Abortion is a litmus test for both parties now. Maybe by 2008 . . . . - Without backing from social conservatives, Rice can't get nominated by GOP.
No End to the Abortion Wars
Condi can’t win the GOP nomination in ’08 without becoming a pro-life convert. Meanwhile, the issue is already simmering as the Senate prepares for battle over Bush’s expected judicial nominees.
By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
March 18, 2005
Condeleezza Rice says she is “mildly pro-choice,” a position that dooms her candidacy for president in the Republican Party. No matter how high her spike heels, it’s too big a reach for her to get the Republican nomination without being strongly pro-life anymore than somebody who is not pro-choice getting the Democratic nod.
It’s a litmus test for both parties. Rice can flirt with running, but unless she’s prepared to do what the senior George Bush did and become a pro-life convert, she’s flirting with ghosts. While senators and governors can cut and paste their position according to political need, the presidency is different.
For the GOP’s base of social conservatives, cultural issues overwhelm economic concerns. The only reason these voters are Republican is because of cultural issues, not tax cuts. Karl Rove understands this. He knows that any departure from the “culture of life” orthodoxy would lose close to a third of the party. With an electorate as polarized as this, no Republican—or Democrat for that matter—will be running away with the presidency in the 2008 election.
Opposition to abortion is a bulwark of the Republican Party. It wasn’t always thus. President Gerald Ford supported federal funding for abortions for poor women until his challenger, Democrat Jimmy Carter, emphasized his personal opposition to abortion and said he opposed using federal money to pay for the procedure. Ford changed his position under political pressure, and in the midst of the presidential campaign in September 1976 he signed the so-called Hyde Amendment (named after its sponsor, Illinois Rep. Henry Hyde) to ban using Medicaid funds for abortion. Almost 30 years later, the ban remains intact.
We need Hollywood to help us imagine a different political scenario. On the NBC drama, “The West Wing,” Alan Alda is running for president as a pro-choice Republican to succeed President Jeb Bartlett, played by Martin Sheen. Alda’s character faces a spirited challenge from the right by one Patrick Butler and his supporters, a takeoff on the ’92 campaign of Pat Buchanan and his "pitchfork brigades." How Alda deals with the pro-life Butler is a major theme of the show. Fleshing out the story line before a recent taping of "The McLaughlin Group," "West Wing" writer Lawrence O’Donnell asked Buchanan if he would accept the second spot on a presidential ticket with a pro-choice Republican. Buchanan’s answer was an unequivocal yes.
Buchanan said he would have no trouble agreeing to disagree on reproductive rights in exchange for the opportunity to influence policy on a range of issues. Yet he doesn’t apply that rationale to supporting a pro-choice Republican whom he might agree with on everything but abortion. He believes Rice is doomed as a presidential candidate because she is mildly pro-choice. Her nomination would spark a third-party movement that would end Republican rule in the White House. Another panelist wondered for the sake of argument whether Rice’s candidacy might pull over enough African-American votes to make up for the defections from the right. That’s the kind of risk Rove won’t want to take.
A pro-choice Republican candidate for president is good box office in Hollywood, but a nonstarter in the real world of GOP politics. It’s not only Rice who gets weeded out. Republicans love Rudy Giuliani as a 9/11 hero, and they’re in awe of Arnold Schwarzenegger, but these supercelebrities would never survive the GOP primaries because they’re wrong on abortion. The power of this issue after 30 years continues unabated, and it is likely to explode in the context of the coming Senate battle over judges. Abortion is at the heart of the judicial controversy with Bush poised to tilt the Supreme Court against Roe v. Wade. When the cancer-stricken Chief Justice William Rehnquist offers his resignation, which could be any time, Bush is likely to move the court’s most conservative jurist, Antonin Scalia, to the top spot. Scalia is openly contemptuous of Roe v. Wade, and the pro-abortion ruling would be put in the cross hairs. Even if Bush loses a Senate vote to elevate Scalia, he would still be on the court, and Bush would have waged the fight that social conservatives demand.
The worst thing that could happen to the Republican Party is for Roe v. Wade to be overturned. It would drive wide open the divisions in the GOP. Most pro-choice Republicans are content to let the issue lie with the hope that the party might someday evolve to a different place. A Scalia court could shock them out of their complacency.
When Rice was interviewed by The Washington Times last week, her press aide nudged one of the participants to ask her about the presidency. Although Rice has said that she doesn’t plan to run, the aide wouldn’t have done that if she wasn’t interested in keeping alive the speculation that she might enter the ’08 race. It adds to her stature. This is a historic moment in American politics, but that’s all it is. Without backing from social conservatives, Rice’s candidacy is over before it can begin.
