Campaign Silo: McCain on choice, Obama ad on (g)Reed

Two posts at the Campaign Silo today:

-John McCain was for choice before he was against it. Some liberals mistake John McCain's vacillation for moderation, but Sarah Blustain isn't fooled.

-New Obama ad hits McCain on ties to (g)Reed. New TV spot takes McCain to task for taking Ralph Reed's money.

Comments

[Alon Levy]

I still don't get your argument about McCain and choice. If it were a Democrat who was vacillating on health care or on choice, you wouldn't say he's basically pro-choice; you'd lambast him for selling out a woman's right to choose. Remember how Greenwald bashed Obama for voting once against civil liberties?

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

I'm not saying he's basically pro-choice. I'm saying his rhetoric changes to fit the situation.

If you look at his voting record, he votes like someone who is very comfortable restricting women's reproductive freedom. However, his voting record is not nearly as restrictive as you'd expect from someone who literally believed what McCain said to Rick Warren about every fertilized ovum being a baby with human rights. For example, McCain wouldn't support stem cell research.

I believe John McCain, if he were president, would give the fundies their conservative judges if it's expedient politically--which it probably would be.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

My guess is that McCain is anti-choice the way most American conservatives are anti-choice. They don't really believe that embryos are people with rights. That's just hokum to get the rubes riled up.

Mainstream conservative anti-choicers simply feel more comfortable with the legal system regulating women's bodies than they do when women and their doctors are allowed to make those choices.

My main point in the FDL post was that McCain is vacillating. I'm arguing that voters shouldn't assume that these flip flops indicate a preference for moderate abortion policy. On the contrary, he flip flops because he's willing to do whatever it takes to get elected, including throwing women under the bus.

[Alon Levy]

But most Americans don't want Roe overturned. The mere mention of this judicial precedent increases support for choice by 10-15 percentage points. Appointing a Bork isn't going to endear McCain to the public. Remember that Bush, who has roots in the Evangelical community, ended up appointing two people who refused to sign a concurrence saying Roe was wrongly decided. McCain, who has none, will probably not appoint significantly more conservative people.

The issue of vacillation is different, and there you're right. The Republicans don't give a damn about the issue, with the exception of true Evangelicals like Brownback and Huckabee. The pro-life roots of many mainstream Republicans are very shallow - for example, Bush Sr. was pro-choice until Reagan nominated him as his running mate, when he changed his position to be in line with that of the top of the ticket.

However, that is true for both parties. I haven't seen any evidence that Obama (or most other Democrats) cares deeply about the issue. I haven't seen much evidence that he doesn't, unlike with McCain, but for what it's worth, his appeal to Evangelicals worries me. He's probably going to govern as more pro-choice than McCain, but the difference isn't like between night and day.

When politicians flip-flop so much on an issue, the only differences in terms of what you can expect between that and moderation are predictability, and competence. A principled moderate is more predictable and competent than a flip-flopper. However, with abortion there's no competence component, and even people who seem principled are all over the map when it comes to governing.