Stanek weekend question: Should Republicans engage on abortion or just let Democrats hang themselves?
It’s a strategy question.
Jonathan Last at The Weekly Standard has written a great piece, “The Party of Abortion,” beginning with:
The Democratic party underwent an ideological evolution in Charlotte last week. They are no longer a pro-choice party. They’re the party of abortion.
As if to prove his point, the pro-abortion group Feministing posted this tweet last night…
which linked to this gif (featuring drag queen RuPaul, btw)….
Last concluded:
What’s strange is that the Democrats have moved one way on abortion as the country has moved the other. In surveys since 2009, Americans have been increasingly identifying themselves as “pro-life,” as opposed to “pro-choice.” In Gallup’s last poll on the subject, the gap between the two was 9 points in the pro-life direction, the widest it’s ever been.
The Democrats’ new position on abortion is probably good for the Republican party. Doubly so because Republicans didn’t even have to draw the contrast – there was barely a word said on the subject in Tampa – the Democrats eagerly drew the contrast for them.
But what’s good for the GOP will not be good for the fight against abortion in the long term. Moving away from America as a land of abortion-on-demand requires national consensus, which can only be built through moral persuasion. Moral persuasion is possible in an ideological contest. Yet once the debate over abortion passes from the ideological to the partisan, persuasion becomes more difficult. Still, the only alternative now is for the pro-life party to win, and then successfully to advance a pro-life agenda….
Last seemed to be saying Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan should continue to focus on Barack Obama’s weak spots – jobs and the economy – win the election, and then promote the cause.
Do you agree?
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
The Democrats are doing a surprising transparent job of revealing who they really are. I say, sit back and enjoy the show! After the 2010 elections, I trust the American people to take a hard turn to the right. It’s about time!
Romney should stay on-message and let the Dems respond to everything with “Yeah, but with US you get free abortions!”
I tend to agree with the “let ’em hang themselves” strategy. In part, that’s because Romney’s flip-flopping on abortion makes it difficult for him to draw the contrast. (Yes, I know he’s converted and yes, I know we have Paul Ryan. Even so.) So let’s just let the Democrats draw it. Another reason: yes, people are becoming more pro-life on abortion, but they aren’t necessarily all the way to supporting a Human Life Amendment, which is the GOP stance. It’s much easier for people to get behind “No, I do not support abortion on demand, at any time in pregnancy, paid for with my tax dollars.” That’s step one.
LIke I said in my post on my last link….this is more radical than we think, this is for population control as a means to and end to poverty, joblessness, lack of resources. I believe in my heart Obama’s camp thinks that curtailing the reproduction of minorities, the infirm and unintelliegent, etc., as Margaret Sanger stated decades ago, we will improve society. It is horrible. And I think that is why they are so strong on the issue, and going further overboard. IT’s not about choice, it’s about population contorl, eugenics, and all of those evil things.
I agree with the others who’ve spoken. The Dems have plenty of rope and they’re busily tying their own noose. Who are we to stand in their way? :P
As to what Romney and Ryan ought to do, they should do whatever is likely to save the most lives. At the moment that seems to be allowing the Dems to make idiots of themselves, but there will come a time when more a pro-active approach is needed.
I gotta say, I am really enjoying this. Again, my favorite Oprah quote:
WHEN SOMEONE TELLS YOU WHO THEY ARE, BELIEVE THEM.
(that’s one for you, EGV)
I am totally enjoying the show and watching them slip further and further from the mainstream. :)
I am praying they keeping yapping on and on and on as loud as they can! They love abortion! They want abortion! They need abortion! And want us to pay for it!
And turning on each other? BONUS!!
GO TEAM ABORTION!
Romney/Ryan stand in stark contrast.
Rush was always right when he said abortion is the holy grail of the left.
I agree with the “give them enough rope and let them hang themselves” approach. Don’t have to say much they are saying it all “They are for :Taxpayer Abortion on Demand, Pro-Death to the unborn with no restrictions, the Dead Babies R Us search and destroy death squad, the never seen an abortion I didn’t love crew, and the let the taxpayers pay for my abortions and my birth control cartel, with their abortioneer-in-chief at the helm and PP, NARAL and Emily’s List rooting for him all the way. All someone in the prolife movement would have to do is to just string together all the video clips of what they are demanding in their own words, you would not have to say a word, let them speak for themselves.
