In my post about the field of front-running Republican candidates, I got a comment from someone who said that s/he could not possibly vote for Giuliani, because Giuliani is personally pro-choice. Further, the comment writer said (or implied) that this would hold true even if it boiled down to a race between Giuliani and a pro-choice Democrat. Enough voters with this viewpoint, and you’ve got 1992 all over again, with a Democrat in the Whit House.
I’ve been thinking about this attitude a lot and, with all due respect, I think that it is wrong. What matters is voting for the candidate who will be both most effective in achieving your goals and most likely to win. A throwaway vote for a pro-Life candidate who can’t possibly win is a wasted vote.
This attitude also ignores the fact that it doesn’t matter what Giuliani’s personal beliefs are if he is willing to do the Constitutionally right thing — which, in this case, is to nominate strict constructionists to fill inevitable vacancies on the Supreme Court. You see, a President can’t do anything about abortion anyway. It’s not within the range of his executive powers. What is within the range of his powers is to ensure that the Supreme Court is staffed with people who understand that their mandate is to interpret, not to rewrite, the Constitution.
To the extent that all honest people, whether pro-life or pro-choice, acknowledge that Roe v. Wade is poorly decided and doesn’t have a Constitutional leg to stand on, it is the strict constructionists who are going to reverse it and remand the matter of abortion back to the states, where it belongs. (Or into the realm of Constitutional amendments, another Constitutionally appropriate venue for the issue.) I can assure you this wonder happen if Hillary or Obama or Edwards or any of the others in that party win. You’ll just see more liberal constructionists on the Court, looking to the EU for Constitutional guidance.
To fully appreciate how an honorable person can put aside his personal beliefs to do the right thing, think of Harry Truman. He was a racist who integrated the American armed forces, and he was an anti-Semite who knew that recognizing Israel was morally the right thing to do. He was a man who was able to look outside his prejudices and see the greater principles at stake.
To sideline a potential winner such as Giuliani, a man who can appoint to the Supreme Court jurists who will abide by the Constitution, merely because you dislike his personal beliefs is to take the risk of jettisoning the Supreme Court for the next twenty years. If you are a pro-lifer who by sulking, splits the Republican vote and if your conduct, multiplied by a few hundred thousand voters, results in Hillary or Obama taking the White House, you will have the blood of hundreds of thousands of abortions on your hands for the foreseeable future.
UPDATE: Deroy Murdock gives some actual numbers about Giuliani’s conservative impact on New York. As for the comment that the judges Giuliani “appointed” during his tenure as mayor were liberal, I have heard that the New York mayor has almost no (or absolutely no) authority regarding which candidates are selected for the bench. Unfortunately, I can’t remember where I read that. Does anyone know where I can find authority for Giuliani’s inability to appoint more conservative judges, whether or not he wanted to?
Incidentally, despite the fact that Giuliani was undoubtedly conservative in his approach to mayoral politics, he still appealed strongly to sane liberal voters. I’ll never forgot the gay, ultra-liberal New Yorker I met in the 1990s. While he had voted for Dinkins against Giuliani when the latter first ran for office, he confessed that he would vote for Giuliani in the upcoming mayoral elections, because Giuliani was the best thing ever to happen to New York. Now that’s a leader.
UPDATE II: City Journal also has an homage to Giuliani’s really astounding ability to push through conservative programs in place of deeply entrenched (and manifestly failing) liberal programs. That he has the ability to turn things around is impressive. It’s great to have conservative principles; less great if you can’t do anything about them.
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digg itFiled under: Abortion, Judges, Judicial activism, Presidential elections
BW, I agree. Abortion is one of those polarizing issues that seems to obliterate everything else. Why not try to get half of what you want instead of insuring that you’ll get none of what you want and many things you definitely don’t want? Why must it be an all or nothing proposition? In politics, that’s hardly achievable.
Years ago, when I volunteered for several animal rights groups, we had this argument all the time. Some of the organizations (there were many in Southern California at that time, and may still be) worked for radical reforms; things that would never pass in the state legislature or be accepted by the general public because they were just too extreme. Other organizations were more practical, and wise enough to take gains in smaller chunks. They achieved some good changes, and helped many animals.
The first group generally got none of what they professed to want, but were self righteous about sticking to their principles. They looked down their noses at those who were willing to chip away at public attitudes over the long haul. Republicans who think that way will just sabotage the election. They’ll hand it to a candidate they despise, and that’s just nuts in my eyes. Reminds me of that old expression “right but stupid.”
