Both the NYT opinion pieces for tomorrow deal with religion and Republican attitudes towards science. I’ll tell you now, get it over, that I actually agree with Chunky Bobo here:
Finally, journalists should remember that Republican politicians have usually been far more adept at mobilizing their religious constituents than those constituents have been at claiming any sort of political “dominion.” George W. Bush rallied evangelical voters in 2004 with his support for the Federal Marriage Amendment, and then dropped the gay marriage issue almost completely in his second term. Perry knows how to stroke the egos of Texas preachers, but he was listening to pharmaceutical lobbyists, not religious conservatives, when he signed an executive order mandating S.T.D. vaccinations for Texas teenagers.
Teh Jeebus is a shell game politically, at least at the national level. The biggest issue is reproductive rights and they’ll never overturn Roe v. Wade. If they did, that would be the end of the Republican party as it currently exists, because Republicans would have to fish or cut bait, outlaw abortion everywhere (and lose upper-middle-class pro-choice women) or punt (and lose their stranglehold on anti-choice voters).
On the other hand, reproductive rights is still a winning issue for Republicans in general elections, because a lot of pro-choice voters think reproductive rights are safe, whereas the anti-choicers think that if they get one more Supreme Court justice…
Teh gay is not a winning issues in a general national election anymore. I suspect (I’d have to think/read more to know for sure) being anti-science is mostly a losing proposition in a general national election now. But if Perry wins the Republican nomination partly by being more anti-science than Romney — and I suspect that he will — then one way or another Paul Krugman is probably right:
[T]he odds are that one of these years the world’s greatest nation will find itself ruled by a party that is aggressively anti-science, indeed anti-knowledge.
The anti-science stuff may be half-hearted but when you say things for long enough, you start to believe them. I see the Republican base getting more and more Medieval on all of our asses and I see the media going along with all of it in the interest of fairness and balance.
Jeffro
Where to begin?
Kathleen Parker is weeping, so I wil catch up with y’all in a sec…
Tom Levenson
It’s a race: will the demographic shift that turns the current iteration of the GOP into. a permanent minority party happen before the counter-reformation takes hold?
2012 is seriously important, because we need every quadrennium we can get to ena le the pop. moves already under way time enough to take hold
Keith G
The biggest share of damage will not come from what is done, but from what should be done that isn’t. Our science stagnates a bit, while others progress a bit more.
Robert Waldmann
Douthat lead with his chin. Perry reversed his position on HPV vaccination which is not available in Texas. The example chosen by Douthat shows that Republicans support cervical cancer.
More to the point, it isn’t good enough to have someone who doesn’t systematically decide things just to spite science. Contempt for evidence based reasoning matters to those who hope that sometimes evidence has some effect on policy.
Bush may not have given the dominionists dominion, but he ignored the evidence on
1. Iraq and al Qaeda
2. Iraq and WMD
3. Sectarian hostility in Iraq
4, global warming
5. The association between taxes on the rich and economic growth
6. oh hell just about everything except for HIV and AIDS
Refraining from trying to govern as instructed by Jesus and (mostly) Moses isn’t good enough. Presidents have to be willing to look at facts, to evaluate self declared experts’ claims to expertise and to adapt policy to the world they live in not the world they want.
Perry is clearly unable to do any of this and unwilling to try.
Catsy
I had to check the link to make sure this wasn’t posted in 1999. I can only assume that Krugman meant “other than the anti-science, anti-knowledge party that ruled the nation for eight of the last ten years”.
Corner Stone
@Tom Levenson: Are you umm, drinking heavily?
General Stuck
I think Krugman is right, at least one more winger president with even more pure elemental grade of wingnut than George Bush. I think what we are seeing is something like an alcoholic spiraling toward his personal bottom, but it is a country facing it’s bottom in a series of falling off the ideological and mostly tribal wagon.
All the while locked into self destructive denial that the country is changing toward not just a multicultural one, but one where the white majority will at some point become the minority, or close enough to that to make POTUS Obama a regular thing.
