A PRO-CHOICE GOP?
BARNES, FRED
A Pro-Choice GOP? by Fred Barnes IS THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, despite its pro-life platform and rhetoric, becoming operationally prochoice on abortion? Let’s look at some recent evidence. In...
...Clinton’s vetoes have kept a ban from becoming law, yet at the same time there has been a small but measurable shift in public opinion polls against abortion on demand...
...This might change if the party wins the White House in 2000, but even then it might not...
...Not much chance of that...
...Never have more elected officials been pro-life, and you don’t have a pro-abortion wing in the party...
...It helped us immeasurably...
...In Washington, pro-life forces are dispirited, all but certain that any legislative progress they make against abortion on Capitol Hill will be negated by President Clinton...
...Lamar Alexander said on the Fox News Channel that he wants “to move state by state to change the laws and the culture so there will be fewer abortions...
...How would most Republican consultants have their candidates handle abortion...
...Republican congressional leaders are thus less and less inclined to press the issue...
...Did it help us...
...But the NRSC strategists claim Neumann won only pro-life votes he’d have gotten anyway, while igniting a huge turnout in liberal Madison that hurt his candidacy...
...The voting base of the Republican party has never been more pro-life...
...Reporters, monolithically pro-choice, are obsessed with covering Republican spats on abortion...
...That’s the lesson of the struggle to outlaw partial-birth abortions...
...Republican political operatives would love the press to find no abortion story in their party either...
...said Neumann...
...There isn’t a consultant who wants to deal with this issue, because they haven’t found the silver bullet Republican response that works,” says Rick Santorum, the Pennsylvania Republican who’s become the Senate’s leading pro-lifer...
...John Kasich also says he’s prolife, but urges Republicans to lower their voice when talking about it...
...There is nowhere near that level of support in Congress at this time...
...Nothing more...
...Former vice president Dan Quayle assured potential campaign donors in New York that he wouldn’t lead a crusade against abortion...
...Gilmore sought to satisfy pro-lifers without provoking pro-choice voters...
...Now, most of the GOP presidential candidates would like to follow Gilmore’s path...
...And Bush and Quayle are two of the stronger pro-lifers in the presidential field, both favoring, at least nominally, a constitutional amendment banning abortion...
...John McCain of Arizona says he’s opposed to abortion, but he hardly stresses the issue...
...Fred Barnes is executive editor of THEWEEKLY STANDARD...
...On the other hand, there’s this feeling among people at the top level of the party that [opposition to abortion] should be just a formality...
...And since Democratic pro-lifers rarely speak up, there’s no visible dissent for reporters to cover there...
...Elizabeth Dole calls herself pro-life, but Newsweek reported she won’t back a constitutional amendment...
...He didn’t say whether he wanted a complete ban on abortions after 12 weeks or to the overturning of the Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion overturned...
...This is true because it takes two-thirds of both the House and Senate to pass a constitutional amendment and three-fourths of the state legislatures to ratify it,” the NRL said...
...Neumann insisted on airing a statewide TV ad that attacked his Democratic foe, Sen...
...There’s a paradox,” insists Jeffrey Bell, the chief strategist for Gary Bauer’s presidential campaign...
...But he declined to call for reversing Roe v. Wade, which would allow states to ban abortion...
...The way to achieve that, they think, is for all the Republican candidates to shut up on the issue...
...Neumann lost narrowly, but he claimed vindication on the abortion ad...
...Among GOP presidential candidates, opposition to abortion is universal, but few relish discussing the issue...
...His candidate, Bauer, wants to make abortion a high priority...
...Pro-life forces gain only when the issue is raised and debated noisily in public...
...In a national survey in January by the pro-abortion Center for Gender Equality, 53 percent of American women said abortion should be illegal except in cases of rape or incest, or to save the mother’s life...
...Texas governor George W. Bush, the frontrunner, noted disapprovingly the number of questions he’d been asked about abortion at a recent press conference...
...An exit poll found that of the roughly 20 percent of voters whose top issue was abortion, four out of five favored Neumann...
...Many agree with the late Lee Atwater, the Republican national chairman who died in 1991, that any discussion of abortion is harmful to the GOP candidate...
...There isn’t one...
...Bell, of REPORTERS ARE MONOLITHICALLY PRO-CHOICE...
...The leeriness of the political pros prompted a sharp disagreement last fall between Mark Neumann, the GOP candidate for the Senate in Wisconsin, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee...
...Actually, the abortion tilt was measurable...
...Nearly every consultant I’ve talked to in the past several years believes that Republicans should only pay lip service to the pro-life position, and even that as vaguely as possible...
...Oddly enough, the National Right to Life Committee put out a statement last week defending Bush and agreeing that the country isn’t ready for an outright ban...
...And in UCLA’s annual poll of college freshmen, support for legal abortion has dropped from 65 percent in 1990 to 51 percent now...
...Given the prominence in the race of Bauer, Forbes, and Buchanan, don’t bet on it...
...Gilmore’s position seemed to anesthetize the abortion issue, and he was able to focus on cutting the state tax on cars, a Republican issue...
...The way Jim Gilmore did in 1997 in his winning campaign for governor of Virginia...
...Committee strategists argued this would alarm prochoice voters who might otherwise stay home, and that Neumann could arouse pro-life voters more discreetly by direct mail or Christian radio...
...They aren’t willing to wage a serious fight against legal abortion...
...course, has a vested interest in the abortion issue...
...Russ Feingold, for backing partialbirth abortion...
...Against this is an army of Republican political consultants who are always eager to have abortion downplayed...
...When he announced, Bush endorsed keeping a “pro-life tenor” in the Republican party...
...THEY SHOULD GIVE DEMOCRATS’ VIEWS THE SAME SCRUTINY THEY LAVISH ON REPUBLICAN SPATS...
...Pro-lifers who’ve criticized Bush—Bauer is one— should stop and prod the media to “give Al Gore’s and the Democratic party’s position and record on abortion the same attention . . . it does Republican pro-life candidates like George W. Bush,” the NRL statement said...
...A legislative effort like the one Bush proposes “to save the lives we can in the meantime, such as banning partial birth abortions and required parental notification before abortions are performed on minors, is entirely appropriate,” said NRL’s Carol Long Tobias...
...His view was that abortion should be legal in the first 8 to 12 weeks...
...Then, when criticized, he renewed his support for a constitutional ban—but not now, because the country isn’t ready for that...
...I won’t support late term abortion,” he said, but added: “No one’s going to ban abortions...
...So for now, the answer to the question is, yes, Republicans are operationally pro-choice...
Vol. 4 • March 1999 • No. 27
