Now this is amusing. Blake Masters, the Republican candidate for Senate in Arizona, is frantically scrubbing his web site of references to his position on abortion. He was all for a "fetal personhood" amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would define a fetus as a human being and abortion as murder. Now it seems, he supports a ban on, in his own words, "very late term and partial birth abortion."
In fact, Republican candidates all over the country are trying to hide from the issue, and Democratic candidates are taking advantage. According to recent polling, there are only 10 states where a majority -- in most cases a bare majority -- supports outlawing abortion, and even that may have changed now that the reality of what it means is becoming apparent.
The fact is the religious fanatics who have taken over the Republican party have long had a highly disproportionate influence on politics and policy -- they are a small minority of the public. I have discussed the reasons for this before -- it's pretty basic poli sci. I believe that many of the states that have moved quickly to impose draconian limits on reproductive health care will see those actions reversed in the coming year, as the public sees the results and makes their outrage apparent at the ballot box. I think we'll see the same with gun safety regulation, perhaps to a lesser degree.
I don't usually like to make predictions, but obviously I'm not the only person who's seeing this -- the Republican candidates seem to agree with me.
1 comment:
Of course, usually crazy people don't know they're crazy. What we're seeing here is frenetic scramble among those politicians who are only craven cynics to distance themselves from their crazy constituents.
I do see "anti-abortionism" in the same light as racism and other hatreds: It is a form of mental illness in which the participant has completely abdicated responsibility for their lives, allowing all their energy to be subsumed by a cause that was never authentically theirs.
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