We see it with the hyper voting suppression efforts around the country, and political suicide missions like Kasich and Walker, sent to deliver some knockout punches to traditional democratic institutions and voting bases, such as organized labor in government. And loose talk of secession by someone like Perry. Not to mention xenophobic maniacs like in AZ, and elsewhere around the country.
And on the national governing front, hostage taking by minority wingnuts trying to force an end to, or to sabotage entitlements that are liberals and dems bread and butter political power base.
So what we will see, I suspect, is the country, taking a drink of GOP nuttery, electing a wingnut in hopes this time will be different for the preferred party of the preferred color and cultural identity beyond simply being an American citizen. And knee jerk reactions from groups of white people, like with the tea baggers, demanding even more purity from GOP politicians, to become progressively more radical and nihilistic.
The happy ending is that at some point, enough of the white voting block finally admits the disease and starts to provide the democratic party with the majorities needed to make real change, before it’s too late, which is the unhappy ending.
Lots of moving parts, and a pretty fucked up country, teetering on the edge of a big fall into some kind of quasi like dystopia. I wouldn’t take odds on the happy ending, at least before a lot of crazy and painful shit happens first. But we shall see.
Big Baby DougJ
@Corner Stone:
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Villago Delenda Est
@Keith G:
This, this, this.
If the shitty movie star had not, with supreme contempt for actual conservatism, sabotaged all of Carter’s energy initiatives 30 years ago, we would be in much better shape vis a vis energy independence than we are now.
It’s about opportunity costs, and furthermore, lost opportunity costs. Solutions get more and more expensive as conditions deteriorate.
Mark S.
I’m glad you’re confident about that but I see the Court as one Scalito away from overturning it. Do you honestly think President Perry won’t nominate the most reactionary strict constructionalist he could get away with?
That’s almost certainly true, but we are dealing with psychopaths who were willing to let the US default on its fucking debt rather than eliminate a tax loophole on private jets. They sure as hell don’t think logically, or more than one step ahead.
Big Baby DougJ
@Mark S.:
If he does, it’s the end of the Republican party as it currently exists.
lol
It’s funny you should mention reproductive rights because the right-wing has been enormously successful in restricting them.
Have they repealed Roe Vs Wade? Nope. But they’ve racked up dozens of smaller incremental victories that have, in practical terms, made abortion unavailable in many states.
Most importantly, you’ve never seen a right-winger get primaried for “only” passing a parental notification law or a facility standards that make it impossible to run an abortion clinic.
Contrast and compare to the left on health care where they see anything short of total victory (single payer) to be an utter failure worth kneecapping your allies over.
The right-wing base is smarter than you give them credit for on this count.
The Dangerman
@Corner Stone:
…and, if not, why not?
I’m not pondering demographics right now; my curiosity is what happens when the Right nominates the furthest right candidate since at least 1964 (Romney is road kill; it’s either Perry or Palin, perhaps both on the ticket) and gets their asses handed to them, where do they go in 2016? Ryan? Bush III?
If that doesn’t get you drinkin’, nothin’ will.
Corner Stone
@The Dangerman: Romney will be the R nominee.
Drinks or no drinks.
suzanne
Nope. If you say things for long enough, you get OTHER PEOPLE to believe them. I am under no delusion that all of those people are that stupid.
General Stuck
Well shit, that’s it folks. The blog oracle has called it, so we might as well go home and count our chickens.
fuckwit
Um, where do you get an abortion in Kansas?
I’m waiting.
Where?
Ahem.
Rethug theocrats win, we lose. And chunky Bobo’s wankings are one reason why.
Reproductive choice is NOT safe under theocrats, even if they are corporate-funded theocrats.
