7 Responses for "Thompson and the National Political Awareness Test"

1. Mike May 8th, 2007 at 9:16 pm 1

   Thompson was merely being honest and open. He slowly changed his position on abortion over time and now is pro-life. In other words he was pro-life before he thought he could possibly win the presidency so you know he is being honest now. You can’t say the same for Mitt.

2. FreeRepublicans.com May 8th, 2007 at 10:21 pm 2

   I’ve made a big deal about Rudy, Romney, and McCain’s “indecisiveness” as well. However, if abortion is to be the litmus test, then Brownback and Huckabee are “viable” and we all know that isn’t the case. At least I hope Brownback isn’t viable. That would be scary.

3. Jack O'Reilly May 9th, 2007 at 12:15 am 3

   This is old news for anyone who read the Ramesh Ponnuru article I posted last week:

   Third, acknowledge that you’ve gotten more pro-life over time. Twice in recent weeks, you have expressed perplexity that anyone thinks you were once pro-choice. Stephen Hayes quoted you in The Weekly Standard:

   “I have read these accounts and tried to think back 13 years ago as to what may have given rise to them. Although I don’t remember it, I must have said something to someone as I was getting my campaign started that led to a story. Apparently, another story was based upon that story, and then another was based upon that, concluding I was pro-choice.”

   But, he adds: “I was interviewed and rated pro-life by the National Right to Life folks in 1994, and I had a 100 percent voting record on abortion issues while in the Senate.”

   Your record in the mid-1990s was a bit less solidly pro-life than that. A 1994 issue of Republican Liberty apparently quotes you opposing public financing of abortion but adding: “The ultimate decision must be made by the woman. Government should treat its citizens as adults capable of making moral decisions on their own.” That same year, in which you ran for the Senate (and won), you said something similar in a debate: There should be no federal funding, and states should be allowed to enact parental notification and other “reasonable controls,” but government should not “come in and criminalize, let’s say, a young girl and her parents and her doctor as aiders and abettors that would be involved.”

   News accounts treated you as pro-choice, and there is no record of your campaign’s trying to dispute that characterization. The National Right to Life Committee did indeed endorse you in that race, and their post-election newsletter listed you among the victorious “pro-life candidates” that year. But that newsletter also grouped you with candidates who were opposed to the Freedom of Choice Act and federal funding of abortion, rather than with candidates who were pro-life across the board.

   In 1997, finally, your office sent a constituent a letter about abortion that included this line: “I believe that government should not interfere with individual convictions and actions in this area.”

   I think the record suggests that you were always uncomfortable with abortion and prepared to support some restrictions on it, but that your opposition deepened over the course of your time in public life. The whole country’s discomfort with abortion seems to have deepened over that time, too. (In part, that was a result of the partial-birth abortion debate in which you were involved.) If that is what happened, I don’t think pro-lifers will hold it against you to say so. Those pro-lifers who worry about the sincerity of Mitt Romney’s conversion do so because he seemed ardently pro-choice not long ago. As you said, you have a strong record of voting with pro-lifers that goes back to 1995.

4. Joseph T McCarthy May 9th, 2007 at 12:26 am 4

   You can say better for Mitt, he has converted and openly mocks the Roe decision.

5. Mike May 9th, 2007 at 2:41 am 5

   Converted? How wonderful! Just when he no longer needs pro-choice votes he stops being pro-choice! Joe you don’t buy it for one second, but you do see Mitt Romney as the best vehicle to continue Bush type policy on into the future. Too bad the rest of the base isn’t as foolish as you think they are.

6. Joseph T McCarthy May 9th, 2007 at 7:26 pm 6

   A character attack on me, how professional of you.

7. Langley May 14th, 2007 at 10:22 am 7

   That wasn’t a character attack, that was attacking something that you said and your consistent Bush-loving blind loyalty to the RNC.

   He didn’t make a personal slander against you. He attacked your position. There’s a difference.