Interestingly, while Americans may be closer to the Republican than the Democratic position on abortion, Republicans seem to have a stronger tendency to make damaging gaffes regarding abortion (remember “legitimate rape, everyone?). So I agree it is better to try and win the election based on jobs and the economy, as they are less likely to say anything foolish there.
Drag queens are beautiful, glamorous and feminine.
But they never undergo abortions.
I think the Democrats seized this issue in response to the backlash over Governor Vaginal Probe, and the others. If your side lays off, I don’t think either side will bring it up. Status Quo is fine with most Americans.
Hal, what is the status quo? Does that mean you have the ‘right’ to kill your own unborn children and government mandates like Obamacare that would force everybody else to subsidize the funding of the Planned Parenthood? If it does then let me borrow a phrase from Clint Eastwood. Go $#@^% yourself.
Yes, truthseeker, the way things have been for the last 30 years or so. Seems to be working out alright. If we could get universal health care/single payer really working, I’d be happy.
I’ve got ths BIG problem with any ‘silly’ strategizing. Wake up people …. we, you, me, all-PC, all-PL, all Democrats, ALL REPUBLICANS, everyone is in a fight to live … right here, right now. And we’d better learn to rely on each other … or we’re ALL DEAD …. DEATH VIA ABORTION WILL SEEM MILD!
Read on ….
”
Life Is Sacred
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/life_is_sacred_20120903/
Posted on Sep 3, 2012
By Chris Hedges
I retreat in the summer to the mountains and coasts of Maine and New Hampshire to sever myself from the intrusion of the industrial world. It is in the woods and along the rugged Atlantic coastline, the surf thundering into the jagged rocks, that I am reminded of our insignificance before the universe and the brevity of human life. The stars, thousands visible in the night canopy above me, mock human pretensions of grandeur. They whisper the biblical reminder that we are dust and to dust we shall return. Love now, they tell us urgently, protect what is sacred, while there is still time.But now I go there also to mourn. I mourn for our future, for the fading majesty of the natural world, for the folly of the human species. The planet is dying. And we will die with it.
The giddy, money-drenched, choreographed carnival in Tampa and the one coming up in Charlotte divert us from the real world—the one steadily collapsing around us. The glitz and propaganda, the ridiculous obsessions imparted by our electronic hallucinations, and the spectacles that pass for political participation mask the deadly ecological assault by the corporate state. The worse it gets, the more we retreat into self-delusion. We convince ourselves that global warming does not exist. Or we concede that it exists but insist that we can adapt. Both responses satisfy our mania for eternal optimism and our reckless pursuit of personal comfort. In America, when reality is distasteful we ignore it. But reality will soon descend like the Furies to shatter our complacency and finally our lives. We, as a species, may be doomed. And this is a bitter, bitter fact for a father to digest.
My family and I hike along the desolate coastline of an island in Maine that is accessible only by boat. We stop in the afternoons on remote inlets and look out across the Atlantic Ocean or toward the shoreline and the faint outline of the Camden hills. My youngest son throws pebbles into the surf. My daughter toddles over the rounded beach stones holding her mother’s hand. The gray and white seagulls chatter loudly overhead. The scent of salt is carried by the wind. Life, the life of my family, the life around me, is exposed at once as fragile and sacred. And it is worth fighting to save.
When I was a boy and came to this coast on duck hunting trips with my uncle, fishing communities were vibrant. The fleets caught haddock, cod, herring, hake, halibut, swordfish, pollock and flounder. All these fish have vanished from the area, victims of commercial fishing that saw huge trawlers rip up the seafloor and kill the corals, bryozoans, tubeworms and other species that nurtured new schools of fish. The trawlers left behind barren underwater wastelands of mud and debris. It is like this across the planet. Forests are cut down. Water is contaminated. Air is saturated with carbon emissions. Soil is depleted. Acidity levels in the oceans skyrocket. Atmospheric temperatures soar. And someone, somewhere, makes obscene sums of money from it. Corporations, indifferent to what is sacred, see the death of the planet as another investment opportunity. They are scurrying to mine the exposed polar waters for the last vestiges of oil, gas, minerals and fish. And since the corporations dictate our relationship to the ecosystem on which we depend for life, the chances of our survival look bleaker and bleaker. The final phase of 5,000 years of settled human activity ends with collective insanity.
