy of Operation Rescue, was taken at a reception the guv hosted for Tiller at her mansion last year]

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