eating sacred cows

And so it goes, with the resignation of Sandra Day O'Connor the world is starting to talk about how the Democrats will or should stop defending any aspect of Roe v Wade/abortion because it's the reason Democrats don't win elections. Yes, according to that Braniac David Brooks, politics is bad because of abortion and the liberals, unlike the Republicans, have "lost touch with the working class".

Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks argued that 'unless Roe v Wade is overturned, politics will never get better'. Liberals, he believes, have lost touch with working-class Americans because they rely on the courts to impose their views and have never had to debate 'values' with those voters.

Brooks seems to conventiently ignore that the American public has consistently supported Roe and, by greater than a 2:1 margin Americans would prefer a SCotUS nominee who would uphold Roe. This despite a campaign of misinformation by the right that, obfuscates the the facts of Roe v. Wade mispresenting it as legalizing all abortion under any circumstances without restriction.

Even adamant pro-choicers are calling a retreat due to the ugliness of the issue

In the Atlantic Monthly, avowed pro-choicer Benjamin Wittes advised abortion-rights supporters to 'let Roe die'. Commitment to it, he wrote, 'has been deeply unhealthy for American democracy'. The battle over Supreme Court nominees is likely to become 'an ugly spectacle in which a single narrow issue pushes to the sidelines discussion of a broad array of other important legal questions' and liberals should have faith in the pro-choice majority.

Mind you, we hear the same thing about tossing the "gay rights" support aside as well because it's an election loser. So when is that we should stand our ground? When they come for the Jews, Muslims and atheists? Nah, they're minority/fringe issue election losers too. If only more of those immigrants would become citizens so they could vote for us, then maybe we could have support brown people - screw 'em, they can't help us win an election. . .

The "religious right" has waited for this a long time, they've purchased their power and they plan on using it to its fullest extent

The prospect of a new Supreme Court vacancy has accelerated this campaign. With the blessings of the Bush White House, a team of conservative leaders self-dubbed "the four horsemen" formed in 2002 and has taken over much of the planning for the nomination fight.

These men are C. Boyden Gray, an establishment lawyer who chairs the Committee for Justice; Jay Alan Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice; Leonard A. Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society; and Edwin A. Meese III, attorney general during part of the Reagan administration.

Gray, in an interview, described a battle plan over two years in the making. The Federalist Society will provide research in support of the nominee. A group called Progress for America, which backed the reelection of Bush in 2004, will spend as much as $18 million on radio and television backing Bush's nominee; and the recently created Judicial Confirmation Network, run by a former Bush campaign coalitions director, is setting up a grass-roots network in the states of six key senators.

[snip]

The first goal of the conservatives' newfound organizational power is to pressure Bush to nominate an ideologically acceptable judicial candidate. Perkins said Bush "has committed to nominate justices like Scalia and Thomas." Rush Limbaugh, in his radio broadcast, warned that there "is no longer any room" for a "stealth" nominee without a proven conservative record.

We've all seen the America Dobson, Falwell, the Christian Coalition plan to impose on us. They've ordained the United States as a conservative Christian country with a right to use taxpayer money to proselytize and impose their state religion on non-adherents - even in the privacy of our own homes (common folk have no right to privacy, that was inappropriately granted by a liberal court); they've redefined abortion to include contraception and are willing to support interference in medical care of women because women may have sex without the expressed permission of the religious patriarchy); interjecting their own views as to who is alive/must be kept alive or not vis a vis inconsistent application of medical futility (probably diagnosed via videotape), and have already started proposing legislation aimed at interfering in doctrinal decisions of other denominations/religions.

Contrary to what Brooks & Wittes write, Democracy/American Politics isn't bad because of abortion; it's bad because a a political stream has narrowed the focus of most (if not all) elections to this issue in order to get single issue voter to ignore all other issues (the single issue abortion campaign is not a hallmark of the liberal parties). In other words, the religious right created a political issue out of the personal/medical issues of sex, reproduction and abortion. It worked for them, despite attempts at the left to discuss/debate other issues, and there's no way the Fundagelicals are going to stop beating this horse until they've achived their goal.

As I stated in my comments to Amanda, liberals/progressives/moderates need to get the word out that this isn't just about abortion, it's about the right-wing plan for control and domination under the auspices of protecting their religion from rejection by non-adherents. It's about time the Democrats grow a spine and start doing some "re-framing" of their own. The battle is about civil rights, dignity, privacy & right to self determination (this includes, but is not limited to, the right to make our own sexual, reproductive and medical decisions). Too many people voted against themselves and their families in voting for Bush, they're feeling that burn. Show them what else they stand to lose as a result of their vote last November and they may finally do something to correct their mistake.

Tags: Supreme Court; Politics; Religion; civil rights;abortion; reproductive rights; freedom of religion

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