I was amazed last night watching Chris Matthews’ show on MSNBC to hear a Hillary supporter saying she would be voting for McCain because Obama won the Democratic Primary. I was amazed because anyone who looks at the Old Man’s record will see that he is totally against the rights of women to have any personal control over their own lives.
Tu wit: an article by Sarah Blustain in the New Republic called “Life Sentence“. Here’s a quote:
Sharlene Bozack was public affairs director for Planned Parenthood of Central and Northern Arizona between 1989 and 1995. One day, she came to D.C. for PPFA’s annual day of lobbying and encountered McCain on the Hill. “I relive it every time I see the man on TV,” she told me over the phone from Phoenix. She and Feldt had run into McCain, introduced themselves, and asked if they could speak with him. He agreed, and they got on the train that runs between Capitol buildings. Bozack was talking to him about international contraception access. Suddenly, she recalls, he was no longer calm, cool, and collected. “He turned toward me and put his index finger out and started pounding me in the chest saying, ‘You know my position on this,’ and ‘How dare you ask me about this,’ and ‘You are just trying to intimidate me.'”
While you may not hear McCain come out and actually say where he stands on issues concerning women’s rights, that is, as Blustain says, so as “not to alienate the Clinton middle–and perhaps in order to keep his foot out of his mouth–McCain has not voluntarily spoken on the campaign trail about many issues dear to social conservatives.” And, of course, his tendency to put his foot in his mouth has been more than evident in other areas such as foreign policy and economics.
What he has done, however, is create a 48-member “Justice Advisory Committee” to consider which judges would be nominated under a McCain Presidency. Blustain again:
That committee features a host of legal minds from the Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43 administrations. Its headline names include senators Sam Brownback, Jon Kyl, and Trent Lott, all of whom have thoroughly pro-life pedigrees. Other members include William Barr, who wrote a Department of Justice opinion in 1992 opposing the Freedom of Choice Act on both anti-abortion and federalist grounds; Charles Cooper, who under Reagan headed the Office of Legal Counsel, where he helped draft regulations that would prevent family-planning clinics that take federal funds from providing abortion counseling; Charles Fried, solicitor general under Reagan, who helped write a lengthy administration brief in Thornburgh v. ACOG that made the case for overturning Roe on anti-abortion and states-rights grounds; and Thomas Merrill, who was U.S. deputy solicitor general and co-author of the Reagan administration’s amicus brief in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services asking the Court to overturn Roe. No member of the committee who has been active on reproductive health issues represents a pro-choice or even a moderately pro-life position.
If the Hillary supporters who are saying they are not voting for Obama (now at about 23%, apparently) vote for McCain they are actually asking to overturn strides made by many women’s organizations over the last 4 decades… certainly not in their own interest and, overall, a self-destructive stance.
McCain is uncompromisingly pro-life… a zealot. He will not listen to women or their representative organizations in his desire to repeal Roe v. Wade or in his campaign to end abortion for ANY reason.
I believe that Hillary realizes that the situation is, at the least, dangerous to the Democratic Party. How she (and Bill) will handle this when speaking to Clinton supporters during the Convention will be closely watched.