The Dangerman
@Corner Stone:
I don’t see the path for him; as I recall (and I could be FOS as well as inebriated), the Right doesn’t have any Super Delegates like the Dems did last time. The party elders might want Romney, but I don’t see the rank and file buying it.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
i don’t think jesus inc. suddenly getting restless,less motivated, or deciding to become less politically homogenous, or having it dawn on them that they are a lesser priority to be satisfied than the energy billionaires, is really something we can count on, or hope for in a general election.
i don’t see where it really matters who is left driving the clown car, or which order they rank gop priority demos, the votes the gop gets will be anti-obama. it is after all, their only recent priority.
sj660
The trouble is people start believing rhetoric and acting on it. Right now it’s mostly just hippie punching. I’m sorry I don’t have enough historical expertise to think of a different example, but it’s something I know about:
In the 19th century, antisemitism as a political issue in Europe was a kind of hippie punching. Jews were blamed for everything just like liberals are now as a sort of shorthand for “all things modern.” People mostly got this. Then you had to be the more extreme antisemite. etc. etc. Then it got real, real fast.
This isn’t to say that antiscientism will end with the mass extermination of liberals (or that it won’t). But I wouldn’t be surprised if it completely destroys public schooling.
Corner Stone
@General Stuck: Well, I would say you should go home and count your chickens, but since you’re an agoraphobic shut in that would be redundant.
suzanne
@The Dangerman:
I agree with you here. He’s not passionate or exciting enough in his temperament. He’s not conservative enough for the teabaggers. And he’s waaaaaay too Mormon for the evangelicals.
I do think Mormonism is a liability for Republican candidates. It’s the Democrats that have less of a problem with it, but the LDS are so eager to discriminate that they overwhelmingly join the party that discriminates against them. Not too smart. Well, they *did* go to BYU.
BigHank53
I’m just going to point out to you that the Tea Party loons and the Dominionists are just fine with blowing up the GOP–if it gets them what they want.
demz taters
If we didn’t count our chickens, how would we know how much health care we can afford?
Corner Stone
@The Dangerman: Enable yourself to enjoy another bowl and allow freedom to ring.
Romney will be the R nominee as surely as Tunch is rotund.
Brian S
@Mark S.: It won’t even take another Scalito. It’ll just take another case. Kennedy is ready to flip given the chance.
Aredubya
@Big Baby DougJ: Nonsense. The GOPers put the Roberts Court together, and have gotten zero electoral blowback. The general public simply doesn’t put 2 + 2 together when rules and rulings come into being that are contrary to what they’d really like. Look at the polling on Citizens United. No, really, look at the polling: http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/brooke-jarvis/citizens-united
Massive majorities for limiting how much corporate money can be spent on elections. Outcry every cycle at the negative campaigning that’s a de facto requirement of CU (since PACs and campaigns can’t coordinate on positive messages for the campaign, they have to go negative against opponents – a feature, not a bug). Notice when that article was published? January 2011, months after the GOP swept into House control.
People simply don’t get it. They can rally up regarding taxes, war, immigration, health care etc., but they do not care enough to dig into the details, see what’s gone on, and penalize the party that put the Roberts Court into place.
General Stuck
@Corner Stone:
Nobody projects like you can, my precious little Huckleberry.
Corner Stone
Kanye is tiny. He’s like Tom Cruise tiny and shit.
Corner Stone
@General Stuck: Any more pictures of your imaginary dog you’d like to share with us?
Corner Stone
Good God!! Miley Cyrus is taller than Shaun White!!
General Stuck
@Corner Stone:
There are people on this blog that claim you have some kind of charm. All I see is a bucket of snot.
Corner Stone
I haven’t actually watched MTV in years. But the last 15 minutes have displayed like nothing else why I stopped.
Corner Stone
@General Stuck: Well President Stuck, you’re not much for higher level thinking.
handy
Right DougJ. Right. Nothing to worry about here. Obama’s got in the bag, what with that “demographic shift” and all.
Comrade Kevin
Five out of the last six comments were by one person. Interestingly, all of them were about pie.
Corner Stone
@Comrade Kevin: So happy you passed elementary arithmetic.
Nylund
I think it used to be the case that GOP candidates played lip service to the anti-science/religious wing of the party just to get votes, but it seems like these days, the peopl getting elected actually believe these things (cf. Bachmann). That is a scary thing.
It’s one thing to feign ignorance to win elections. It’s a whole other thing to win elections as an ignoramus.
