Anti-Abortion Leaders Size Up G.O.P. Candidates
WASHINGTON, July 29 - After 30 years of political organizing within the Republican Party, the anti-abortion movement has won a series of victories in legislatures and courts and stands tantalizingly close to winning even more. But these are anxious days for the movement.
Six months before the Iowa caucuses, abortion opponents are trying to adjust to a strikingly different political landscape. For the first time in a generation, they face in Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, a front-runner for the Republican nomination who supports abortion rights.
Abortion opponents are dividing their support among several other candidates, including Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and a relatively recent convert to the cause, and Fred D. Thompson, the former senator from Tennessee.
And some strategists and outside analysts are voicing a theory that was once unthinkable in the Republican Party: that a convergence of forces, including the early primaries in moderate states like California, may have diminished the influence of the anti-abortion movement on the Republican nominating process.
Anti-abortion leaders are increasingly moving to defend the seminal victory they won in 1980, the definition of the Republican Party as the “Pro-Life Party” in a plank in its platform and its choice of presidential nominees. Key leaders are signing on with the anti-abortion candidates they see as best able to go the distance. And some of those leaders are warning, bluntly, that the abortion issue is fundamental - not something to be finessed.
At the Republican straw poll in Iowa next month, abortion opponents will circulate a petition calling on the party to reassert its values, honor its platform and choose an anti-abortion nominee. “We have our eye on the goal,” said Kim Lehman, president of the Iowa Right to Life Committee, who said that the overwhelming majority of Iowa caucus-goers oppose abortion. “Our goal is to get a pro-life president, so we can be confident of his position on legislation and confident of his judges.”
James Bopp Jr., an influential conservative lawyer and general counsel to the National Right to Life Committee, said, “For the Republican Party to nominate a pro-choice candidate would be very destructive of the party.” Mr. Bopp, who has signed on as an adviser to the Romney campaign, said that a Republican nominee who supported abortion rights “would essentially be at war with the base, and that would manifest itself in a lot of different ways.”
Richard Land, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, has been touting Mr. Thompson as a compelling combination of electability and social conservatism (although Dr. Land said he does not make endorsements). He is also warning that the party cannot assume it will hold the anti-abortion vote in a general election if it nominates a supporter of abortion rights.
“If there is no difference on that issue, then all of a sudden a lot of other issues start getting oxygen,” Dr. Land said.
Most of the Republican candidates are scrambling to demonstrate both their anti-abortion credentials and their ability to win. Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative stalwart, said she sensed “concerns” at the grass roots about all the candidates at the front of the pack.
“Every day somebody asks me who we’re going to support,” said Mrs. Schlafly, who has attended every Republican convention since 1952 and has been a longtime defender of the party platform’s anti-abortion plank. “I tell them I don’t know. I can’t predict. I just tell them to go out and get elected as delegates to the convention.”
Mr. Romney, who campaigned for years as a supporter of abortion rights in Massachusetts, reversed his stand a little more than two years ago and has worked hard to ease any doubts about his commitment to the anti-abortion cause.
At the National Right to Life Committee’s convention last month in Kansas City, Mr. Romney declared, “I proudly follow a long line of converts - George Herbert Walker Bush, Henry Hyde and Ronald Reagan, to name a few.”
But his commitment is challenged by some, including Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, a longtime anti-abortion champion and rival for the nomination who argued, “He’s flipped on a number of the pro-life issues.”
Mr. Thompson has had to deal with questions in recent weeks about his lobbying work on behalf of a group seeking to ease federal rules on abortion counseling in the early 1990s. Even so, as he said in a video appearance at the Kansas City convention, “on abortion-related votes, I’ve always been 100 percent.”
What many abortion opponents say they crave these days is certainty. Analysts say the Supreme Court could now be just a vote or two away from a major rollback of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision declaring a constitutional right to abortion. But the next president will be crucial. And while President Bush has been given high marks by conservatives for his nominees, the anti-abortion movement has been “disappointed a number of times” in the past, Mrs. Schlafly said.
