Lower taxes? No.
Less regulation of business? No.
Education reform? No.
Immigration reform? Oh, heck no!
No, according to Peter S. Canellos, the cornerstone of conservative ideology is protecting innocent life. Well, he doesn't call it that. He calls it being "anti-abortion," which lets you know where he sits and what he thinks of this cornerstone.
The sheer number of Republican leaders who've morphed from abortion-rights defenders to strict moral opponents invites both skepticism and credulity: There has to be some element of political expediency in all these shifts, but the leading lights of the GOP can't all be craven opportunists. To some degree, at least, they must be mirroring the journey of their constituents.
More than even a few years ago, opposition to abortion rights is now the cornerstone of the conservative ideology. Other conservative positions grow out of its foundations.
Opposing abortion has become a shorthand way of siding with the simple values of the American heartland against the permissive attitudes of the two coasts. By defining themselves against coastal elites, Republicans play into a rich trove of resentment stemming from the notion that people on the East Coast and West Coast don't respect "flyover country."
It makes sense that being "pro-life" takes in more than just opposition to legalized abortion. People who are pro-life tend to favor other traditional values and the rights of individuals over greater government regulation and social permissiveness. In other words, if a person is pro-life, they usually aren't just opposed to abortion. For pro-life supporters, the argument starts with abortion but continues through a host of other issues including parental rights, education, property rights, embryonic stem cell research, and so on.
Canellos says that the abortion issue will sink Rudy Giuliani's presidential hopes, and explains the apparent flip-flops of candidates Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson. I'm not convinced that being pro-choice will prevent Giuliani from being the Republican candidate. That will depend largely on how well the Iraq War is going by that time. Let's face it: security and the war will be the big issues of the '08 election because those are the main problems we face right now.
Abortion isn't a big issue currently. We have a more pro-life Supreme Court, which means that we can expect more pro-life leaning opinions in the future. That takes pressure off all candidates on that issue. And while there are people who simply will not vote for a pro-choice Republican, I think that number is relatively small.
I haven't seen any Republican candidate so far that excites me. Like most Republicans who are still looking for a better candidate, I haven't made up my mind who will get my vote in the primary yet.
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