By Dave Andrusko
If you are a pro-abortion partisan looking over what is (for you) a bleak horizon, how are you going to explain how pro-lifers keep winning and you keep losing? It can’t be that the anti-life troops with their abortion-on-demand marching orders are wildly out of step with the American public. Of course not.
So….how do you square the circle?
Writing at Salon, Sean McElwee attempts to answer the question, “Americans generally support reproductive choice — so why does the GOP keep winning on abortion?”
If you make it through the entire post, there is a fundamental irony-and truth-buried in the end. We’ll get to that in a second.
McElwee’s initial task is to “prove” that pro-life positions are unpopular-“quite unpopular,” to be exact. So, of course, that requires slanting the questions that are asked of the public in a manner that gives the answer he wants, much like tilting a pinball machine.
But if you take a non-pro-life source-Gallup-you find over and over again that a majority of the public opposes the reasons for which 90+% of all abortions are performed. If you look at other non-partisan polls, you learn that Americans do not want their pockets picked to pay for abortions at home or abroad. And they don’t want pain-capable unborn babies subjected to the brutality of abortion-to name just three items.
Read the following carefully, because it perfectly illustrates how pro-abortionists tell themselves blatant falsehoods. McElwee writes
While Democrats obsessively track public opinion as a guiding star for policy — and will all too happily sacrifice the interests of their constituents on the altar of public opinion — Republicans see public opinion as inchoate, ripe for molding.
But that’s the point, isn’t it? It’s not that Democrats “obsessively” track public opinion, it’s that they misread/distort public opinion.
And when McElwee tells his readers, “Republicans see public opinion as inchoate, ripe for molding,” it is a back-handed acknowledgement that most people simply haven’t thought through the abortion issue. On specific policy issues, overwhelmingly they pitch their flag in our camp.
There’s lots more in his piece that is worth reading, but especially the ending. Granted he insists we are frauds, out of the mainstream, etc., here’s McElwee’s astonishingly candid advice for his fellow pro-abortion Democrats found in his “Conclusion”:
Though the pro-life movement has views antithetical to the progressive movement, it offers key lessons. Among them are the importance of grassroots activism, constant political pressure, a mobilized base, state-level politics and an unrelenting vision for the future. …Though the pro-life movement has gained most of its power since the big Republican victories in the 2010 midterms, those victories were rooted in more than a decade of state-level work.
Exactly! Pro-life Republicans control both Houses of Congress, we have a pro-life President, and the party that advances our cause-the Republican Party-continues to clean up in state houses and governorships all over the nation. Why? For all the reasons McElwee cites, and, of course, more.
It is not an exaggeration in the slightest to say that Democrats are adrift. That is why they will tell themselves last Saturday’s pro-abortion Women’s March is so important, even pivotal.
They will confuse a one-time gathering, which Democrats in general, pro-abortion organizations like PPFA in particular, excel at putting on with pro-lifers’ “decade of state-level work” which actually extends back many decades.
One movement is about venting, the other about planning. One is filled with vile language, the other with the kind of polite people you’d love to invite over to your house. One is steeped in deception and illusion, the other in truth-telling and transparency.
All his preface is off-key, but McElwee’s conclusion is in perfect harmony with the facts.
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