Today's must-read
By Alexham Posted in Life Issues — Comments (17) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Courtesy of David Limbaugh. Here's a taste:
The GOP social liberal who urges the party leftward in the name of sound strategic analysis is allowing his own policy preferences to skew his thinking. For if he truly understood history or the pulse of the conservative movement that still drives the GOP, he would see the folly of his prescriptions for the party.
Those GOP "moderates" can't seem to get past their own belief that pro-life conservatives are indeed extreme and so assume it will be easy for Democrats to paint them as such in the election. But most Americans are less likely to view those defending innocent life as extreme than those defending its extermination in the name of women's rights. They are less apt to consider the championship of traditional marriage as extreme than forcing society to sanction, even celebrate homosexual unions.
Interestingly, Democrats instinctively understand the awesome power of social conservatives -- they call them values voters. That's why for the last three or four years we've seen stories every other month or so about the Democrats' "new" efforts to woo values voters . . . .
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Today's must-read 17 Comments (0 topical, 17 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Which pro-life candidates are weak on the WOT? Right now there are plenty of candidates to choose from. Why should a pro-life voter compromise that position? They are not hanging everything on that one issue because they do not have to.
More innocent unborn children are killed every year then there are killed in Iraq. To presume abortion unimportant because the GWOT exists is absurd and immoral
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Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.
- Soren Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling
I have looked at the abortion rates from the past and it has been over 1 million defensless children every year since 1975. If we keep the math simple, we as a nation have killed 32 million children. The last check of war dead is 3683, there is no comparison. The Liberal weenies are whining about 3700 military and not saying boo about the 32 million children. I must say any death in the war is not welcome and families suffer because of that death. We must put all this in perspective.
Freedom is not Free
Abortion is absolutely the most critical political issue we face today. I take quite the opposite view, that NOT using abortion as a litmus test is extremely short-sighted and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the threat that we face. The greatest threat to this country today is NOT Islamic terrorism but rather the erosion of our rights. What is our most fundamental right? The right to life. If a candidate does not respect the most basic right granted to us by God and codified in our Constitution, he or she will not respect any of our other rights, either.
why a Republican nominee must be pro-life.
Three responses to you post by the time I write this, and none of them will ever vote for a pro-abortion candidate (I would be the fourth if you want to include me), while you have it "the whole abortion issue is pretty far down" as your take on the issue. The pro-lifers pretty much all have this as a litmus test to vote for a candidate, and you can't cut out 20%+ of your base on a single issue.
Gun rights issues work the same way, if you are pro-gun control I won't vote for you no matter how much I like the rest of your positions. So Guiliani loses twice, and it doesn't matter how much back-peddling, back-filling, or flip-flopping he engages in.
I am a generally pro-choice Republican, but I have the utmost respect for the pro-lifers in our party and their beliefs -- in fact, I believe that our pro-lifers are much less extreme than the abortion-at-any-cost-on-demand crowd that dominates the Democratic party. I support abortion rights, but believe that most present restrictions on the practice are acceptable. I also believe that it is a state issue, not a national one, but that's another story.
Back to Limbaugh's critique -- I cannot speak for other Giuliani supporters, but I support Rudy not because I believe the party should move to the center. On the contrary, I want our party to move further to the right, particularly on what I like to call the "Thee Ts" for lack of a better term: Terrorism, Taxes, and Total Spending.
I do not believe that the GOP needs to move to the center on social issues. However, most social issues are so low on my list, I also don't think that the party needs to go litmus-test crazy over particular candidates. My point is, I think Limbaugh is mischaracterizing Giuliani voters if he is suggesting that they want to bring the party to the center. I believe Giuliani is a conservative, in spite of his abortion stance, and support him because of that. For most of us, those social issues on which he is a moderate are simply very low-tier issues. I, for one, would support Rudy if he were ultra pro-life and vehemently anti-gay marriage.