The Dangerman
@suzanne:
Kinda bad to lose those two power bases of the party ;-)
From my view from the cheapest of seats, Perry announced, came out with a variety of throat farts, and “his people” flocked TO him and AWAY from Romney (and away from Bachmann, who has little left then cheap stunts like guaranteeing $2 gas; she’s laying in the road with Mitt).
Corner Stone
@Comrade Kevin: Derrrr, my name’s Kevin and I likes me some pie!
soonergrunt
@suzanne: Speaking of morons with a religious hook, Yutsano told me in the last thread about you calling out matoko_idiot/hermione_nolife_teenage_rebel/whatever_the_fuck_shes_calling_herself_to_evade_the_piefilters_this_week and I can’t find it. I’ve gone back about a week but haven’t found it yet.
If you have a link, I could use a laugh.
General Stuck
This is true. And would apply to most cynical GOP politicians who want to keep the status quo on abortion, as they demogogue it for GOP votes, but they won’t have the deciding vote. It looks to me the SCOTUS has largely been on a binge of overturning precedent. And Kennedy is now away from the moderating influence of Sandra Day O’connner.
jwb
@Corner Stone: Agreed that Romney will be the nominee, but I’m quite curious to see how they are going to undercut Perry. I’ve always presumed that Perry is Romney’s top choice for VP, so they’ve got to take him out without kneecapping him.
Yutsano
@demz taters: Win.
@suzanne: Willard got turned down for the prom once already. And he really hasn’t done much to change his positions (except to change his position to reflect his audience) so unless there’s a huge come to Jeebus moment here Mittens goes nowhere.
Joey Maloney
DIsagree.
First, note that the lunatics are currently running the asylum. At the state level, they are repeatedly and aggressively pushing laws that are designed to conflict with RvW and get in front of the Supreme Court. Anyone want to bet on how this court will rule? I can easily see them crafting a decision that doesn’t formally reverse RvW but in practical terms guts it. Hell, that’s already happened to some extent.
Second, the fundies have the same problem with the Republican party as the left-leaning interest groups have with the Dems. Yeah, they shit on them routinely, but where else are they going to go?
In fact, if RvW was overturned I think the anti-choice vote would be if anything more mobilized because 1) the fight would move to the state level where they would have dozens of unequivocal successes which would 2) whip them into a bigger frothing frenzy than ever.
Be careful what you wish for.
Big Baby DougJ
@General Stuck:
I can’t bring myself to say “I wish a motherfucker would overturn Roe v. Wade” because I can’t root for back alley abortions, but as far as eviscerating the Republican party, overturning Roe v. Wade would do it.
You’re probably right, they may be crazy enough to do it anyway.
Corner Stone
@jwb: Perry will take care of that himself. He’s this election’s Fred Thompson with better visuals.
People who think Perry will make it through are fooling themselves.
Big Baby DougJ
@Joey Maloney:
The trouble is this, they’re already maxed out. You get about 20% of voters single issue anti-choice, about 5% single issue pro-choice. So they gain 15% right now on the issue (roughly). There’s nowhere to go but down for them.
They are fucked if Roe v. Wade gets overturned. They can’t compete in suburban Pennsylvania or Ohio or Michigan anymore when it happens. And that’s game over in presidential elections til it works itself out.
The Dangerman
@Big Baby DougJ:
True; not only do they lose Nationally, but a lot of states will race to enact Choice legislation. Then they are fighting yet another states rights issue where they are on the wrong side of history (gay marriage being the other one).
sb
@Corner Stone: Four years ago, I’d agree with you. But now? I’m not so sure. Did the tea party exist four years ago? I think the Repugs have gone full metal wingnut. The majority in the House makes Dennis Hastert look like Abbie Hoffman.
I agree that Perry makes for a lousy nominee. But I’m done predicting what the Repugs are going to do because they’re, you know, nuts.
jwb
@Corner Stone: You’d think. Except given the current crop of candidates, I could see Perry taking this.. No one but the money wing is ever going to warm to Mittens. That may be enough, but it leaves an opening.
