The GOP’s uncivil union-pro-life voters,
pro-abortion money
Alan Keyes
Loyal to Liberty essay
May 16, 2010
In a 2005 Washington Post article
titled “Women
closest to Bush are Pro-choice” Ann Gerhart
wrote:
Laura Bush hardly has been
expansive on the issue of abortion rights. Asked on the eve of the first
inauguration whether Roe v. Wade should be overturned, she said, “no.” Asked
during the 2004 Presidential race whether that was still her position, she
said, “Yeah.” Her terseness notwithstanding, she is a part of an unbroken
tradition of Republican First Ladies who supported a woman’s right to choose,
back to Pat Nixon, who said, “I believe abortion is a personal choice.”
Gerhart’s story focused on a fact well
known to pro-lifers who pay attention to politics. The story notes that in
the G.W. Bush administration the divergence from pro-life views went beyond
the First Ladies, to include other women in high and influential positions,
such as Condoleezza Rice.
The article appeared during the
days before Bush’s ill fated nomination of Harriet Miers for the U.S. Supreme
Court. It considered the possible influence so-called “pro-choice” women at
the core of his inner circle might have on his decision.
As Bush considers judicial
candidates, the competition for his attention has been cast as a well-funded
battle between competing interest groups. What this overlooks is the
possibility that Bush, who famously follows his heart and gut and acts
decisively, may have some internal conflicts.
Whatever possible conflicts G.W.
Bush may have had in his heart, it has become painfully clear over the years
that there are undeniable “internal conflicts” over abortion and other moral
issues in the heart of the GOP. Whether it’s Republican First Ladies or
influential pro-”abortion rights” donors and fundraisers, the Party has plowed
the furrow of its electoral ambitions with a team
that unequally yokes so-called “pro-choice” donors with a conservative
base that is emphatically pro-life.
The success of the effort depends
on the sacrifice of principle. This involves first of all treating all the
issues of moral concern as matters of personal opinion, on which it is
tolerable to agree to disagree. In this respect, the spousal relations of GOP
presidents may be the paradigm of the approach required to keep the badly
matched GOP team intact. As Laura Bush said in the interview that re-focused
attention on her views favoring “abortion rights”and
“gay marriage”: “I understand his [George's] viewpoint…and he understands
mine.” [I will share some thoughts on Laura Bush's explanation of her pro-gay
marriage views in a separate post.]
Unfortunately the kind of
understanding Mrs. Bush refers to must involve only emotional acceptance
and tolerance. It can have nothing to do with the understanding that grasps
the rational basis for a conviction, the reasoning that justifies
it. In the latter sense understanding requires a common sense of the
starting point (principle) from which reasoning begins, and the rules by
which it is governed.
Every President of the United
States, and in fact every official at any level of government in the United
States, swears an oath to uphold and preserve the U.S. Constitution. Their
oath commits them to maintain a certain form of government in the United
States, which necessarily involves preserving the ideas and institutions
required to sustain it. By taking the oath, these officials accept the
obligation to make decisions that respect these ideas and institutions.
This respect must be their starting point for reasoning about public policy issues.
As Laura Bush’s husband, G.W. Bush
may have personal views and convictions. But as a sworn official of the U.S.
government it becomes his duty to respect the ideas and convictions required
to maintain the form of government the U.S. constitution establishes. Having taken
an oath without mental reservation or purpose of evasion, if he decides to
implement views that undermine and destroy, rather than maintain, that form
of government, he forswears his oath. He literally commits the high crime and
misdemeanor of perjury (from the Latin, perjurare,
“to swear falsely,
break one’s oath“).
In this respect, public officials
do not have the luxury of simply speaking or acting from the heart. They must
be able to justify their actions with reasoning that demonstrates the
consistency between what they do and the integrity of the ideas and
institutions they are sworn to preserve.
This is why, when dealing with
issues of moral principle like abortion, personal views cannot be a decisive
basis for judging someone’s fitness for any official position under the U.S.
Constitution. Candidates and nominees must demonstrate that they know and can
rationally apply the ideas on which it is based. They must demonstrate that
they comprehend the connection between these ideas and the institutional
arrangements intended to implement them. Once they are in office, they must
be able to articulate their understanding of that connection with respect to
every official decision and action they take. Unless they are held
accountable in this way, their oath becomes a meaningless gesture, the
babbling of deceitful platitudes intended to lull people’s vigilance while
their liberty is being destroyed.
The GOP has followed a political
strategy that allows the party to promote of candidates who never demonstrate
this kind of fitness for office. It treats abortion and other issues as
if they are matters of personal opinion. Candidates for office can then
affirm their personal support for abortion, to please pro-life voters, while
openly or covertly supporting “abortion rights” when it comes to law and public
policy. Such people could never prove their fitness for office if doing
so required offering a line of reasoning that relies on the ideas the U.S.
Constitution implements and on which its integrity depends.
Ironically, one of the key selling
points the GOP uses to mobilize conservative support for its candidates for
President and the U.S. Senate has to do with the importance of their role in
the selection and confirmation of Federal Judges and Justices. Conservatives
are strongly committed to defending the integrity of the U.S. Constitution.
Thanks to Laura Bush’s promotion of her new book, we are once again invited
to ponder the conflict between what serves the political purposes of the
current GOP leadership and what is needed for the survival of the
Constitution.
The U.S. Senate’s consideration
of Elena Kagan’s for the Supreme Court takes
strategic advantage of this intrinsic conflict within the GOP. On
account of that conflict, the GOP Senate contingent is unlikely to mount more
than a weak, incoherent effort to stop her
confirmation. This will prove once again that the GOP’s
pro-Constitution sales pitch is inherently deceptive.
Strong grassroots’ opposition
exists to the Obama faction’s evident intention to overturn constitutionally
limited government in the U.S. The Kagan confirmation process could be
the GOP’s chance to consolidate and lead that opposition. This could be
done by making Kagan’s rejection of constitutional
principle the central focus of the discussion. But by failing effectively to
mobilize against Kagan on grounds of principle, the GOP will forfeit the
opportunity for leadership.
Their default will lead more
people than ever to realize that both actors in the present two party charade
have abandoned allegiance to constitutionally limited government. The
critical question: Do all the years of false but successful GOP sloganeering
mean that this realization comes too late?