Just another Republican:
ABC News’ Teddy Davis and Rigel Anderson Report: John McCain’s campaign signaled on Wednesday that the Arizona senator is backing away from his previously stated goal of changing the GOP’s platform on abortion.
“There’s a process in place for the delegates to work on the platform and we are going to let that process work itself out,” McCain spokesman Brian Rogers told ABC News.
McCain’s plan to take a hands-off approach with the abortion platform stands in stark contrast with the position he took during his first presidential run.
Back in 2000, McCain clashed with then-Gov. George W. Bush over his unwillingness to change platform language that called for a human life amendment banning all abortions.
McCain implored Bush to join him in wanting to add exceptions for rape, incest, and danger to the life of the mother.
This is, of course, not unlike using Campaign Finance Reform as your signature issue for years, standing around while the media throws garlands and gushing prose at you all the while, then, in the first chance you have to follow the CFR laws you enacted, you game them for all they are worth.
Being a maverick sounds like a lot of fun. It is like a responsibility free zone.
peach flavored shampoo
Just think what a “responsibility-free zone” does when you own the world’s most powerful military.
Even JMM has been very forthcoming with his alarm over such an angry, vindictive person running the US. And he’s not ususally prone to hyperbole.
David
Too bad one doesn’t have to get a permit to be in a responsibility free zone.
Rattlemullet
John Cole do you read these comments?
Do I understand correctly you were once a Republican? If so I would like to hear how you transformed to a more Democratic way of thinking. Can you direct me to any of your blogs that articulate on your move away from the Republicans.
My comment to this article is in most of McCain’s life he probably had only one stand up moment and that is when he chose to stay a POW and this action was most likely motivated by guilt, out of knowing what his fellow POW’s would have thought of him. He has no core principles except for the ones that are core to him at the time he needs them.
John McCain needs to die a YouTube death like George Allen.
rachel
He’s getting pretty old; maybe he forgot what he said before.
Brachiator
McCain is so old, he forgets what he said as he is saying it.
Incertus
Oh, I really hope he does this. This would be almost as good as picking Joe Lieberman as a running mate. It’s absolutely true that the choice position is the more popular one in the US, but McCain can’t win without the 20% or so of fundamentalists who think abortion is murder and won’t vote for someone who doesn’t think that. That’s the deal the Republicans made years ago.
Nicole
Oh lord, not the “except in cases of rape or incest” crap. It seems, to this pro-choicer, that the argument that anti-abortionists make is that abortion is taking an innocent life. Okay, that’s a position. But here’s the thing I can’t figure out- a life conceived because a guy broke into a house and raped a woman, or because a dad slept with his daughter is no less innocent than one conceived because a 17-year-old didn’t have a condom, right? So why are so many people who say they are against abortion okay with it in cases of rape or incest? What’s the difference? The only difference I can see is that in rape, the woman had sex against her will. Which basically says, “If you got pregnant because you were forced to have sex, you don’t have to have the baby, but if you got pregnant because of consensual sex, you have to have the baby.” Which makes the baby a punishment. Which is a really awful position to have about babies.
It’s murder or it’s not, and if you’re willing to tell a husband and wife that she has to bear a child conceived ’cause a guy attacked her in an alley, then at least you’re being consistent when you say an unmarried woman who had a condom break has to bear a child, too.
So, in a way, I give props to the Republican platform for being consistent on this one. “Except in cases of rape or incest” is, in my opinion, even more blatantly anti-woman than saying abortion is wrong in all cases.
cyntax
Oh, one does, and it costs. You just have to hug it out with the guys who slimed you back in 2000, win the rethug nomination in 2008, and if you ever had any principles whatsoever (which is debateable), leave em all at the door to the GOP convention. Other than that, it’s free.
jake
At the risk of starting a big old fight, I have a question:
Under a law that allowed an exception for rape or incest, who would make the call?
I haven’t looked into this because the whole thing seems stupid (partially for reasons Nicole listed), but it seems like it could easily be a pretty dirty trick. “Don’t worry ladies, if you get pregnant because someone forced you to have sex, you can get an abortion. Right after the assailant is apprehended and a jury finds you’ve been the victim of a sex crime.
Heh.”
David Hunt
From what I’ve read, he isn’t gaming CFR laws; he’s outright breaking them. Fortunately for him, the FEC is so broken, they won’t get around to a ruling on that until after the election (if ever).
Zuzu's Petals
I never understood the anti-abortioners’/McCain position that only abortion providers, and not women, should be prosecuted if abortion is outlawed.
Where is the consistency in that? Has the woman not broken the law?
Their argument, of course, is that women are simply victims of the big bad abortion industry.
Which is another way of saying that women – including, e.g., corporate CEOs – are too childlike to understand the choice they are making. Either that or these people are cynics who know that Americans would never stand for seeing their daughters and sisters and wives put in jail for seeking an abortion.
Brachiator
To me, this is worse. CFR is inside-the-Beltway stuff. Abandoning his previous position on the GOP platform in order to win over hard-core fundamentalists is both craven and potentially endangers women’s lives.
It’s neither consistent nor simplistically “anti-woman.” It’s a common sense exception that recognizes the pain and anguish that a woman who is a victim of rape or incest might feel, and the revulsion that she might feel toward an unwanted pregnancy that results from rape or incest.
I am pro-choice, period. But I believe that a platform that would not even consider any exceptions is wrong and vile because it mechanically subjugates women (and men and children) in favor of a pointlessly rigid adherence to principle (which is the typical instinct of the conservative brain).
Mike G
But the media will insist he’s a mavericky maerick of maverickness, “moving to the center” on the abortion issue. They have their story to tell and don’t want to be disturbed by facts under under circumstances.
in most of McCain’s life he probably had only one stand up moment and that is when he chose to stay a POW and this action was most likely motivated by guilt,
Taking early release would have been, in addition to a family disgrace and career-ender, a violation of his military oath subject to court-martial, which states that one will not accept special favors and will accept POW release only by duration-of-confinement seniority (except in cases of severe injury or illness). He also would have had to publicly denounce the US and make a statement that he was well-treated, which he ended up doing anyway under torture.
Not to say that many people in that situation wouldn’t have taken the deal and run, but it wasn’t as magnanimous a decision as he makes it out to be.
Discussed in detail here:
‘Why I Will Not Vote For John McCain’
Doctor Phillip Butler is a 1961 graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a former light-attack carrier pilot. In 1965 he was shot down over North Vietnam where he spent eight years as a prisoner of war. He is a highly decorated combat veteran who was awarded two Silver Stars, two Legion of Merits, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Heart medals.
http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,164859_1,00.html