Clarence Thomas Mentee: “No One Would Notice If Roe V. Wade Were Overturned”
Wendy Long, a conservative judicial activist challenging Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) said yesterday that no one would miss Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized abortion, if it were overturned. Long clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and served as a counsel for the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network, but is perhaps best known for spearheading several inaccurate race baiting attacksagainst Justice Sonia Sotomayor during her confirmation process.
Long made the abortion comment to Capital New York’s Reid Pillfant at the Manhattan GOP’s annual Lincoln Day Dinner last night:
“I think there is a universal understanding among the legal community that Roe v. Wade was a very flawed legal decision,” she said. “It’s a horrible decision from a constitutional law standpoint, and even liberal law professors will tell you that.
“I believe that the issue of abortion should be left to the people to decide. The Constitution doesn’t mention the word abortion. So I think that’s what it’s really all about. And if Roe v. Wade were overturned tomorrow, nobody would even notice, because the states are legislating their own laws about abortion, completely independent.”
Republican-controlled legislatures are attempting to restrict women’s access to abortion services, but Roe is preventing them from outlawing abortion entirely. Should the precedent be overturned, a lot of women would almost certainly notice as plenty of states would criminalize the procedure.
By: Alex Seitz-Ward, Think Progress, February 24, 2012
Rick Santorum: The GOP’s Unelectable Soul Mate
Could GOP primary voters have finally found their soul mate? In the person of former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, they may have stumbled upon a presidential candidate who can speak their language with a forceful authenticity that simply can’t be programmed into Mitt Romney.
And as if by divine providence, the rise of Santorum coincides with the return of culture war issues—gay marriage, abortion, and, especially, contraception—upon which he has earned his reputation and loyal following among conservatives.
But Santorum’s turn as the not-Romney of the moment and the sudden political shift from jobs to social issues illustrate the perilous political position into which the GOP is charging headlong. It’s a confluence of candidate and issues that can lay bare the cultural gap that has grown between the Republican base and the mainstream of American politics.
Take the birth control flap. When the administration rolled out a new rule requiring, for example, Catholic-related organizations like schools and hospitals to include contraceptive coverage as part of their employees’ health insurance, it was denounced as a disaster even by regular allies of President Obama. The president “utterly botched” the policy, liberal columnist E.J. Dionne said. The rule put the country on the brink of a “religious war” and was a “dissing, in common parlance, of Catholics,” pundit Mark Shields opined. Moderate Democrats like former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine quickly repudiated the mandate.
Republicans sensed an opportunity, and even after the president unveiled a compromise whereby the contraceptives would be paid for by insurance companies rather than the offended institutions, they doubled down. They denounced Obama’s accommodation and pushed legislation allowing employers or insurers to dispense with any health insurance item that pricked their conscience. In this they had the enthusiastic partnership of the bishops of the Catholic Church, who were equally unmoved by the deal.
What they did not have, however, was the support of either the broad electorate or the bishops’ flock, a fact illustrated by the preponderance of recent polling data on the issue. A survey released by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, for example, showed that 56 percent of voters support the birth control benefit, and 53 percent of Catholics do. The same firm later polled the Obama compromise and found that 57 percent of Catholics, including 59 percent of Catholic women, support it. With the compromise, 56 percent of Catholic independents favor the contraception mandate.
These figures are not outliers. Another survey released by the Public Religion Research Institute, found that the pre-compromise rule had the support of 62 percent of women, 58 percent of Catholics, and 51 percent of independents (and 55 percent of Americans overall). The only group in the survey that opposed the rule was white evangelical Protestants, with 38 percent in favor and 56 percent against, raising the question of whether the Catholic bishops are stewarding the right church. A New York Times/CBS News poll last week found that 65 percent of voters support the compromise, including a majority of Catholic voters.
One of the few recent surveys that produced a markedly different result, from Pew, showed that among those who have heard of the rule, opinion is closely divided—hardly the stuff to power the initial pronouncements of Obama’s doom with Catholic voters or to support the GOP going all in on the issue. All these figures help explain why, in the face of fretting that the contraceptive rule was a political blunder, Gallup announced last week that the president’s approval rating among Catholics was statistically unchanged.
But those same polls show Republican voters are, for the most part, strongly opposed to the mandate and to the compromise, which helps explain why the party continues to battle the policy on the Hill and in the campaign, which brings us back to Rick Santorum.
No candidate is better positioned to capitalize on the resurgence of culture war issues (not only birth control, but also California’s ban on gay marriage being struck down, and the Planned Parenthood-Susan G. Komen spat) than Santorum, who made his name in culture skirmishes, most famously comparing homosexuality to bestiality.