“All my means are sane,” Captain Ahab says of his suicidal pursuit of Moby-Dick, “my motive and my object mad.”
The ocean floor off the coast of Maine, which this summer has seen a staggering five-degree rise in water temperature, is now covered in crustaceans—lobsters and crabs—that no longer have any predators. The fish stocks have been killed for profit. This crustacean monoculture carries with it the fragility of all monocultures, a fragility that corn farmers in the Midwest also have experienced. Lobsters provide 80 percent of Maine’s seafood income. But how much longer will they last? When a diverse and intricately balanced biosystem is wiped out, what future is there? After you dismantle nature and throw away the parts, what happens when you desperately need to put them back together? And even if you can nurture back to life the fish stocks decimated by the commercial fleets, as valiant organizations such as the Penobscot East Resource Center are attempting to do, what happens when sea temperatures and acidity levels continue to rise amid global warming, dooming most life in the oceans?
The warmer water this year caused lobsters to shed six weeks earlier than usual. What happened to the sea further south is now happening off New England. Long Island Sound, two decades ago, had an abundance of lobsters. Then as the water heated up they disappeared. They fell prey to parasite infestations and shell disease, and the survivors migrated to colder water.
All natural resources are being exploited until exhaustion. They will diminish and soon vanish. Droughts are affecting forests in the Northeast as well as the Northwest. The wintertime die-off of pine beetles and other pests—a reduction vital for the health of the forests—is no longer happening as the planet steadily warms. The traditional hardwoods of the northern forests and the great conifer trees are dying. They are being replaced by oak-hickory forests, dooming the biodiversity, eradicating the habitat of a variety of songbirds and other wildlife and ending the maple syrup industry. Maple syrup was produced a few decades ago in Connecticut and Massachusetts. As a child I would hike in snowshoes to the farmers’ sheds deep in the woods containing vats of boiling syrup. We would pour syrup on the blanket of snow outside to make brittle winter candy. But production in the southern New England states has been largely extinguished and shifted to northern Maine and Canada. These are the small natural indicators that something is terribly wrong.
The daily loss of Arctic sea ice this summer is the most severe on record. The amount of sea ice has fallen by 40 percent since satellite tracking began in the late 1970s. The complete disappearance of summer Arctic sea ice may be no more than a decade or two away. And with the disappearance of the summer ice, our planet’s weather patterns will become dominated by freakishly powerful and sudden storms and other violent natural disturbances. Droughts will devastate some parts of the Earth, and in others there will be unrelenting rainfall. It will be a world of extremes. Hurricanes. Tornadoes. Floods. Dust bowls. Fire and water.
Our political leaders, Democrat and Republican, are complicit in our demise. Our political system, like that in the declining days of ancient Rome, is one of legalized bribery. Politicians, including Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, serve the demented ends of corporations that will, until the final flicker of life, attempt to profit from our death spiral. Civil disobedience, including the recent decision by Greenpeace activists to chain themselves to a Gazprom supply vessel and obstruct a Russian oil rig, is the only meaningful form of resistance. Voting is useless. But while I support these heroic acts of resistance, I increasingly fear they may have little effect. This does not mean we should not resist. Resistance is a moral imperative. We cannot use the word “hope” if we do not fight back. But the corporations will employ deadly force to protect their drive to extract the last bit of profit from life. We can expect only mounting hostility from the corporate state. Its internal and external security apparatus, as the heedless exploitation and its fatal consequences become more apparent, will seek to silence and crush all dissidents. Corporations care nothing for democracy, the rule of law, human rights or the sanctity of life. They are determined to be the last predator standing. And then they too will be snuffed out. Unrestrained hubris always leads to self-immolation.