General Stuck
@Big Baby DougJ:
There are quite a few single issue anti abortion voters, and especially amongst devout Catholics in the Hispanic community. But I am old enough to remember true stories of botched amateur abortions with young women bleeding out, so there is no political gain that could be even considered by making that again likely.
But I just keep getting these vibes that the wingnut mind borg is entering into some kind of last chance mode for forcing their bullshit on the country in a number of ways. And abortion is near, or at the top of that list.
If the SCOTUS did overturn Roe, we would become a country divided along the lines of abortions allowed and not allowed.
Big Baby DougJ
@Corner Stone:
Don’t be so sure. I thought so too a few months ago. What has happened down here is the winds have changed.
Big Baby DougJ
@General Stuck:
To quote Pat Buchanan, we would have the greater half
sb
Yep. I see them capable of absolutely anything in this next election. I suspect that a lot of the bullshit they peddle? They know it’s bullshit. But they will do anything to further the cause. It’s a means justify the ends thing (look no further than the debt ceiling). Then again, perhaps I’m giving them too much credit. It’s just as likely they really do believe global warming is a hoax, cuts increase revenue, the earth is 10,000 years old, etc., ad nauseam.
The Dangerman
@Big Baby DougJ:
By population? Absolutely.
Number of States? Unlikely.
Jenny
Horseshit.
Just look at how they’ve been erecting restrictions and how they’ve been trying to shut down Planned Parenthood.
eemom
@lol:
you are exactly right.
Folks (read men and Hamsheresque women) who pontificate about Roe v. Wade being overturned and/or the supposed “setback” to women’s rights attendant to the Stupidpak amendment to the ACA have no fucking clue what they’re talking about. The anti-abortion zealotards are doing just splendidly on the state legislative front, well under the radar, quietly rendering it impossible for the vast majority of women to obtain an abortion, restriction by restriction, law by law, state by state…….and none of the fucking loudmouths who profit by waving “women’s issues” flags has jack shit to say about it.
suzanne
@sooner: Are you talking about when I told Four Loko that she was just another boring-ass privileged white girl who disappointed her parents? I’ll go back and look for it tomorrow. LOL.
@Yutsy: Concur. I know the goopers are all about “their turn”, but no one likes Mitt. Some just tolerate him better. And the Mormon thing is a huge-ass problem for him. The evangelicals AND the social justice groups both hate the LDS. Rare to see those two unite on anything.
Mobile site still sucks donkey balls.
soonergrunt
@suzanne:
To quote Yutsano:
Specifically a spoiled rich white girl (I intuited that, just couldn’t spot the actual evidence) from Colorado (which part I’m dying to know the tell, as I lived in Denver as a young kid and went to high school in Grand Junction.
Corner Stone
Let’s throw down a marker. Romney will be the R nominee. I’m taking him against the field.
Who says no?
Yutsano
@suzanne: “Their turn” went out the window after Dubya, since by those rules they should have gone with Walnuts. They tried to go back to that but that was before the teatard crazy really hit hard. They don’t want a President, they want a Great White Hope. Perry will sing that siren song better than Mittens ever could.
@soonergrunt: The Colorado part was a self-confession by the child after she went off on an anti-Mormon rant for several posts. Of course we were all supposed to just bow down to her superior knowledge of the LDS faith based solely on her anecdata.
soonergrunt
@Corner Stone: I don’t think so. I could be wrong, but I think he fades early. He’s too transparently full of shit. Perry will win Iowa and New Hampshire…of course, McCain was pretty transparently full of shit in 2008–not as bad as Romney, but still–and lost Iowa and (I think) New Hampshire and went on to become the nominee.
handy
@Corner Stone:
I’m going with Perry, knowing full well the “obvious choice” a year out isn’t necessarily the right one (Giuliani in ’07). He’s not the brightest guy, but he knows that wingnut G-spot better than Mittster.
Big Baby DougJ
@Corner Stone:
I say “no”.
Big Baby DougJ
@eemom:
Yes, but as a national presidential issue, Republicans gain votes now on it but would lost votes if if Roe v. Wade was overturned. Their craziness works best slightly under the national radar that way.
