At the very moment Democrats are claiming to distance themselves
from abortion, they run back towards it by making Howard Dean — a
former doctor for Planned Parenthood — their public face. Though
the press almost never mentions it, Dean did an OB/GYN rotation for
Planned Parenthood in the 1970s and later served as an executive
board member of Planned Parenthood New England, meaning that he
directly oversaw the largest abortion provider in the region. Were
the Democrats sincerely moving to the middle on abortion, selecting
a former overseer of abortion would have been the last thing to
do.
Now they have managed to lash themselves to abortion even
tighter by turning a Planned Parenthood alumnus and mascot — Dean
received the organization’s Margaret Sanger award — into the
party’s chief spokesman. Yes, like Hillary Clinton, Dean will try
and call a few audibles on his old colleagues and friends at
Planned Parenthood. But that won’t work. In politics, past is
prologue and perception.
Dean will repeat his line, “We’re not the party of abortion,”
but who will believe him? After all, he said last year that he
represents the “Democratic wing of the Democratic party,” by which
he obviously meant the pro-abortion wing of the party, such a point
of pride to him during the primaries that he retailed stories about
referring teens for abortion back in his days as a
pediatrician.
Who came up with the idea of “$5 copay” abortions? Dr. Dean.
Vermont had the highest rate of abortion in the country under him,
averaging 359 abortions for every 1,000 live births. Vermont
pro-lifers laugh aloud at the media’s lazy description of Dean as a
moderate willing to make overtures to pro-lifers. That’s not the
Howard Dean they remember. On a radio talk show, Dean once referred
to pro-lifers in the state as common criminals. He was so
pro-abortion he concocted a macabre scheme to let low-income
“mothers” claim their unborn children for eligibility in his “Dr.
Dynasaur” program, then once they were eligible he gave them state
monies with which to abort that same child.
Short of elevating an outright abortionist to head up the
Democratic party, Howard Dean is about as bad a choice as the
Democrats could make to serve their purported goal of appealing to
Middle America. Choosing a former Planned Parenthood doctor and
board member to woo the Red States is the equivalent of the
Republican National Committee selecting Jerry Falwell to court
coastal elites.
Even the manner in which Dean maneuvered into the DNC chair
illustrates his contempt for Middle America: he had to torpedo the
campaign of Hoosier Democrat Tim Roemer through a smear campaign
that raked up Roemer’s cautious pro-life voting record as well as
other innocuous votes. “One day I received by messenger a dirty and
smudged envelope with no return address,” reports Ryan Lizza of the
New Republic. “Inside were five pages of anti-Roemer
opposition research about his positions on everything from Israel
and abortion to labor and Social Security.”
Dean’s bloggers spent days devouring Roemer. Stung, Roemer
struggled through an interview with George Stephanopoulos, reports
Lizza, “defensively responding to bloggers he had clearly never
heard of, like MyDD.com and the Washington Monthly’s Kevin
Drum. ‘The bloggers, the Internet is a very, very useful tool for
us to communicate with voters, ideas. I’m very excited about it,
but it can also misinterpret a vote,’ he complained.”
Lizza reports that Roemer “never recovered.” At a DNC candidate
forum, Roemer “rose, and glaring at Dean and candidate Simon
Rosenberg, lashed out at the ‘secret e-mails’ that were circulating
about him.” At another candidate forum, Roemer said, “We shouldn’t
let a special interest group decide our view on choice.” The
pro-Dean crowd hissed.
Even tepidly pro-life views are contemptible to Dean Democrats.
Nancy Keenan, the new president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, spoke
out of school recently when she chided John Kerry for his
“judgmental” comments about abortion. (Kerry had merely rolled out
his old cop-out position that he was “personally opposed” to
abortion but wouldn’t impose that view on anyone else.) What Keenan
blurted out is what Dean Democrats really think: anyone who
questions abortion is “judgmental” and unworthy of Democratic
leadership status.
After they drove him out of the DNC race, Roemer said Democrats
were “losing ground with some of our core constituencies on values
and faith issues. If we do not have a serious conversation within
our party about how to reach out to those who are leaving us, we
will be doomed to minority party status.”
The conversation, Mr. Roemer, has already been held. It ended
with a hiss.
George Neumayr is executive editor of The American
Spectator.
