Ross Douthat once again makes a strong argument as to why
pro-lifers should want the next president to be a Republican. Any
Democratic president will knowingly nominate only pro-Roe
jurists to fill vacancies on the Supreme Court. An even nominally
pro-life Republican president will nominate at least some
anti-Roe justices and President McCain may have the
opportunity to create an anti-Roe majority on the Supreme
Court if just a single pro-Roe justice retires. Douthat
stacks the deck a bit by assuming the next Democratic president
will necessarily get two terms, that John Roberts and Samuel Alito
would definitely vote to overturn Roe, and that a
Democratic Senate won't be an obstacle to a nominee who isn't at
least Roe-ambiguous, but his basic point is correct: Each
pro-choice Democratic president makes Roe's reversal more
difficult and therefore less likely.
Tom Piatak makes the
strongest argument for why pro-lifers should be discontented
with, and even distrustful of, the GOP: "Would economic
conservatives have loyally supported the GOP for 28 years, if
during that time the Republicans had failed to enact a single tax
cut and the official to whom Republicans insisted on deferring on
tax policy never wanted to make a decision on tax cuts one way or
the other?" One could just as easily ask whether Cold War hawks
would have stayed in the GOP for decades waiting for a Republican
president to eventually begin an arms buildup against the Soviets.
Many libertarian-leaning conservatives are already bolting the
party after just eight years of big-domestic-spending compassionate
conservatism. What other major GOP faction, much less the party's
largest single voting bloc, would be satisfied with such thin
gruel?
It is true that some pro-life goals are a.) difficult for the
elected branches of government to achieve and b.) controversial or
even unpopular, preventing any successful political party from
realizing them. But part of this has to do with the way the GOP and
organized social conservatives have gone about trying to accomplish
those goals. Conservatives should have been promoting jurisdiction
stripping years ago on uncontroversial issues, like deleting "under
God" from the pledge of allegiance, or issues the Court hadn't
decided on yet, like same-sex marriage, rather than constitutional
amendents and national abortion bans. Had they done so, an abortion
jurisdiction-stripping bill might be no more politically suicidal
than appointing an anti-Roe majority to the Supreme
Court.
On the other hand, President McCain would veto most pro-abortion
bills passed by a Democratic Congress, some of them untrivial. And
I agree with Douthat that antiwar conservatives who are hoping that
a Democratic president will fundamentally change U.S. foreign
policy are engaged in more wishful thinking than the most
optimistic pro-lifer.
topics:
Abortion, Constitution, Supreme Court, Conservatism