AP/Biswaranjan Rout
A village boy leads his goat across a parched pond on the outskirts of the eastern Indian city of Bhubaneswa
……. this essay is only the start of the ‘assault’. Remember Pres. Obama said the War in Iraq was ‘won’. Americans now use smart’ bombs. These bombs explode in undergroud bunkers. They ‘slice-through’ rocks, concrete, etc. How? They’ve got a coating of nuclear powder on their warhead. They not only cut-through walls, but contaminate the ground ….FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS! People using this technology (US-military) should be tried as war-criminals!
Have no fear John. All the global warming in the world will not stop the hands of time and time heals all wounds.
I had never heard the term nuclear powder though. How does nuclear powder bury bunker busters? Are you saying that there is some sort of nuclear reaction occurring outside of the bomb itself and causing heat that allows the bombs to burn there way through the earth and penetrate deeper into the earth?
Publicly, they should be ready to be engaged by either the MSM or the Democrats. The debates are only a short time away. They should be able to express how offensive the other side’s remarks are. Be calm, patient, and articulate in responding to the other side’s comments but don’t be afraid to show some passion and to be offended by their desire to request your complicity in killing babies. The GOP should always remember that the pro-choice side wants your signature/approval so that they can say that you agreed to the deaths of the preborn.
Privately, and in negotiations over legislation with the Democrats, the GOP should always be bringing up their concerns for the preborn - the prolife position helps to bring perspective to all of the other issues.
With all that said, I think it is time to bring up the Personhood Amendment and try to use this time to get either a mandate from the American public or to get as many Americans as possible on aboard with this effort. Anything else is too cautious and a wasted opportunity.
Just an “aside”. The person in the clip that I’m seeing is NOT RuPaul. That may be RuPaul’s SHOW that the clip is from, but RuPaul is black. This person is white.
Hi ts,
Maybe …. I’m not familiar with HOW this technology works (just that it DOES work), & only that nuclear contamination is widespread. It makes Chernoble look like a playground! Why no reporting?
In fairness, that “dead to me” gif got a pretty high (for Feministing) comment count, mostly from people saying that they disagreed with it.
I’ve never seen such agreement here! With a couple of attempts at derailment, there seems to be a definite consensus that Mitt should just stay on message with jobs, etc., and let the Dems self identify as the party of free abortions! That’s distasteful to many independents and even some lukewarm pro-choices. Yuck!
John, I have heard of them using ‘uranium’ tips (to harden the tip) and that the uranium they use is radiocative. But that is not the same as nuclear.
Hi ts,
Heard the same thing! Then slapped my head …. I had never heard of ANY uranium being radiation-free! … (trained scientist) stupid, stupid ME!
An interesting question, and there are compelling arguments to be made on both sides. Personally though, I think that the GOP should engage more on abortion. From the bully pulpit, a gifted, intelligent speaker like Clinton or Obama can sing about how abortion is a difficult decision that should be “safe, legal, and rare”. This resonates well with the public, unless someone else uses their own platform to challenge it. The long debate over partial-birth abortion did this well. For the first time, many people were forced to confront the gruesome reality of what this abortion actually does and reconsider their position on all abortions (even much earlier ones). The result was a significant, permanent shift in public opinion. Pro-life politicians never could have accomplished this by sitting around and secretly hoping for Roe v. Wade to be overturned. If there’s no significant public demand for outlawing abortion and moderate supporters of legal abortion become prominent in the GOP, then the party platform will change to become neutral or favourable toward the status quo. This would be detrimental to the pro-life cause.
One of the least true sayings is that it’s always darkest before the dawn. It’s actually gradually getting brighter and brighter. Our time will come.
John, don’t fall for environmentalists being the great defenders of life, and evil corporations as the great villains. It is we who are our own worst enemies. When we can’t defend our most defenceless from ourselves, it’s foolsh to point fingers at other entities in a conspiratorial way.
Here is a very true saying: “Life means change.”
