Tag Archives: personhood

Can Anyone Explain This?

Rand Paul is fighting in the Senate to give full constitutional rights to fertilized eggs.  Yet at the same time, he’s going to filibuster any gun legislation Harry Reid brings to the Senate floor, legislation that might save the lives of, you know, actual already-born children like those killed in Newtown.

Marco Rubio, fearing that he might be out-maneuvered for 2016, just jumped on the filibuster bandwagon with Paul, along with Ted Cruz and Mike Lee.

GOP’s Attack on Obama Speech Continues Demonization of Romney

The GOP has been attacking Obama’s inauguration speech as partisan.  I actually didn’t think it was particularly partisan, and neither did Newtie, so he and I agree on something, which is kind of creepy.

But what do they think a Romney speech would have been like?  With Obama sitting there, Mittens would have declared that the country repudiated Obamacare and wanted less government spending, especially on social programs and entitlements, and less regulation and lower taxes.  He would have said the country wanted the Ryan budget and privatization of Social Security and Medicare.   He would have said his victory was a repudiation of everything from gay marriage to abortion rights to climate change.  Given the failure to re-elect a sitting president, Mitt’s speech would inevitably have been highly, harshly partisan.

In attacking Obama’s speech, the GOP continues to blame their messenger, not their message, when the country soundly rejected both.  Yes, Mitt was a terrible candidate who personified every negative stereotype and caricature of his party.  But they still don’t get that they surrounded him with embarrassing nut jobs like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, and that they forced him to sell a fringe platform.  They still don’t get that if Mississippi rejected a Personhood Amendment, such an amendment is not mainstream.  On this 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, new polls show that less than a quarter of Americans want it repealed.  It’s the same on immigration and gay rights and the Ryan budget and the environment.

The GOP somehow is still convinced that while we didn’t like their guy, we like their policies.  In attacking Obama’s speech, they fail to accept that we like both him and the sentiments he expressed on Monday.

The GOP didn’t just lose the election, they lost their compass.   They can’t find their way to the middle, the golden mean where the majority of votes will always be found.

 

It’s Interesting…

It’s interesting that on anything related to science (climate change, whether people are born gay, whether a fertilized egg is a person), the GOP  insists on imposing  fundamentalist Christian views on everyone.

But when it comes to economic policy, they have turned to an atheist — Ayn Rand — who preached unregulated capitalism, an unfettered free market that is as extreme to many of us as the GOP’s theocratic policies.

That’s why I don’t understand today’s GOP bravado that Mitt was a lousy candidate, but Paul Ryan will do just great in 2016.  He’s with Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock on abortion, and with Rand on economics.  He’s the personification of what lost last night.

Karl Rove says that this country is still center right.  Even if that’s the case, his party is not center right, it is now far, far right.  As the GOP has moved more to the right, the Dems have not moved equally left, so they are now the more centrist  — and saner-seeming — party.

I would say this is a centrist country, that tilts left or right depending on the issue and how far each party is from the center.  If politics in America is played between the 20-yard lines, the GOP is out in the parking lot, with very few young or female or minority folks at its sad little tailgate party.

 

Dispatches from the Parallel Universe

Here’s Charles Krauthammer from “The Choice” at WaPo:

“An Obama second term means that the movement toward European-style social democracy continues, in part by legislation, in part by executive decree.  The American experiment — the more individualistic, energetic, innovative, risk-taking model of democratic governance — continues to recede, yielding to the supervised life of the entitlement state.

“Every four years we are told that the coming election is the most important of one’s life.  This time it might actually be true.  At stake is the relation between citizen and state, the very nature of the American social contract.”

This is just pure delusion.  In 2008, pundits could make wild claims about who Obama was and what he wanted to do.  But he’s been president for four years, a very moderate and centrist president, one who has frustrated the left of his own party.  We’ve seen him, we’ve lived with him, he is no radical.

By contrast, it is Romney/Ryan who are a true threat to the American social contract with their dramatic shifts of wealth and resources even further upward.  They are the threat to the middle class and those hoping to join it.

And if you want to talk about a “supervised life,” what better example could there be than the government forcing you to have your rapist’s baby?  Romney/Ryan, both supporters of the Personhood Amendment, offer their own sick version of an entitlement state where fertilized eggs are more entitled than those of us who are already here.

 

Akin Staying In

A defiant Todd Akin says he’s staying in his Senate race against Claire McCaskill in Missouri.  I expect he’s furious about the hypocrisy of those in the GOP calling for him to exit.  Some of them might not agree with him that you can’t get pregnant if you’ve been raped, but the result they support is the same — no abortions for rape victims.

A huge headache for Mitt, who has now been forced to say that his administration won’t oppose abortion in case of rape.

Funny, that’s not what the GOP platform has said since 1976.  Funny, that’s not what Paul Ryan has said his whole career (he and Akin are joined at the hip on abortion).  Funny, that’s not what Mitt agreed to when he told Mike Huckabee that he would “absolutely” sign a personhood amendment, which says that a fertilized egg is a human being, an amendment so radical and bizarre that it failed to pass in Mississippi.

This is a flip where Mitt would immediately flop if he won and cave to the base, a temporary pander to try to hold the line on the already huge gender gap.  Good luck with that Mittens, we see right through you, and your little dog Ryan too.

Thank you, Todd Akin, for giving abortion rights the spotlight they deserve in this race.

The GOP and Birth Control

I am fed up with those seeking to minimize the GOP’s sudden focus on birth control in the presidential race.  I reject those who say it doesn’t matter or it’s a silly sideshow.

If there’s truly nothing to see here and we should move on, the party needs to come out forcefully and unequivocally for birth control.  But they won’t because they’re pushing these extreme “personhood” amendments at the state level that would outlaw not just abortion, but hormonal forms of birth control that have long been accepted and used in this country.

All of the Republican presidential candidates have come out in favor of these “personhood” amendments, which means they oppose birth control.

If Rick Santorum chose to say, “My wife and I personally choose not to use birth control,” I would have no problem with that.  But that’s not what he’s saying.  He’s saying, “Contraception is not okay.”  That’s very scary, and we need to take him at his word.

Let’s learn from the 2010 elections.  Everyone thought the Tea Party that elected Republican governors and state legislators stood for smaller government and less spending, that the movement was about economic issues.  But as soon as these people got into office, they focused on social issues, especially abortion.  All of a sudden 80 laws were passed restricting abortion.

The 2012 election should be about the economy, but if they want to make it about social issues, go ahead, make the Democrats’ day.

Everything in Moderation

We think of this country as founded on the principles of the 18th century Enlightenment.  But really, we go back to the 4th century B. C., to Aristotle’s Golden Mean.  Our motto could just as easily be “Everything in moderation” as “In God We Trust” or “E Pluribus Unum.”

We saw this last night when the anti-union law in Ohio didn’t just lose, it lost by 22 points, and when the “personhood” amendment in Mississippi didn’t just lose, it lost by 16 points.  The right-wing extremists in this country are their own worst enemies because they always go too far.  They reject small victories and end up with big losses, thank God.

Besides the Golden Mean, they should study another Greek concept — hubris.