EDIT: Maybe the “but” is wrong, we may be saying exactly the same thing here.
handy
@soonergrunt:
There are a couple factors I see in Romney’s favor, two that I think also put McCain over the top in ’08. He plays better to independents and he probably has better connections to the country club wing of the party and hence more pull and favors to call within the apparatus.
Still, he’s got a lot ‘splaining to do about all the things he’s on record for saying and doing. Perry just speaks teatard effortlessly. Beside, I think there are a lot more people than are willing to admit they actually LOVED Shrubbie and would vote for him again given the chance.
soonergrunt
@Yutsano: When I was in high school in Grand Junction, 25 miles from the Utah line and more than a few Mormons, the rebellious Mormon kids mostly all said they were going to convert to Judaism as soon as they could and some of the more rebellious even claimed to have become Jewish. Some of them were quite hard core about it. The funny thing is that it allowed them to keep calling the rest of us “gentiles.” Maybe she’s a Mormon. I’m still going to keep looking for it tomorrow after work if you didn’t keep a link.
Thanks!
soonergrunt
@handy:
I’d agree with that.
Corner Stone
@soonergrunt: It’s really not that great a takedown, honestly.
Suzanne calls her a privileged white girl who absorbs a patina of “the other”, etc, et al, ad infinitum.
It’s nothing more than where others have called their shots against her. Didn’t budge her, stop her, hesitate her, cause reflection.
Odie Hugh Manatee
The logical candidate out of those currently stuffed in the clown car is Mittens so I’m going with Parry for the win.
It’s because they’re that crazy. They threw logic out of the window long ago.
Anoniminous
@soonergrunt:
2008 New Hampshire results:
McCain 37%.
Romney 32%.
Huckabee 11%
ETA: You may be thinking of Michigan where Romney beat McCain 39/30.
ruemara
“If” they overturn Roe v Wade? Honey, they don’t need to overturn it, they just have to make it moot. And they’ve done a huge amount of work already in multiple states, undermining a perfectly legal operation. The people who brave all the red tape and offer to provide abortions get to live in fear of the covert terrorists masquerading as Christians. We’re already at a point where you have to be in CA or NY for reasonable access to abortion providers. Americans are just too stupid and ignorant to notice.
Chris
@sj660:
This exactly. And your analogy was spot on.
Antisemitism went through the roof in XIXth century Europe for a number of reasons, but one of them was that traditional elites were losing their power and being forced to live in a world where the will of the masses mattered – and antisemitism was one of the few things that resonated with the masses enough to rally them.
So, they pumped out tons and tons of anti-semetic crap as a XIXth century Southern Strategy (the Czar’s government invented the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; the French Catholic clergy and aristocratic officer corps powered the Dreyfuss Affair; etc, etc).
The trouble is, as you said, that even though it’s all electoral politics to the elites, the rubes believe every word of it. So when they finally lost confidence in the elites and went into politics for themselves (e.g. fascism), and all they “knew” about the world involved Jewish conspiracies and liberal stabs in the back, it was as predictable as hell that something like the Holocaust would result.
Anoniminous
Gallup Poll of 8/24 has:
First Tier, Total: 88%:
Perry 29%
Romney 17%
Paul 13%
Bachmann 10%
Laughingstock, Total: 12%:
Cain 4%
Gingrich 4%
Santorum 3%
Huntsman 1%
Right now Perry is the front-runner but that means not a whit, this early. McCain was polling around 13% at this time, last time.
One interesting thing: if Perry is the nominee his stance on Social Security means he will most likely lose Florida (29 electoral college votes) and there’s no way he can give-up Florida and win the election.
Anoniminous
@Anoniminous:
That’s 69% for the first tier, not 88%. My brain is going & time to pack it in.
Chris
@Nylund:
True, but one of these things can easily turn into the other. People fall for their own cons all the time, and Karl Rove’s supposed statement about how “we create our own reality” is a perfect example of that happening.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Anoniminous:
I look at that list and come up with 81% in the laughingstock tier. Sadly, what isn’t funny is that one of them is going to win the primary.