The stakes are historically high, which explains why Republican candidates including Mr. Giuliani have been promising to appoint to the court “strict constructionists,” widely considered political code for judges with a conservative agenda.
In fact, the anti-abortion movement has so much at stake that some of Mr. Giuliani’s allies make a strikingly counterintuitive case: that abortion opponents should cast their lot with Mr. Giuliani, despite his long support for legalized abortion.
Mr. Giuliani’s allies argue that their candidate is sensitive to the need to reduce abortions, increase adoptions and empower the states to regulate abortion. And the Democrats will inevitably nominate a candidate “who will not be a moderate on those issues, but intensely hostile,” said Representative Pete Sessions, Republican of Texas, who describes himself as both “pro-life” and a Giuliani supporter. Moreover, Mr. Sessions and others argued, Mr. Giuliani can beat the Democrats.
Hadley Arkes, a professor at Amherst College and a leading social conservative legal thinker, said he had recently gotten “feelers” from some in the Giuliani camp. But Mr. Arkes, an opponent of abortion, said he could not fathom a way the party could nominate Mr. Giuliani and remain the same “pro-life” party it has been for 25 years.
“You change the constituency of the party,” Mr. Arkes said - either by showing that anti-abortion voters are not necessary to win, or by showing that anti-abortion voters are willing to subsume their cause to other issues.
Even so, Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, said recent poll analysis suggested that some anti-abortion voters may be willing to consider that possibility.
Jennifer Stockman, co-chairwoman of the Republican Majority for Choice, said she found it “heartening” that “a moderate is doing so well and that so many conservatives believe in him as well.” Her counterparts in the anti-abortion movement said they were confident the party’s anti-abortion tradition would hold and were beginning to mobilize to ensure they were right.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
Can any of the “people” quoted in this article crack 100 on an IQ test ?
It’s like watching the special students perform during school shows…..
except the special students aren’t hate mongering filth who spread evil via a ridiculous ancient book of lies and violent fantasies
Strange that the “pro-life” party is the party that ties the knot, the knot that hangs people that is. The single issue folks are finding themselves way behind on their issue because we have so many other issues much more important. No need to name them we know them.
Bill
p.s. Rich women go to Europe to get abortions daily, but back in USA they are pro-life.
Ron Paul, an obstetrician, is strongly anti-abortion and is a very strong Constitutionalist.
He won the debate on Fox and CNN, according to their own polling (watching Sean Hannity squirm as the results were shown on Fox was priceless!!). It was so bad that CNN had to remove all the pro-Ron Paul posts off it’s website!
Oh, and he’s against our occupation of Iraq.
He seems to be the only true Republican on the ticket who has a sterling voting record and no skeletons in his closet (except perhaps the whole Libertarian thing).
He’s the hottest candidate on the Internet! And he’s luring Democrats! to his side for his strong anti-war position!
Go figure.
I think it interesting that any political candidate should consider the voting record of long dead president when considering whether or not women should legally get reproductive health care over a womens right to determine when she needs health care.
This is an ancient issue…if you really want to impact the rate of abortion then attack poverty and illiteracy. women need more rigts not less.
RE: ANTI-ABORTION-ERS & GIULIANI? ANALYSIS, PREDICTION…
The underlying purpose of so-called pro-lifers has always been axing federally funded social services.
So, if Giuliani is nominated? First, there’ll be ’signs’ on Giuliani’s side - ‘I respect the views of my constituents,’ and the “strict constructionist” SC thing. Then anti-abortion Republicans will endorse him with a song and dance about unity, ‘our side,’ and evil liberals. And then the vast majority on the right - who know exactly what the song and dance is about - will pull the lever for him.
Last? Some stupid-assed Time Magazine analysis of - surprise-surprise - how the ‘culture-war’ right went for him anyway.
Break over abortion? No effin’ way - the article is right on one thing - the stakes for the right are too high to let that issue break them. If Giuliani is not overtly anti-abortion, so much the worse for the issue - it’s outlived its usual usefulness, and right wing leaders will drop it. Sure they’d like to whack Roe-Wade - but, in the meantime, they’ll settle for a leader who’ll pull the plug on federal funding for children w/asthma-
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/30/2863/
Are US citizens dumb enough to select another theocrat-plutocrat to the highest office in the land?
