It's always illuminating (on some level) to watch "This Week." Ken Mehlman, the President's campaign manager, did a great job, as always -- he's a very smart guy, who was a committed Republican back at law school (he was a year ahead of me).
Mark Halperin was out front in the political panel. It's amazing that nary a word was said about the infamous "no need to hold both sides equally accountable" memo that surfaced Friday -- it would have been interesting to hear what he had to say.
At one point during the panel (consisting of George Will, Cokie Roberts, Halperin and Fareed Zakaria), everyone seemed to reach consensus that the President and John Kerry were deploying different strategies in Friday night's debate -- namely, that Kerry was reaching out to undecideds, and the President was looking to solidify his base. The evidence? The panel pointed particularly to the question on abortion.
I beg to differ. Members of the Republican base are not the only Americans to oppose federal funding of abortion and partial birth abortion, or to support parental notification. Actually, a healthy majority of Americans are with the President on all three issues (and note that, contrary to what Kerry tried to suggest, parental notification laws always include a "judicial bypass" option, specifically to address Kerry's horrible "16 year old raped by her father" scenario).
In fact, media people seem to assume that everyone is pro-choice, because everyone they know is. But these polls on abortion show a pretty closely divided country -- note especially the 5/04 CBS poll that found that 36 percent wanted abortionto be generally available; 37% wanted stricter limits; 25% said it should not be legal at all (in other words, 62% want either more limits or no abortion at all). A Fox news poll (also here) found 44% of Americans consider themselves pro-choice; 47% consider themselves pro-life.
Best of all was this poll conducted in 1999 for the left-wing Center for Gender Equality. In what must have been a nasty surprise to Faye Wattleton (the center's leader, and an abortion rights activist), the poll found that 70% of women supported more restrictions on abortion; 40% thought it should be available only the cases of rape, incest or life of the mother; 13% wouldn't permit it at all.
Given all this, it's not so clear to me that President Bush is merely trying to rally the "hard core base"with the way he's talking about abortion. Couldn't it be that John Kerry is watering down his views, not simply to reach undecided voters, but because he knows a majority of voters in general don't actually agree with his support for things like partial birth abortion?
Mark Halperin was out front in the political panel. It's amazing that nary a word was said about the infamous "no need to hold both sides equally accountable" memo that surfaced Friday -- it would have been interesting to hear what he had to say.
At one point during the panel (consisting of George Will, Cokie Roberts, Halperin and Fareed Zakaria), everyone seemed to reach consensus that the President and John Kerry were deploying different strategies in Friday night's debate -- namely, that Kerry was reaching out to undecideds, and the President was looking to solidify his base. The evidence? The panel pointed particularly to the question on abortion.
I beg to differ. Members of the Republican base are not the only Americans to oppose federal funding of abortion and partial birth abortion, or to support parental notification. Actually, a healthy majority of Americans are with the President on all three issues (and note that, contrary to what Kerry tried to suggest, parental notification laws always include a "judicial bypass" option, specifically to address Kerry's horrible "16 year old raped by her father" scenario).
In fact, media people seem to assume that everyone is pro-choice, because everyone they know is. But these polls on abortion show a pretty closely divided country -- note especially the 5/04 CBS poll that found that 36 percent wanted abortionto be generally available; 37% wanted stricter limits; 25% said it should not be legal at all (in other words, 62% want either more limits or no abortion at all). A Fox news poll (also here) found 44% of Americans consider themselves pro-choice; 47% consider themselves pro-life.
Best of all was this poll conducted in 1999 for the left-wing Center for Gender Equality. In what must have been a nasty surprise to Faye Wattleton (the center's leader, and an abortion rights activist), the poll found that 70% of women supported more restrictions on abortion; 40% thought it should be available only the cases of rape, incest or life of the mother; 13% wouldn't permit it at all.
Given all this, it's not so clear to me that President Bush is merely trying to rally the "hard core base"with the way he's talking about abortion. Couldn't it be that John Kerry is watering down his views, not simply to reach undecided voters, but because he knows a majority of voters in general don't actually agree with his support for things like partial birth abortion?
posted by LadybugUSA at 10:33 AM
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