Kane
Republicans see Obama’s health care reform as a threat to their individual freedom. They even feel imposed upon when Michelle Obama has the audacity to address the issue of childhood obesity and seeks to provide information to families with young children so that they can make healthier eating choices.
And yet, republicans apparently have no problem whatsoever in supporting a presidential candidate who signed an executive order mandating that prior to entering the sixth grade all young girls be vaccinated for sexually transmitted diseases. Go figure.
sb
@Corner Stone: You’re on. Not just because I think you’re wrong but because I like a fun wager every now and again.
If you win, 10 dollar gift certificate to the food establishment of your choice. If I win, same. If you’re looking for a higher bet, sorry–high school teacher’s salaries aren’t that high, no matter what the wingnuts would have you believe.
kay
@eemom:
Agreed. Someone finally said it.
Indiana. I had this fantasy scenario for Indiana. It was just perfect. The assault on Planned Parenthood there was so mean-spirited, so nasty, so practical and immediate and easy to explain, that Indiana would have been the ideal state to really devote 100% of their assets and energy (short term) and make a lot of noise. It’s also close (enough) to Chicago, so even though they probably couldn’t fill a high school gym with pro-choice advocates IN Indiana (because they completely ignore state-level organizing), they could have brought them in from Chicago.
Mitch Daniels was ducking the whole issue. He signed the order on a Friday after COB. He’s a national conservative figure and media love him. It would have been covered, had there been any kind of concerted opposition. and Daniels would have had to defend the law he clearly wanted NOT to talk about. Just the perfect, perfect set-up to really take a stand for national pro-choice groups. Nothing. They missed it.
They held events in Chicago and New York, in deep-blue cities where they’re comfortable, like they always do, and all the action was in Indiana.
Just a huge missed opportunity.
The obsession with federal law and federal legislation on the part of national pro-choice groups is unconscionable at this point, when women are being denied basic health care at the state level.
I think they’re smug and comfortable where they are, in deep-blue cities and DC, and they are simply refusing to actually go where the action is, or, ya know, where the women affected are.
They need a new plan and new leadership. They’re stuck, they’re complacent and they’re WAY too comfortable in DC, and, meanwhile, the states are lurching backwards, and have been for at least ten years.
kay
@eemom:
You could see how Indiana/Planned Parenthood resonated here, on this very site. ABL wrote about it, Tom Levenson wrote about it (many times!) , I wrote about it, Anne Laurie wrote about it.
So what did national pro-choice orgs do with that golden opportunity? They went to court.
Where they always go. Nothing in the legislature, nothing grass roots, just a bunch of lawyers waving paper, and the (usual) insane single-minded reliance on and demands for federal intervention, as a last ditch defense.
They took all that energy and (potential) momentum and closed it up in a courtroom, where it’s almost guaranteed not to be covered by media.
PIGL
@Big Baby DougJ: why? Bush nominated what, 3? without penalty of any kind.
PIGL
@ruemara: what you and eemom said. Terrible but true.
soonergrunt
@kay: The only problem with that is that a LOT of affected women are themselves partners in their own subjugation.
We see it here all the time. The number of women who are fighting to protect their own rights is very small here in Oklahoma compared to the number of women who are working very diligently to severely restrict and eventually repeal those rights.
gnomedad
@handy:
This would make an excellent category tag.
kay
@soonergrunt:
I agree with you (and yours is another point, like eemom’s, that is rarely mentioned) but I think that could change, if some effort were put into a long-term, slow campaign to build support in states. Even the reddest state has a minority who support choice. They vote. They’re out there.
We just can’t rely on courts or Congress or a President to do our work for us. As a practical matter, at the state level, that approach has failed.
In some ways, I think the pro-choice movement suffers from a sort of fatal flaw that was there at the outset and was never addressed. Roe was a legal victory. It wasn’t a legislative or popular victory. That doesn’t have to be determinative or permanent: we could start with Roe and sort of go in reverse, and build state-level and enduring, resilient popular/public support from the top down, but we never really did that.