Not one of these necktie wearing hypocrites has the right to say one word about whether or not a woman may choose to have or choose not to have an abortion. Unless their apparent gender is a disguise they must keep their big mouths shut on the subject.
Here is, or should be the ideological litmus test: either you show an earnest respect for life–no war, no capital punishment, advocate for drug rehab over punitive measures, etc and from THERE rhapsodize about being pro life (as per anti abortion)… or else just shut the hell up and leave women’s bodies alone! “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” As if these Neanderthals have a clue about ANY thing sacred, anything that remotely supports life as they clamour for the latest weapon system to USE on living beings, and not once, as in a gross mistake of ill fated proportions, but over and over again, as is the US historical legacy. ENOUGH!!! The world must laugh at this nonsense. It’s like military guys in their pressed uniforms and shiny boots, costumes that belie the “WORK” (OH, SO BLOODY AND DIRTY) that tends to be theirs to do!
Siouxrose…
Damn,
There you have it.
Siouxrose…
well said…
“. . .in Iowa next month, abortion opponents will circulate a petition calling on the party to reassert its values, honor its platform, choose an anti-abortion nominee. . .”
oh, yeah, and commit political suicide.
“except the special students aren’t hate mongering filth who spread evil via a ridiculous ancient book of lies and violent fantasies”
well said!
“Are US citizens dumb enough to select another theocrat-plutocrat to the highest office in the land?”
well some of them…YES
“Are US citizens dumb enough to select another theocrat-plutocrat to the highest office in the land?”
Yes, plenty will vote for another one. Remember though, Bush wasn’t legitimately elected either time. Florida hijacked in 2000 by the SC and Ohio was stolen by Republican operatives in 2004.
“Are US citizens dumb enough to select another theocrat-plutocrat to the highest office in the land?” post by ezeflyer.
I am afraid the answer is: YES, ezeflyer. I just read Kurt Vonnegutt’s “Man without a Country” so maybe I am a little more jaded today than usual. Any politician who would restrict a woman’s right to make her own decisions will never get my vote, be they Dem or Repug. I confess I cannot relate to these embryo worshippers.
I disagree with baska (as usual). The anti-choice people are much closer to being single-issue voters than you think, since they feel it is “God’s Law” that is being violated. Except for the rich televangelists, most of the so-called “pro-lifers” are ordinary middle-class bible-thumpers whose devotion to Bush is based not on grand neo-con principles, but on their perception of him as a “righteous, born-again Christian.” My feeling is that they will vote their conscience (religion) rather than accept a Republican nominee who is even as marginally pro-choice as Giuliani, and will vote instead for the candidate of the Constitution Party, which represents ALL of the right-wing Christian values they espouse.
(Note: FYI, according to the Wikipedia, there are approximately 333,000 people who are already registered members of the Constitution Party, which makes it about the same size as the Green Party. Their evaluation of the current GOP candidates, reflecting their disdain for all potential Republican candidates except Ron Paul, can be found at http://www.constitutionparty.com/news_print.php?aid=613. In 2004, according to their website, “The Constitution Party’s vote was up 30 percent, while the combined Nader-Green Party vote declined 83 percent, and the Libertarian vote dropped 2 percent.)
If this sort of split does occur, Republicans will have to deal with a “spoiler” problem much more serious than any the Democrats would have to fear from the Greens (especially since these defectors will come from WITHIN the Republican Party, whereas with the Greens it is not a fair comparison, since the Greens come from a DIFFERENT party whose members generally don’t vote for Democrats anyway, and vice versa–contrary to the popular mythology). If the Christian right splits the Republican vote, the Libertarians get a sizable number of votes from both “traditional” and “fiscal” conservatives, and the progressive, peace-movement crowd refuses to support Hillary Clinton, there may turn out to be a very interesting election next year, from a “third-party” prospective, and I am optimistic about the possibilities.
Maybe the Republicans, as well as the Democrats, should think of pushing for IRV–if only to ensure their own survival.