Thanx Hans (I think),
I do have this problem though about whether the glass is half-empty or half-full. I tend very much to the ŕll-empty`side. Since I am also severally disabled, I tend to take pro-life seriously. Re. abortion, we have been talking-FAILURES (for the most part). Our strategies have not helped PC to embrace and live a fuller life … we just bitch and COMPLAIN about them … (as if they are so different than us). I`ve still `nowhere to lay-my-head`. Do I…
This reminds me of the reasons drag queens have historically been stigmatized. A man dressed as a woman may be feminine and glamorous.
But he can’t get pregnant.
That means he never risks a pregnancy that a woman might reject — and abort.
But neither can he perform the extraordinarily valuable function of carrying and giving birth to a baby.
He gets the glitz of femininity with neither the risks nor the deepest purpose.
The young women at Feministing are awesome!!! But when you folks gain power, you can send them to re-education camp where they will learn to be happy handmaidens whose goal in life is happily reproduced!!!!! And if not the re-education camps, you can bring back that good, ole Inquisition!!!!! That ‘ill teach em!!!!
“With all that said, I think it is time to bring up the Personhood Amendment and try to use this time to get either a mandate from the American public or to get as many Americans as possible on aboard with this effort.”
Right, like in Mississippi and Colorado – ROFLMAO!!!
CC, how long did it take for abortion to become legal? How many attempts (and court cases) at making abortion legal did it take?
You can laugh, but I know you don’t think it is funny.
“Hillary Clinton said: “We can all recognize that abortion in many ways represents a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women.””
Hillary is obviously not proabortion enough. She needs to be sent to a Feministing Hate Camp where she learns to properly hate unborn children.
Yet another video dedicated to CC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrWxPUSJoeg
I think the challenge we face in trying to engage is that most people will hear us filtered through a hostile media which will censor us, take statements out of context to make them sound negative, etc. We need to engage, but we need to find ways to get the message out to people without the hostile filter.
Excellent point Tim.
Tim, with word of e-mail (mouth), the internet, FOX news, and the radio do you think the prolife movement has a better chance at getting its message out more effectively than before?
There is one idea that I would like the GOP to promote and put in their platform – it is an educational piece. I would like the GOP to require schools to include as part of the curriculum for all ages a course on building a civil and decent society through individuals and private institutions and not through government programs. A course that explains that government programs, though they are able to be good, should be the last resort to solving a problem because they are typically more costly and less effective at solving the problem at hand. A course that explains government programs promote dependency and lack citizen input and feedback. This course should also talk about civic morality/obedience/responsibility and not just civil disobedience.
I think with those other outlets we do have ways to get the message out without the filter. I think the difficulty, if I can use a radio/TV analogy, is that we are broadcasting, but not enough people are tuned to our station and hearing our message. However, look at all the radio and TV formats that used to be niche markets and now enjoy wide popularity. We have to keep putting the message out, and word of mouth is a big help in expanding the audience.
Tyler 5:14: Well said, but be careful about how you express this. There are some things that government is insanely better at than any private interest could be. One courts mistrust to generalize that “government programs, though they are able to be good, should be the last resort to solving a problem because they are typically more costly and less effective at solving the problem at hand.” When government sticks with what it does best, to the contrary — government is typically less costly and more effective.
The issue is that government hasn’t stuck to what it does best, and thus has become more costly and less effective.
You’re absolutely right, though, that the value of mediating institutions has been insanely ignored in the schools. Another issue: the word “public” has come to be associated entirely with “government” — which is utterly mad.
While I’m inclined to agree with rasqual (as usual), I’m also of a mind to caution trusting entirely the government to things of their typical forte without explicit oversight. For instance: the DOD. They ARE rather good at maintaining the safety of the nation, however, from my experience with them, they need a huge overhaul in their methods and means. Not everyone who gets a DOD contract should. The DOD actually practices waste as if it were their end goal rather than national defense. I just like to remind people that trusting the government for just about ANYTHING we should and do is foolish if we don’t make an effort to check up on them as they do so.
Drag queens are beautiful, glamorous and feminine.
Uh, no, they aren’t. They look like men trying to look loike women. RuPaul does not look like a woman, he looks rather ridiculous, but it isn’t politically correct to say so.