This right can’t be the exclusive property of lawyers, and the fight can’t be conducted solely in a courtroom. That won’t work. It’s NOT working.
suzanne
@Corner Stone:
Yeah, it really wasn’t. I could have done way better but that would have required firing up the ol’ give-a-shit.
She’s Catholic, BTW. Not Mormon.
Corner Stone
@suzanne:
Not to be dissing you as I thought it was pretty spot on. But it wasn’t epic or anything, just accurate. Everyone knows the score but it doesn’t seem to change anything.
No reason to fire up the give-a-shittanator as Dr. Doofenschmirtz would name it.
Glen Tomkins
Irrepressible Conflict
“…they’ll never overturn Roe v. Wade. If they did, that would be the end of the Republican party as it currently exists, because Republicans would have to fish or cut bait, outlaw abortion everywhere (and lose upper-middle-class pro-choice women) or punt (and lose their stranglehold on anti-choice voters).”
Sadly, you overlook the historical example provided by the practice of states’ rights in this country of how a party can have their cake and eat it too on keeping hate alive.
Their side can absolutely afford to overturn Roe v Wade, because that would not at all end conflict over reproductive rights and wrongs. In a post Roe v Wade world, abortion would not be illegal in the United States. It would only be illegal in Red states, because Roe v Wade federalized the issue, and overturning that decision would only return it to the states.
In Blue states, this would mean that abortions would be safe and legal. In Red states, they would be unsafe and illegal, and, more to the point for the political utility of this issue, abortion would become the source of intensified effort by the God-bothering states to impose their will on the rest of us. They would constantly be passing new laws to test the limits of the federal judiciary’s tolerance of their meddling. There would be no end of their attempts to get their states’ criminal jurisdiction finagled to cover, somehow, the actions of abortion providers in Blue states — which would, of course, be murder in their states. Even as those are, hopefully, swatted down in at least their initial sweeping form, they will also pursue the easier route of extending their civil jurisdiction by way of the current, hopelessly entangled, condition of interstate commerce.
They could have it both ways. They leave their Blue state voters complacent in their continued enjoyment of abortion rights, but get to feed their God-bothering crazies both the actual success at outlawing abortion in the Red states, and an ongoing irrepressible conflict in which they continue to fight abortion providers in Blue states.
Kathy in St. Louis
You forget an even more obvious reason Republicans will never overturn Roe v. Wade. What will their daughters and female staffers do? I mean, other than Palin, who ever heard of a Republican’s daughter having a baby in her teens, and unmarried at that? And if the sweet young things that are summer interns in Washington are all virginal and not being hit on/slept with by the Representatives and their staff, that would be a most unusual situation. Not saying the same thing doesn’t happen with the Dems in office…just saying they aren’t stupid enough to try to claim they want abortion outlawed.
Kathy in St. Louis
@Anoniminous:
And the only one who isn’t totally batshit crazy is Huntsman at 1%…and he’s suspect after shooting his mouth off last week.
Samara Morgan
this is true, but it isnt in the interest of fairness and balance.
its in the interest of selling product, and survival.
even Jake Tapper does it.
Sawgrass Stan
I’m going over to NYT to comment on Krugman’s blog, but anybody remember
“The Republican War on Science” by Chris Mooney– 2005, maybe?
I heard him on Al Franken’s show and it’s pretty much the stuff you remember from Bush II, with more lunatic details plus rebuttals of same from actual scientists. Appointing evangelical pinheads to head departments so that they could countermand the findings and recommendations of the department’s staff, etc., etc., etc. Regardless of what Douthat says (and yes, I concede he has a point,) I don’t see any reason why President Perry’s administration wouldn’t force a climate change-denier TV weatherman into a position of power in the National Weather Service. After all, climate change, like Newton’s theory of gravity and Einstein’s theory of relativity, is “just a theory that’s out there.”
Amazon link– http://www.amazon.com/Republican-War-Science-Chris-Mooney/dp/B000WCNU44/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314631511&sr=1-1