By Dave Andrusko
Cain and Romney during a Republican debate
It never ends, and, in many ways, it never varies, year after year, election after election: warnings from a hostile media that Republicans will rue the day that they ever talked about abortion.
Just to take one of a hundred examples, “Abortion Resurfaces for GOP Field” by the Wall Street Journal’s Elizabeth Williamson. The hub/nub of the argument is that life is complicated for Republican presidential “candidates who have been focused almost entirely on the economy” whenever “one of the most divisive issues in politics come up”:abortion. (By the way, the assumption is that candidates cannot, simply cannot, talk about more than two or three topics during an entire presidential campaign.)
But what does that mean? In one sense the statement is absolutely true. Every time a pro-life Republican states his or her position, a hostile media DOES attempt to figure out some way to demonstrate this will hurt them.
Doesn’t matter that among single-issue voters, the pro-life candidate for President always does better than the pro-abortion candidate. Doesn’t matter that on abortion Barack Obama is the mirror opposite of pro-life President George W. Bush—as hostile to the unborn as Mr. Bush was protective. (Have to keep that under wraps.) And it surely doesn’t matter that, as human beings, the pro-lifer will occasionally misspeak (recognition of human frality is a courtesy extended only to pro-abortion Democrats).
Most of the stories shedding crocodile tears about how the abortion issue is hurting pro-life Republicans have honed in on Herman Cain, who has repeatedly tried to make his pro-life credentials clear after having left himself open to attack in an interview with a hostile questioner, CNN’s Pier Morgan, and former Gov. Mitt Romney, who was once pro-choice but is now strongly pro-life. (Rep. Michele Bachmann had not gone through unscathed but is the recipient of less media hostility since she is not near the top of opinion polls.) The objective?
Well, it’s not a disinterested pursuit of the truth, else there wouldn’t be the gleeful tone when writing about how some other pro-life candidates are hammering Cain and Romney.
NRLC President Carol Tobias reminded the Wall Street Journal that Mr. Cain received a standing ovation at NRLC’s annual convention last summer. She added that the Republican candidates “have all taken strong pro-life positions, and we are comfortable with any of them.”
But that vote of confirmation is completely at odds with the real objective of writers like Williamson: sowing maximum seeds of distrust between our Movement and the pro-life GOP candidates, which is absolutely crucial if President Obama is to be re-elected.
I know you won’t fall for it. Remember: fool me once, shame on you. [Attempt to] fool me twice/thrice/multiple times, fool on me.
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