He’s been almost as outspoken on birth control. “One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about before is, I think, the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea,” he told the conservative blog Caffeinated Thoughts last October. “Many in the Christian faith have said, ‘Well, that’s okay. Contraception’s okay.’ It’s not okay because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” Here’s a candidate, in other words, who is ready to turn the power of the bully pulpit against … contraception.
He has on other occasions said that he doesn’t think contraception works, that “it’s harmful to women” and “harmful to our society.” More generally, he has denounced the “whole idea of personal autonomy,” and the notion that “government should keep our taxes down and keep regulations low, [but] shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom … shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues.”
That kind of cultural conservative hawkishness might play in a GOP primary, but it’s why so many political observers view Santorum as completely unelectable. Which leaves Romney in a tough position: How does the self-described “severe conservative” attack his rival for being too severely conservative?
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, February 22, 2012
Mitt Romney”s “Anti-Immigrant Extremist” Friends: The Worst Kind Of Company One Could Keep
Mitt Romney’s endorsement sheet is beginning to read like a who’s-who of tough talk, anti-immigrant extremists: Former California Governor Pete Wilson, Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeau, and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the architect of immigration laws in Arizona and Georgia, have all signed on to his campaign. Unfortunately for Romney, these names alone have the potential to embolden the very community they seek to disempower.
Until this week, Romney was boasting the endorsement of Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeau, a co-chair of his Arizona campaign. Babeau came to national attention after starring in John McCain’s 2010 “Complete the Dang Fence” ad, part of McCain’s effort to fend off a right-wing primary challenger. Babeau went on to become a frequenter commentator on Fox News. He’s even running for Congress. Then, last week, the Phoenix New Times revealed that Babeau had maintained a multi-year relationship with a Mexican immigrant who he allegedly threatened with deportation if any details of their relationship were to become public. Babeau swiftly stepped down as co-chair of Romney’s Arizona campaign, leaving some big shoes to fill.
Enter America’s self-proclaimed “Toughest Sheriff,” Joe Arpaio. Sheriff Joe, who the Department of Justice recently accused of systematically profiling and abusing Latinos, is busy lining up presidential hopefuls to kiss his ring. On February 13th, Arpaio took to Twitter to announce that he’d received a call from Republican hopeful Newt Gingrich seeking his endorsement. “Nice surprise and what a gentleman he really is,” Arpaio wrote. Then on February 18th he gave a shout out to yet another suitor, tweeting, ”Big week ahead, I’ll be meeting another presidential candidate.” Arpaio doesn’t exactly have a Midas touch— he’s endorsed the failed campaigns of former U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Hayworth, Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, and Republican drop-out Rick Perry. But polls find that over 30 percent of Republican primary voters are more likely to vote for a candidate if he boasts Arpaio’s endorsement.
Ever the desperate salesman, Mitt Romney continues to trade Latino general election votes for the votes of his primary’s fringe electorate. No one should understand this trade-off better than Pete Wilson, a godfather of the anti-immigrant movement. In 1994, then-Governor Wilson led the fight for Proposition 187, the “Save Our State” initiative, which would have barred undocumented immigrants from access to social services like health care and public education. But then the effort boomeranged: the Republican push for Prop 187 galvanized the state’s Latinos, inspiring drives for naturalization and voter registration and turnout that turned Reagan’s state into a Democratic stronghold. In a general election, Pete Wilson doesn’t have enough fans to offset the potential cost of his endorsement. Ask Meg Whitman. She flaunted Wilson as chairman for her 2010 gubernatorial campaign as a way to build conservative credibility in a tough primary. Then she spent the general election unsuccessfully trying to distance herself from Wilson when he became a liability with Latino and independent voters. That’s of no immediate concern to Romney. Facing a primary that just won’t end, he’ll do what it takes to get some of California’s proportional delegates, no matter the cost.
If Romney’s other endorsements are any indication, there can be no doubt that he’d gladly swap general election Latino votes for 32 percent of Republican primary voters, even in a state where he has no real competition. Democrats are already portraying Romney as having two faces: wooing Latino voters out of one side of his mouth and courting anti-immigrant champions out of the other. In advance of last month’s Florida primary, the Romney campaign aired Spanish-language spots aimed at Hispanic voters, while in South Carolina he touted the endorsement of Kobach. Immigration advocates decried the hypocrisy. The problem is that Romney doesn’t see himself that way because he misunderstands the Latino community. Romney believes that he can call the DREAM Act a “handout” and sell Draconian immigration laws to those of us who are citizens by telling us that they only affect those of us who are not. He claims that he’s pro-legal immigration, just anti-illegal immigration, as though that clarifies the issue. What Romney doesn’t realize is that even those Latinos who are American-born or naturalized citizens often come from mixed-status families, learn in mixed-status classrooms, and live in mixed-status communities. For us, the “undocumented” aren’t anonymous; they are people we know and love. For us, the Wilsons, Babeaus, Arpaios and Kobachs of the world aren’t brave problem solvers. They are simply put, the worst kind of company one could keep.
