As for yesterday’s debate: I think Newt Gingrich made a fatal
error by appearing to patronize Michele Bachmann. This clearly
angered Michele, and last night, she exacted revenge. Let’s go, as
they used to say, to the videotape (or at least the
transcript).
The issue was abortion. Bachmann was railing against Newt
for supposedly refusing to defund Planned Parenthood when he was
Speaker of the House of Representatives back in the
1990s.
Worse yet, she charged, Newt had pledged to “campaign for
Republicans who are in support of the barbaric procedure known as
partial-birth abortion. I could never do that,” Bachmann said. “I
will be 100 percent pro-life from conception until natural
death.”
This is beyond “hardball politics.” This is called
“destroy your opponent” politics. Bachmann ought to be ashamed of
herself for suggesting that Newt’s position on abortion is no
different from extreme left-wing Democrats such as Barack Obama or
Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
In fact, as Newt himself tried to explain, he had a “98.5
percent right-to-life voting record” during his 20 years in the
Congress.
Gingrich said he did disagree with some (but not all)
pro-life advocates on the initial Welfare reform bill. He supported
it; they opposed it. But Welfare reform, he continued, had nothing
to do with abortion. “I think my position [on life] has been very
clear and very consistent.”
Now, if that was all Gingrich had said, he probably
wouldn’t have a problem. He began his statement, though, with this
comment: “Sometimes Congressman Bachmann doesn’t get her facts very
accurate.”
This wasn’t the first time Newt had said this of Bachmann;
and his professorial condescension toward her clearly has gotten
under Bachmann’s skin.
“Can I have a rebuttal for getting my facts wrong?” she
asked the debate moderator, Chris Wallace. “Because this isn’t just
once.”
I think it’s outrageous to continue to say, over and over
through the debates, that I don’t have my facts right when, as a
matter of fact, I do.
I’m a serious candidate for president of the
United States, and my facts are accurate [emphasis
added].
Speaker Gingrich said that he would actively support and
campaign for Republicans who got behind the barbaric practice of
partial-birth abortion. This is not a small issue. This is a big
issue. And I think George Will was right when he asked that
question: What virtue is there in tolerating
infanticide?
Whoa. It’s one thing to charge Newt with being insufficiently
bold and aggressive in defense of life. It’s another thing
altogether, though, to charge him with “tolerating infanticide.”
The Speaker’s record simply doesn’t support that vicious and
vitriolic accusation, and shame on Bachmann for suggesting
otherwise.
It is true that Newt said he would campaign for some
“pro-choice” Republicans. However, as he pointed out in the debate,
this is a pragmatic concession to political reality, not a
statement of conviction or belief about life.
“What I said on that particular issue,” he explained, “is:
I wouldn’t go out and try to purge Republicans. I don’t see how
you’re gonna govern the country if you’re gonna run around and
decide who you’re gonna purge.
The fact is, twice when I was speaker, we moved to end
partial-birth abortion. Clinton vetoed it. We worked very hard… I
have consistently opposed partial-birth abortion.
In fact, I would like to see us go much further than that
and eliminate abortions as a choice. And I’ve said as president, I
would defund Planned Parenthood and shift the money to pay for
adoption services to give young women a choice of life rather than
death.
I think that Newt is substantively right. The facts, it
seems to me, clearly support his contention that he is deeply
pro-life. However, as a purely political matter, I think it’s
undeniably true that Bachmann bloodied Gingrich and got the better
of this exchange.
