Who will you vote for in the next Presidential election if it comes down to two pro-choice candidates - Guiliani vs. Clinton?
Justin Taylor has written a very thoughtful post on this, with a list of ten thoughts that are helping him work through the issue. Here are his thoughts, but it would be worth reading the
entire article.
- I do not want Giuliani to be nominated for the Republican ticket. For those who are convictionally pro-life and want to see justice for the unborn prevail and Roe v. Wade overturned, it seems difficult to support Giuliani's candidacy at this stage when there are other viable pro-life candidates.
- The ballgame changes if the race comes down to a pro-choice Republican vs. a pro-choice Democrat.
- One has to ask whether or not it can be reasonably ascertained if one pro-choice candidate would be better than the other in terms of the cause of life. The key word, I think, is reasonable. We're not talking infallibility here.
- The next president will undoubtedly get to nominate justices to the Supreme Court. No one doubts that Hillary Clinton will nominate judges with a judicial philosophy at odds with constructionalism and originalism.
- I think there are good reasons to believe that Giuliani would appoint constructionalists and originalists, as he has promised to do--in part because I think he will want to placate the Republican base. (Even if he does this for only one term in order to win reelection, which I think is doubtful, then the next point still stands.)
- One must recognize that if it comes down to Guiliani vs. Clinton, a vote for a third-party candidate will undoubtedly guarantee a Clinton presidency (likely for the next eight years). Read that sentence again. Now read it one more time. I think it's incontrovertible, and I'm not sure some pro-lifers have sufficiently recognized this.
- The irony, then, is that being a single-issue voter on the cause of justice for the unborn can actually lead to increased injustice for the unborn.
- At the end of the day, perhaps we can categorize the two positions as (1) principled pro-life purity and (2) principled pro-life pragmatism.
- It seems that the Religious Right (by which I mean the James Dobson Republicans--the elite evangelical political influencers of soccer moms and the like) are in a pickle: Mitt Romney is a Mormon, Fred Thompson doesn't seem like a Christian, and Mike Huckabee doesn't seem electable. From my seat in the bleachers, it seems like they should pick one and stick with him.
- It is a valid, legitimate point that if the Republicans nominate a pro-choice candidate, then this precedence opens the door for the nomination of pro-choice Republican candidates in the future.
1 comment:
One of the major premises of the strongly pro-life camp is that Roe v Wade can be overturned. It probably cannot be completely overturned. However, what is more likely is that the supreme court (especially if it moves in a more constructionist direction) will tell the states to deal with the issue themselves which essentially but not really is overturning Roe. In the absense of Roe abortion is illegal in Michigan. The '73 decision caused irrepairable damage that won't be completely erased however the best direction forward is throwing off the federal government concerning the issue, which it seems likely for Guiliani to do.
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