Condi can’t win the GOP nomination in ’08 without becoming a pro-life convert. Meanwhile, the issue is already simmering as the Senate prepares for battle over Bush’s expected judicial nominees.
By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
March 18, 2005
Condeleezza Rice says she is “mildly pro-choice,” a position that dooms her candidacy for president in the Republican Party. No matter how high her spike heels, it’s too big a reach for her to get the Republican nomination without being strongly pro-life anymore than somebody who is not pro-choice getting the Democratic nod.
It’s a litmus test for both parties. Rice can flirt with running, but unless she’s prepared to do what the senior George Bush did and become a pro-life convert, she’s flirting with ghosts. While senators and governors can cut and paste their position according to political need, the presidency is different.
For the GOP’s base of social conservatives, cultural issues overwhelm economic concerns. The only reason these voters are Republican is because of cultural issues, not tax cuts. Karl Rove understands this. He knows that any departure from the “culture of life” orthodoxy would lose close to a third of the party. With an electorate as polarized as this, no Republican—or Democrat for that matter—will be running away with the presidency in the 2008 election.
Opposition to abortion is a bulwark of the Republican Party. It wasn’t always thus. President Gerald Ford supported federal funding for abortions for poor women until his challenger, Democrat Jimmy Carter, emphasized his personal opposition to abortion and said he opposed using federal money to pay for the procedure. Ford changed his position under political pressure, and in the midst of the presidential campaign in September 1976 he signed the so-called Hyde Amendment (named after its sponsor, Illinois Rep. Henry Hyde) to ban using Medicaid funds for abortion. Almost 30 years later, the ban remains intact.
We need Hollywood to help us imagine a different political scenario. On the NBC drama, “The West Wing,” Alan Alda is running for president as a pro-choice Republican to succeed President Jeb Bartlett, played by Martin Sheen. Alda’s character faces a spirited challenge from the right by one Patrick Butler and his supporters, a takeoff on the ’92 campaign of Pat Buchanan and his "pitchfork brigades." How Alda deals with the pro-life Butler is a major theme of the show. Fleshing out the story line before a recent taping of "The McLaughlin Group," "West Wing" writer Lawrence O’Donnell asked Buchanan if he would accept the second spot on a presidential ticket with a pro-choice Republican. Buchanan’s answer was an unequivocal yes.
Buchanan said he would have no trouble agreeing to disagree on reproductive rights in exchange for the opportunity to influence policy on a range of issues. Yet he doesn’t apply that rationale to supporting a pro-choice Republican whom he might agree with on everything but abortion. He believes Rice is doomed as a presidential candidate because she is mildly pro-choice. Her nomination would spark a third-party movement that would end Republican rule in the White House. Another panelist wondered for the sake of argument whether Rice’s candidacy might pull over enough African-American votes to make up for the defections from the right. That’s the kind of risk Rove won’t want to take.
A pro-choice Republican candidate for president is good box office in Hollywood, but a nonstarter in the real world of GOP politics. It’s not only Rice who gets weeded out. Republicans love Rudy Giuliani as a 9/11 hero, and they’re in awe of Arnold Schwarzenegger, but these supercelebrities would never survive the GOP primaries because they’re wrong on abortion. The power of this issue after 30 years continues unabated, and it is likely to explode in the context of the coming Senate battle over judges. Abortion is at the heart of the judicial controversy with Bush poised to tilt the Supreme Court against Roe v. Wade. When the cancer-stricken Chief Justice William Rehnquist offers his resignation, which could be any time, Bush is likely to move the court’s most conservative jurist, Antonin Scalia, to the top spot. Scalia is openly contemptuous of Roe v. Wade, and the pro-abortion ruling would be put in the cross hairs. Even if Bush loses a Senate vote to elevate Scalia, he would still be on the court, and Bush would have waged the fight that social conservatives demand.
The worst thing that could happen to the Republican Party is for Roe v. Wade to be overturned. It would drive wide open the divisions in the GOP. Most pro-choice Republicans are content to let the issue lie with the hope that the party might someday evolve to a different place. A Scalia court could shock them out of their complacency.
When Rice was interviewed by The Washington Times last week, her press aide nudged one of the participants to ask her about the presidency. Although Rice has said that she doesn’t plan to run, the aide wouldn’t have done that if she wasn’t interested in keeping alive the speculation that she might enter the ’08 race. It adds to her stature. This is a historic moment in American politics, but that’s all it is. Without backing from social conservatives, Rice’s candidacy is over before it can begin.
posted by Sid Cottingham | 3:44 PM
1 Comments:
Agreed. And not just about Rice, but Guiliani and Pataki. Social moderates would never make it through the primary.
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