Generally, I think the Republican party's strength today is that it (at least purports to) build itself on ideology and attract diverse coalitions of people to rally around that general ideology. The Democrats do it in the opposite direction -- they try to attract coalitions of people (unions, intellectual academics, minorities, environmentalists, etc.) and build a morphed ideology around those interest groups. I don't want the Republicans to do the same.
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The truth is, the more you tax profits, the more you undermine the American work ethic and the incentive structure that goes along with it. In fact, you demoralize the very system that has made this country great.
In the medium run (10-30 years), gay rights will hurt Rs more than abortion. Polling shows that younger voters are very pro-gay rights and older voters are more traditional. In abortion polling, age is not a factor.
Also, when did being pro-choice become a symbol of "moderate?"
What if we called ever R Senator besides Coburn "moderate" because they support budget-busting porking. Why is abortion the only single issue that costs someone the "conservative" label?
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Bobby Jindal Saves Louisiana
becasue abortion actually directly kills people, and budget busting pork doesn't. There are some that consider you moderate if you comprimise on economic issues and for some people the social issues are the most important.
My impression (and it is only that) is that a solid majority of Redstate posters are pro-life, but are more or less split down the middle on gay rights issues, probably including marriage. Commonly, you see opposition to gay marriage through judicial fiat, but that is not the same thing as opposition to gay rights or even gay marriage.
Adoption by gay couples is pretty contentious, as is allowing gays to openly serve in the military. That being said, I think that if the MA legislature would just get off its rear and pass a civil unions bill and if activists stopped trying to overthrow DOMA then a lot of the controversy over SSM would go away.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
rather, there is wide disagreement about gay rights here on Redstate--no consensus one way or the other. However, on abortion, there is near consensus--posters on this site appear to be overwhelmingly pro-life.
as a reliable leading indicator. If you disagree with me on abortion, chances go up significantly that you also disagree with me about guns, gay rights, law enforcement, the death penalty, the proper roll of the judiciary, the proper size of government, etc. The first three are nearly a 1:1 correlation, the death penalty and the rest are about a 1:0.75 correlation.
That's an interesting theory, but I'm not sure it has any basis in fact. I'm somewhat pro-choice (at least as far as first trimester goes), and I believe pretty strongly in civil unions for gays, but I doubt the correlation on the other topics goes anywhere near as far as you think. I'm against gun control, I believe in strong support for law enforcement, I support the death penalty, I hate judicial activism with a passion (although I'll point out that activism != liberal -- there's been plenty of it, IMHO, on the conservative side as well...), and I believe very strongly in fiscal responsibility and smaller government.
Well, on second thought, maybe you do have a point, since I *don't* know your opinion on all of those topics. But looking at the question from *my* point of view I perceive (rightly or wrongly) a fairly significant chance that if someone is strongly anti-abortion, to the point where they wouldn't even *consider* voting for someone pro-choice, that they will indeed likely disagree with me on fiscal conservative issues, like the size and role of government, taxes, federalism, and the like. Or, perhaps even worse, from my point of view, they could care less about those issues.
>> That's why for the last three or four years we've seen stories every other month or so about the Democrats' "new" efforts to woo values voters . . . .
And that's why so much of Air America's bumper music is country music! Woo the value voters.
Like it or not, pro-life/so-con Republicans can't win statewide in some states, like NJ and California. But those states are the exception rather than the rule, especially when you are toting up only the places where Republicans can win at all on anything but an exceptional basis.
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill
Socially liberal Republicans think the only way a Republican can win an election is if he is pro-abortion, but the las time I checked, every single democratically-elected Republican president has been pro-life (No, Gerald Ford was not elected by the people).
Polls show that most Americans favor at least some restrictions on abortion. Who is out of touch here?
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Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.
- Soren Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling
For me this upcoming election is all about who is gonna be tough on terrorism. The whole abortion issue is pretty far down on my list of important issues right now.
I think it's very short sided for some viewers to immediately count a Republican candidate out just because he happens to be pro-choice.
These are too perilous of times to hang everything on that one issue.
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