The GOP's Abortion Anxiety - Why GOP Leaders Worry About Pro-Life Wins

Newsweek wonders: "The pro-life movement is on a roll. So why are the Republican Party's top guns suddenly so shy on the subject?"

When South Dakota approved a law sharply restricting abortion last week, many pro-life Republicans around the country sounded a loud hallelujah. But at least one very senior Republican did not seem at all eager to join in the chorus. As Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, flew to Memphis to attend the first gathering of potential GOP presidential candidates for 2008, a NEWSWEEK reporter asked him if he had anything to say about the South Dakota law. "No," he said. Did he plan to make a statement on that topic at the Republican gathering in Memphis? "No" was the answer. Would he ever be willing to comment on the topic, other than to say that it's up to the states to make their own choices on abortion? Again, the answer was "no." The look on his face was more expressive. It appeared to ask, "Are you kidding?"

Why such reticence to embrace glad tidings? After all, the abortion issue has been good to the Republican Party. It has energized Roman Catholic and evangelical grass-roots activists and allowed the GOP to paint pro-choice Democrats as cultural extremists, out of step with Main Street and the heartland. But a recent flurry of activity on abortion is making Republican politicians nervous. With states moving to restrict abortion and the Supreme Court drawing closer to the day when it might actually reverse Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision guaranteeing a woman's right to an abortion, GOP leaders see big political risks.

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Some of the Republicans' most ardent right-to-lifers are not embracing the South Dakota law. "It could backfire," says Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana, if the courts strike it down—a near certainty, since the Supreme Court still lacks the votes to reverse Roe (and Justice John Paul Stevens, widely viewed as the vote that would maintain a 5-4 majority in Roe's favor, does not show signs of slowing down, despite being 85 years old). Virginia Sen. George Allen, a former governor, is firmly anti-abortion. But he told NEWSWEEK that if a similar bill had come through his own state's legislature, he would have vetoed it.

Asked whether he supported the South Dakota law, Sen. John McCain riffled through his mental notecards and said he didn't know the "technical" details of the law. But he said he would support the measure if it were consistent with his long-held view that abortion should be banned except in cases of rape or incest—or to protect, as he put it, the "health" of the mother. His aides had to scramble to correct the record: he meant, they said, the life of the mother. [ED.: What a dumbass!]

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Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, who is vying for the evangelical vote, strongly backed the South Dakota law. "I'd have signed it," he told NEWSWEEK. "Rape and incest are horrible crimes, but why punish the innocent child?" [ED.: I disagree with him on the timing of the South Dakota legislation, but it is becoming clear to me that Sen. Brownback takes his Catholic faith seriously. He may be the man I'll support for President in 2008. I sure won't support McCain or Giuliani.]

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My Comments:
I couldn't give a squirt what Ken Mehlman thinks. His calculus is political. He fears that abortion as an issue will hurt the Republicans at the polls. He's full of it. Abortion as an issue helps the GOP. But beyond that, I'm sick of the political calculus.

Which isn't to say that I think the current push for abortion bans is a good idea or that I think "strategy" should be shunted aside in favor of ideology. I agree with what pro-life Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana says in the article - this could backfire on pro-lifers at this point. As I've said here a number of times, and I've been backed up by Justice Scalia on this, it's too early to challenge Roe until the makeup of the Court changes.

Roe will be overturned when the right case is brought at the right time, and pro-lifers need to be thinking strategically about this. For the time being, it's probably better to chip away at abortion piece by piece than to go for broke with a South Dakota-type ban.