By the way, does anybody know where there’s a nice concise chart that outlines the candidates’ positions on major issues? Maybe it’s a little early for that, but I’d like to see one if it’s out there.
I’m with you on this Bookie. I remember 93 very well when the Perot and Clinton voters came to me about, what once a week, with “I never expected that when I didn’t vote for Bush…..”
People forget. Rudy trumps a Clinton any day. People who wait for the perfect will always be the loser.
Roe v. Wade January 22,1973 was the best decision the Supreme Court of America ever made. It was the event that tipped the crime scale in America. Roe v. Wade help trigger ,a generation later ,the greatest crime drop in American history. And the millions of women most likely to have an abortion in the wake of Roe v.Wade – poor ,unmarried ,and teenage mothers for whom illegal abortions had been too expensive or too hard to get – were often models of adversity. They were the woman whose children , if born , would have been much more than average to become criminals. But because of Roe v. Wade, these children weren’t being born. CHECK THE FACTS MAM JUST THE FACTS ! This powerful decision had a distant effect; years later just as these unborn children would have entered their criminal primes, the rate of crime began to plummet.Go figure. Do the math.
So therefore abortion has a beneficial eugenic effect as a way to decrease the number of undesireables in society? Is that what you are saying?
OMG! Are you actually saying, Swamp, that you have inside knowledge that certain people have an inherent drive to commit criminal behavior and THEREFORE DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE BORN?
I would hate every moment of it. But I would cast my vote even for McCain, as much as I personally dislike him for how he has trashed the first amendment in McCain/Feingold, if it would mean that the Supreme Court had a better chance to get another Rogers or Alito. I believe this would be true w/Giuliani, but what would McCain be likely to do vis a vis the Court? Anyone please respond.
My question concerning Giuliani is his position on immigration. I am not clear on it and I am concerned that he would promote amnesty and thus encourage further illegal immigration and its concomitant multiculturalism and lack of assimilation.
I was curious about the same thing (Giuliani on immigration) and I found this interview done by Sean Hannity in February which addresses that question and others about Rudy’s positions.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,250497,00.html
(I don’t know if this is going to show up as a link, but worst case, you can cut and paste it.)
swampacreage,
Math?… How about the fact that the vast majority of abortions were not done by the poor but by middle and upper middle class women who couldn’t be bothered with motherhood?
How about the fact that more babies are being aborted in San Francisco and Boston than are born? The only area of the country experiencing positive demographics are the Red States. The Blue States are starting on the path of European demographics.
Thomas, Swampy can’t answer. Due to an anomalous quirk in the space-continuum, turns out his mother actually had an abortion, and now because the cosmos is basically a self correcting entity, poor Swampy has ceased to exist.
I’m saying Roe v Wade was the best thing ever to bring down crime in America . “Before Roe v. Wade it was mostly the daughters of middle and upper class families who could arrange and afford a safe illegal abortion.I’m saying in the early years of Roe v. Wade it was unmarried poor teens who could now afford the legal abortions. What sort of future might their children have ? One study has shown that the typical child who went unborn in the earliest years of legalized abortion would have been 50 percent more likely than average to live in poverty; he would have also been 60 percent more likely to grow up with just one parent. These two factors- childhood povery and a single – parent household- are amomg the strongest predictors that a child will have a criminal future.In other words, the very factors that drove millions of American women to have an abortion also seem to predict that their children , had they been born , would have led unhappy and possibly criminal lives.”Anways it is a women’s decision . Who better than them ?
Of course. We could reduce poverty and crime by sterilizing the poor and aborting their offspring. A unique and effective way of dealing with the problem. True, some folks may have some misplaced scruples about the method, but, well, can’t make an omelette without … oh you know the rest.
Look at the judges Rudy appointed during his tenure as mayor and you will find that he appointed far more liberal judges than conservative. You folks want to believe so badly that you will overlook his record and believe his word that he will appoint constructionists to the court. I do not trust him. You may say I am wasting my vote when I vote for another, but I assure you I am not. Just how did the Republican party come into being anyhow? Why,it was a third party.
Swamp – I got it. You’ve been reading Dickens and really liked his advice about decreasing the world’s surplus population, but BEFORE they are born – much more efficient.
Marg, the abortion craze has statistically been shown to hit African-Amis hard, population wise. Thereby reducing crime in inner cities. The Democrats are cutting up the cattle as we speak, and yet blacks still believe in loyalty to the Democrats when the Left has never been loyal to them, not even during the civil war. Or especially back a century.
