Friday, July 09, 2004
A Timetable of Republicans and Abortion on Demand and a Devious Question
I thought it was self-evident.
1973: Roe v Wade shocks us all by setting up abortion on demand with no restrictions to speak of
1976: A few years under Ford. Looks the same.
1980: Still the same, but then True Believers (TM) would expect that from the Democrats.
1984: Hmm, surprisingly we still have abortion on demand.
1988: Still have abortion on demand, but hey: America feels good about itself now.
1992: Read my lips: No change.
1996: Safe, legal, but not rare. No change either.
2000: Ditto, but thousands of Floridians were disenfranchised to make the world a safer place to be a fetus.
2004: By chad, no change. Why am I not surprised?
If your sensibility is bothered by the flip way I've addressed the senselessness of legalized abortion, I slightly apologize. Which is more than you'll get from the Republican mainstream. They have no interest in seeing the Democrats extract themselves from their self-imposed hari-kari with sensible Catholic voters. And they have no interest in splitting their party like a wishbone either.
If the One Issue approach is to succeed, I think it's going to take a third party. It's also going to need to be a party with a very wide umbrella to cover both liberals and conservatives. A conservative-only pro-life effort will split the Republicans and open up easy street for the Democrats.
I'm amused by this whole line of thinking. Are conservative pro-life Catholics (and others) committed enough to start reaching out to liberals to get abortion shut down? Or will their conservative sensibilities keep them in the Republican grip? And if they come to the realization that the cause is hopeless there, is it a mortal sin to remain in that bed? What do you think?
