The American Spectator

Journalists in Washington have been buzzing for days over reports that House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi is backing former Indiana Rep. Tim Roemer for Democratic National Committee chairman.

Why? Because Roemer is pro-life. Could the staunchly pro-choice San Francisco Democrat really be putting her support behind this guy?

Yes. While Pelosi hasn’t officially endorsed Roemer, she did urge him to run. “Brendan Daly, spokesman for Pelosi, said the congresswoman … would not oppose an antiabortion leader (for) the party,” reported the Boston Globe.

That’s only the latest is a series of signals suggesting that the Democratic Party is starting to rethink abortion politics. After years of being implacably pro-choice and scornful of anyone who disagreed, Democrats are beginning to realize that their position may have been hurting them more than they realized.

“We’re very encouraged,” Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life, told the Boston Globe. “I think people are starting to wake up and say we can’t alienate this whole wing of our party.”

For years Democrats simply assumed that a stridently pro-choice stance was a popular, winning issue. As everyone knew, it was the Republicans who lost votes on abortion because of the grip the religious right had on the party.

The 2004 election has blown that theory away. After all, 60 million people voted for President Bush, the largest number in history of the republic.

A survey by Democrat Stan Greenberg found that only 17% of voters cited John Kerry’s stance on abortion as a reason to vote for him while 19% cited it as a reason to vote against him, for a net loss of 2%.

For President Bush, 20% cited his abortion stance as a reason to vote for him, while 12% cited it as a reason to vote against him, for a net gain of 8%.

Then there’s the fact that Bush beat Kerry among Catholics, 52%-47%, according to a CNN exit poll. That’s despite the fact that Kerry is Catholic and Bush isn’t! Pro-life politics may help explain Bush’s 4% uptick among Latinos, another highly religious group.

A mid-summer poll by Pace University and MTV’s Rock the Vote found that 54% of first-time voters think abortion should either be illegal or available only in “the most extreme cases.”

Liberal pundits have taken notice.

“The zeitgeist (has) shifted: Abortion is no longer seen as central to sexual liberation but rather as much more troubling and problematic,” said the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen. “Over the years, the so-called right-to-life movement has changed some minds.”

Well, there’s nothing like to cold slap of an election loss to make somebody rethink their priorities. Since November, Democrats have been trying to find ways to reach out to those pro-life voters, or at least dim their support for the GOP.

They installed Nev. Sen. Harry Reid, who has voted pro-life in the past, as their new Senate leader. (Reid is reportedly also supporting Roemer for DNC chief.)