Yet another move to Diet Republican

[illusionofjoy]

If you can't stomach regular Republican, why not try Diet Republican (formerly known as Democratic)? Despite a platform stating the a woman's right to choose shall not be impeded, the Democratic Party seems content to run plenty of anti-choice candidates to fill the seats of Congress. Excerpted from an article in the New York Times:

[A] dozen anti-abortion Democratic challengers [have been] recruited to run for the House this year and has aggressively supported with millions of dollars and other resources in culturally conservative districts long unfriendly to the party.

That is the highest number of anti-abortion candidates the party has fielded in recent memory to run either for open seats or against Republican challengers, according to party strategists and a leading anti-abortion organization. It is a strategy that that has received little attention in an election year dominated nationally by a grim economic picture and an unpopular president.

But Democratic Party strategists contend that in Congressional races, in which local sensibilities and attitudes often play as a big a role as national trends, candidates like Mr. Bright could potentially deprive Republicans of the one realm where they have enjoyed a significant advantage: social issues.

The Democratic effort to seek out candidates like Mr. Bright has not been without tensions, given the party’s reliance on abortion rights groups for fund-raising and get-out-the-vote efforts. And there is the fundamental reality that the Democratic Party’s platform explicitly embraces abortion rights.

Kelli Conlin, the president of the National Institute for Reproductive Health, called the recruitment strategy misguided, saying that surveys conducted by her organization showed that even some Republicans express support for abortion rights when her group described the consequences of outlawing the procedure.

“The movement to recruit anti-choice candidates ignores the larger reality that this is a pro-choice nation,” she said. “It misses the larger point.” (Polls show a divided nation on the issue: A 2008 CNN-Opinion Research poll found that 53 percent of Americans characterized themselves as “pro-choice,” versus 44 as “pro-life;” a 2007 poll by the same organization showed the numbers reversed, 45-50.)

In 2006, I held my nose and voted for anti-choice Democrat Bob Casey Jr. to replace the reprehensible Rick Santorum, representing Pennsylvania in the Senate. While I would never want Santorum or anyone like him back, I have been watching Casey and, frankly, I am unimpressed. Casey would endorse Barack Obama during the Democratic Primary, showing that he was out of touch with a state which gave a nine point win to Hillary Clinton.

Perhaps Casey's endorsement and stance on reproductive rights make him an Obama a perfect fit for each other, connecting the running of anti-choice Democrats in traditionally Republican territory to the Obama camp's "win at any cost" mantra. While the Obama camp seems to thinks that the ends will justify the means (the ends apparently being victory while we old-school FDR Liberals wonder "where's our fucking pony?"), and while I pray for a Democratic supermajority in Congress while I simultaneously pray for a McCain victory, I wonder...

What mandate will these anti-choice Democrats think they'll have over our reproductive rights? And that thought scares me far more than any mad rants you could throw at me regarding Sarah Palin's positions on the subject.

Comments

[shimmer-star.livejournal.com]

i was just thinking about the plethora of anti-choice democrats running in PA after peeking at the planned parenthood voters guide. i hate, hate, hate the fact that dems are 99% anti-choice in PA. wtf? seriously! this is why i'm kinda happy that arlen specter won another term two years ago - at least he's pro-choice, though a republican.