They think it is the Republicans Keeping them down. How well they have been fooled.
Remember that it is the Democrat/Left that has adopted the totalitarian utopian ideas of Europe. The comments on this support this. Whenever I hear the Democrat/Left extolling the social benefits of euthanasia and abortion as a means of “cleansing” society of its undesirables, it is easy to hear the approaching echo of Fascist jackboots.
I said it reduced crime ! I can give you the stats in the blue and red states.Hey Maggie don’t get your knickers in in a Twist but did you know that Charles Dickens(more please) brother “Punch” Dickens was an officer in The North West Mounted Police in Canada in the 1870’s ?
Now you got it Z , but of course it must be voluntarily programmed .
Show us your stats Swampy. Don’t quote them; give us the links so we can see from which moonbat source they originated.
The true stat is that a higher percentage of children than ever before are born to impoverished, under-educated, under-age and single mothers. So, who are getting all of the abortions?
At an antecdotal level, my daughter is a delivery room nurse in an Orange County, Ca hospital. She tells me that a very high percentage of their births are at-risk babies born to dysfunctional mothers. A very high percentage are single mothers. In other words those are not the ones getting aborted.
Now, every Sociologist I have ever heard of affirms that the conditions I have described are conducive to criminal development.
Give us a break.
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I said it reduced crime !
I’m sure it does reduce crime. I’m also sure that Nazi doctors that experimented on Jews produced useful medical knowledge and advances.
The Left dares call us fascists? How high their hubris is…
It is true Oldflyer, Bill Bennet got in trouble for saying the same thing, when Rainbow and their allies attacked him and tried to suppress the truth from getting out. That the Left is using abortion as a way to keep blacks in America perpetually in their control, by marginalizing them politicaly (less people less votes) and by controlling crime which gets them votes from the middle class.
The question shouldn’t be “who is getting the abortions” the question on crime is about “does abortions reduce crime”. And it does. But like I said before, a lot of things can reduce crime and produce advances. Doesn’t mean they are all ethical.
A very high percentage are single mothers. In other words those are not the ones getting aborted.
That’s just bad logic. For it is easily imagined that with more abortions, you have even more single women engaging in high risk activities, which cause more children to be born, even when including abortions. Besides it is anecdotal to Orange County. California being California, their welfare does tend to motivate single parent homes.
http://www.blackprof.com/archives/2005/09/crime_and_black_abortions_is_b.html
Now, every Sociologist I have ever heard of affirms that the conditions I have described are conducive to criminal development.
It probably is conducive, after all abortions are not a good thing, correct? But crime rates have de facto come down in the last 30 years. You have to come up with an explanation for that as well. And yes, there are more than one factor leading to the decrease. And I think the existence of abortion over the decades is one of them.
I believe that studies have proven that in our culture, violent crime is a phenomenon mostly of the young adult male. When a population boomlet reaches the age 16-24, crime inevitably rises. As the boomlet ages into the 30’s and 40’s and on, the violent crime rate drops.
Furthermore poverty and despair and broken homes also produce elevated crime rates.
That’s why I do believe the statistics indicate that when abortion became readily available to poor young women in the mid-70’s, the result is that crime dropped in the late 80’s and early 90’s.
But I’m shocked that people would argue that this makes abortion a preferable alternative. That is a particularly pernicious use of the form of argument that states that the ends justify the means. It is also only one narrow viewpoint on the effects that abortion has on a society. There are of course many other effects and you should consider all of them.
This viewpoint on abortion reveals the effects of young adult males on crime rates, in particular poor, poverty-ridden, values-deficient young adult males.
It’s useful solely for illuminating that connection. How we choose the best way to deal with that problem speaks to our worth as a society. Relying on abortion to alleviate that problem doesn’t speak well for us, I think.
The Left has always believed the ends justified the means. From Social Democrat to Social Nazi.
It is useful for far more than illuminating such a stainless and sterile connection. Because it ignores who promotes abortion as a social engineering solution. The Left doesn’t primarily rely upon euthanasia and their pet projects to solve crime but rather to increase the disenfranchisement of various minority groups. Because we all know to a certain extent that when minority groups assimilate and adapt to the mainstream culture, we have less possibility of dissent, riots, and revolutionary disaffection. This reduces the ability of a party such as the Democrats, to control that specific demographic. As with immigration, the goal is power, but power achieved by producing disharmony in the social fabric, causing a need that can be exploited.
So long as immigrants are unlawful, separated from society, and unable to assimilate because of Democrat tactics and promoted to stay apart because of Democrat bilingual language programs, the ghettoization of minorities begin. And they keep on going.
