"...The (Republican) party asserts that one of America's most common surgical procedures is murder. So, last year, perhaps a million women and their doctors committed murder. However much a person deplores abortion and embraces that legal logic, nobody believes that either the legislation or the constitutional amendment that Republican platforms have praised will be passed. Hence the sterility of today's abortion debate. And hence the inclination of some social conservatives to focus on limiting abortion by changing the culture, and their willingness to evaluate candidates by criteria unrelated to abortion.
Writing in The New Republic, Thomas B. Edsall notes that in the late 1980s voters by a 51-42 margin believed that "school boards ought to have the right to fire teachers who are known homosexuals." Today voters disagree, 66-28. In 1987, voters were evenly divided on the question whether "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behavior." Today voters disagree, 72-23.
Recent Pew polling shows that a combined 48 percent of Republican voters say Iraq (31 percent) or terrorism (17 percent) is their principal concern. Abortion? Seven percent. Gay marriage? One percent.
Edsall wonders whether Giuliani, who is appealing to "the Republican longing for managerial competence" with his "idiosyncratic brand of conservatism," might be a transformational Republican figure. But perhaps his conservatism is not idiosyncratic. Perhaps it is, in a way, traditional. Perhaps some conservatives are really serious about turning back the clock. To 1972."
And there you have it in a nutshell. To maintain a system of values is in George Will's opinion, wishing to turn back the clock. Here's the deal with the liberalization of mores; beat people over the head with something and eventually they'll become immune to the pain. Doesn't mean they agree, does mean they're tired of fighting over it. George himself is proof positive of the declining scrappiness in modern Republicans. He mentions abortions, he mentions gays, but to be politically correct he disremembers a plank near and dear to Conservatives, and that of course is gun control. Republicans are getting older, while the dems are getting younger due to the internet and it's Kos-Kids. So sure, perhaps Ma and Pa Geriatric , long removed from their childrearing years, don't worry about abortion as much as they do about keeping moslems out of the woodpile and mexicans out of the tomato patch. Hard to blame them (even though I for one do) because the Jurassic Press treats abortion just like it would root canal. They don't read newspapers as much as they once did, but the cable news offerings are all about the war during the winter months, and hurricanes and poor people during the summer months. The Oprah in the afternoon and American Idol at night regimen isn't creating any new Conservatives, folks, and that's the plain truth.
And here's something that hit me like a ton of bricks. Was chatting with some old timers the other day and the topic of entitlement programs came up. Ben is 98, his pal just turned 90, and the price of health care is understandably high on their agenda, but terrorism is something that happens in big cities. What happens in small cities is when you get enough minorities together in one place in come the democrat politicians and their giveaways. One of the socialized-medicine freebies they had no problem with was abortion.
"Anything that keeps them from making more mouths for us to feed is worthwhile." Were I to run here in Florida on that platform there are towns that'd vote for me en masse and then some.
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