By: Alicia Menendez, Contributing Writer, NBCLatino, February 21, 2012
“Warning, Warning”: Mitt Romney Is Out of Flops on Abortion
Lots of politicians, and quite a few presidential candidates, have changed their minds on abortion. This is partly because, in its broadest terms, it is a weighty, complex issue with a legitimate case to be made on both sides, even if one side has a stronger case (I’m not talking here about subsidiary issues like parental consent or the despicable laws requiring women to get ultrasounds or anything like that, just the basic question of whether abortion is right or wrong). It’s also because in recent years, both parties have tolerated less and less deviation on the issue, particularly in anyone who wants to be their presidential nominee. There are still a few pro-life Democrats (like Harry Reid) and pro-choice Republicans (like Olympia Snowe), but the days when someone could hope to get on a national ticket without toeing the line on abortion are gone.
So if you’ve been around a while, there’s a chance you held one belief in your early years, but then moved to align with your party later on. This is what happened, for instance, to George H.W. Bush (a great advocate of reproductive rights in his early years as a member of Congress) and Al Gore (who started off his career pro-life). Chances are most people don’t even know that about Bush or Gore, but people sure do know that Mitt Romney changed his views on abortion. Why? A few reasons.
First, it happened very recently—over a period between 2004 and 2005, when he was moving toward his first run for president. Second, there’s lots of video of Romney loudly declaring his pro-choice position and promising to be a vigilant guardian of a woman’s right to choose. Third, he has flipped on a lot of things, so the abortion change fits in with a broader impression of Romney as opportunistic and unprincipled. And finally, Romney has never offered an explanation of why he changed that Republican voters find persuasive.
So today, Will Saletan offers a long, exhaustive story about Romney’s history with abortion, documenting every movement on the issue over Romney’s career, and all the ways (many of them shamelessly dishonest) that he has tried to justify those movements:
When you see the story in its full context, three things become clear. First, this was no flip-flop. Romney is a man with many facets, groping his way through a series of fluid positions on an array of difficult issues. His journey isn’t complete. It never will be. Second, for Romney, abortion was never really a policy question. He didn’t want to change the law. What he wanted to change was his identity. And third, the malleability at Romney’s core is as much about his past as about his future. Again and again, he has struggled to make sense not just of what he should do, but of who he has been. The problem with Romney isn’t that he keeps changing his mind. The problem is that he keeps changing his story.
Saletan paints Romney’s history of changes on abortion like everything else about Romney: careful, methodical, planned, full of rewritings of the past, and utterly devoid of any discernible principle or genuine sentiment.
If he gets elected, though, will Romney be different in any meaningful way from a candidate who had been anti-abortion all his or her life? Let’s look at what he’ll actually do. He’ll instantly reinstate the Mexico City Policy that bans U.S. support for any group that even suggests abortion overseas, pushing that pendulum back to the Republican side. He’ll sign any legislation Congress might come up with restricting reproductive rights. And perhaps most importantly, he’ll appoint to federal courts, and to the Supreme Court, judges who want to overturn Roe v. Wade. If Romney were elected and one of the five justices who currently support Roe (Kennedy, Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan, and Sotomayor) retires or dies, he will absolutely, positively appoint a successor who is ready to overturn Roe.
Because he doesn’t have much choice, whatever he believes deep down. He has to dance with the one who brung him, and the Republican party will simply not tolerate anything less. Republicans may fear that he’ll get to the White House and suddenly shift back to being pro-choice, but that simply isn’t going to happen. Try to imagine the category-5 shitstorm that would result if a President Romney nominated someone to the Supreme Court that Republicans felt was a less-than-reliable vote to overturn Roe. If he was in his first term, he’d immediately get primary challengers. If he was in his second term, they’d try to impeach him. Even if most Americans don’t want to overturn Roe, the political cost of another shift for Romney would just be too high. And it’s hard to argue that for him, there’s any other calculation to be made.
By: Paul Waldman, The American Prospect, February 22, 2012
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