Once started, it is a self-renewing cycle. You don’t need a central conspiratorial organizer, it organizes itself. The newest generation will look to pop culture, and self-destructive methods instead of education and self-improvement. Rap and gansta style elevation of crime and prison. People like Jesse Jackson knew they suffered a defeat when the first black white President put an end to certain highs of welfare. They suffered terribly when the conditions for blacks improved in the job sector because of that.
The less disharmony there is, the less people may profit off it.
People say a lot of things they don’t support. Support the troops, support the draft, call for war crimes, impeachment before elections, bipartisanship after Nancy wins.
In order to deal with the problems of society, like crime in Iraq, first you have to eliminate those who are sustaining the problem and encouraging it (Iranian agents). With the new indoctrination camps designed to convert an entire generation of middle and high income familes’ children, we have a trend that will eventually result the disruption of the social fabric as we know it. Weakening the inside defenses is simply a prelude, it is the illegal immigration of mobsters, drug lords, and gang members (terrorists as well) that will eventually increase crime and distability.
Europe increased taxes and produced abortion and euthanasia. Then after that, they invited in a second class of citizens and indebted servants, to do their dirty work. By giving them the right to vote, the politicians of Europe also gain a neat little group of people they could count on to provide them with endless power and term limits. Up until they revolt, of course, and kill the aristocracy. Slave revolts are always nasty affairs.
People say that the Left in the US are following the European socialism model. Have they considered the implications of that? Not just the obvious implications, but the more far reaching ones, that we see even now occuring in Europe.
Europe is probably the next best thing to sliced bread for Republican Presidential candidates debating Democrats. Why? Because everything in Europe can be tied to Democrat actions and subversions. Civil rights for terrorists and criminals? Just bring up one rape case to every other assault case on police officers, with kidnappings, in Paris and European countries. That would be the result, just tell people, bring their attention to it. People already dislike Europe for various reasons. Show them why they should dislike it even more.
This offsets the Left’s tendency to sort of say let’s be the EU and whatever. This totally undercuts it, simply because Europe is our time machine. We know what’s going to happen in America 10 to 30 years down the road if the Left was in charge. The Left’s role model is experiencing it now, and what do people think will occur if the Left is successfully in making the US emulate Europe?
Gun control, euthanasia, abortion, everything and anything, Europe provides us the wisdom to see through. Their sacrificial burning is a chance for others to remain free, even if they should fall.
Mikes got it right !
Rudy on judges:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-judicial12mar12,0,2358452.story?coll=la-home-nation
It’s pretty rare for family court judge to have to rule in constitutional matters.
The source of the “swamp gas” from swampacreage is the book Freakonomics, although he may not have read it there. It’s been widely quoted, but I believe it has also been pretty soundly refuted….. Someone who is sharp with the search engines can check it out…a LOT was written on it when that came out. Does anyone remember how much trouble the former education secretary and author of The Book of Virtues got into when he referenced that “fact” on a morning radio show — it was totally unfair because he was saying that EVEN IF TRUE, abortion was nevertheless a moral outrage.
Anyhow, it’s a superficially appealing “analysis”, but whoever said that most abortions are not among the young inner-city females is correct – they’re a relatively small proportion of all that take place. And that anyone would justify killing the unborn on this basis is truly chilling.
Danny has it straight – the left in both Europe and our country is gung-ho for eugenics, only they won’t call it that.
Again, if you hunt around the Web, you’ll find the refutations – and they’re based on numbers, not just hot air.
“Earl of Shallow Refutations ” did you get your Freakin fancy Earldumb title from a bubble gum machine ? HELLO ,I said abortion cuts back crime.Prove to me that it doesn’t ! You can’t ! The rest of your hissy sissy fits about the right to abortions are your hangups. Anyway , go ask a woman about that.They will give you your answers ! More than likely ,they will tell you ,”none of your Freakin business” !
ps Oh by the way, read the book ,and see IF YOU CAN LEARN an EARN YOUR TITLE ! Pass the Swampgas !!
[...] Bookworm Room, “Voting for the Supremes” [...]
I think Earl might have possibly had swamp as one of his students… or someone like him in the past.
Earl Of Dumbleton was not allowed near the gifted students.
He had to earn extra pay while he taught opportunity classes.He wanted to be closer to his students so he volunteerd to drive at half price the short bus to school where it gave him more time to get to know his students better(not that there is anything wong with that). He certainly was dedicated though.