"I feel very angry and betrayed" by the GOP, some of whose elected officials have backed a "guest worker" immigration plan, abortion rights and tax increases, said Richard Viguerie, chairman of Conservative-HQ.com. "We should withhold support from all major Republican [presidential] candidates today. Not one of them deserves our support today," he told a ballroom full of activists at the Conservative Political Action Conference annual meeting Thursday.
Further, he said, conservatives should withhold "all support" from GOP national committees, which Viguerie said have not produced federal candidates who adhere to conservative principles.
Ken Blackwell, a failed GOP candidate for Ohio governor last year, agreed that conservatives should at least wait to endorse a presidential candidate. "The Republican party -- our natural home in a two-party system -- is in disarray," Blackwell lamented.
Ah yes, Ken Blackwell, recently deposed vote-fixer for the Ohio GOP. That would be this guy:
Wilberforce took what was then an unpopular position - ending slavery in the British Empire - and devoted his life to it. During his 18-year crusade, he endured ridicule, vilification and scorn but remained undaunted. He was inspired by God's amazing grace. And he ultimately succeeded.
Today, God's grace visits us again.
In Miami, Amillia Sonja Taylor captured the hearts of millions and the attention of doctors with her courage, strength and zest for life. Born at 21 weeks and six days, she weighed only 10 ounces and was 9.5 inches long - about the size of a ballpoint pen.
Last week, she was brought home by her doting family weighing four and a half pounds. The world's youngest baby ever to survive, little Amillia has moved the threshold of viability in the ongoing fight to protect the unborn.
See how neatly Blackwell ropes together three rather disparate ideas: slavery is wrong and was rectified by moral crusaders such as Wilberforce; it's a miracle that a baby delivered at 21 weeks has managed to survive; and of course, his real point:
Wilberforce implicitly understood that non-cooperation with evil is just as much a moral obligation as cooperation with good.
Today, we face another evil and we need another Wilberforce. Abortions in American have taken the lives of more than 48 million babies since the Supreme Court's 1973 decision.
Those of us in the pro-life moment must strive to be today's Wilberforce for the unborn. We must continue to not cooperate with this legalized evil. And we must continue to wage our battle in the courts, in Congress and legislative bodies across the nation, through direct action and in the hearts of men and women.
Now, by rightard standards of basic epistemology, ontology, and semiotics, this cheap piece of sophistry rings true. It is an idiomatic English-to-Dog Whistle guidebook, if one were to wish for such a thing. Simple phrases such as, "Hello, how are you today?" are reconfigured lego-like into interchangeable tropes such as, "You need to be on the right side of the existential struggle between Good and Evil. We, of course, are the right side."
Central to Blackwell's feeble presumptions is equating a pro-choice sentiment with a desire for, or at least studied indifference to abortion. I think that may offend as much as the basic principle underpinning its continued legalization in the first place. Because that one presumption has informed their ridiculous stereotypes for decades; it permits them a very wide rhetorical area in which they can purport to ventriloquize The Other's understanding of the sanctity of life.
I think Ken Blackwell's challenge should be taken up by all comers. I think that respect for life -- all life -- is essential to having a true moral compass. People like Blackwell simplistically (and insultingly) attribute religious people with superior moral precepts simply because they attend church and can recite the talking points chapter and verse. If they spent half that energy and discipline trying to help living people, to empower their fellow citizens on true quality-of-life issues, there would be a dent in the abortion rate overnight. I guarantee it.
As nice of a story as it is that American medical technology has excelled to the point where the viability of a baby can be adjusted to 21 weeks, there is another side to that as well. As the health care system continues to crumble and deny significant access, as it becomes more and more pwned by infinitely greedy insurance and pharmaceutical companies and HMOs, these tales of extraordinary measures taken will begin to stack unfavorably against the increasing numbers of uninsured Americans, people who cannot afford access, people whose chronic illnesses and inability to effectively treat them translates in to billions of dollars of lost productivity every year.
Suddenly being able to separate conjoined twins, or prolong a centenarian's life for nine months, while certainly wonderful things, are at the expense of something else in a finite resource pool. Many times hospitals will magnanimously underwrite some of the costs of these extreme cases. Which means they can afford to scale back costs across the board. Again, it is wonderful that we have the technology and skills to be able to undertake extraordinary medical procedures with high success rates. It would also be nice if people didn't have to risk losing their house when their kid breaks his arm, or pay $120 for a fucking asthma inhaler.
Anyway, that's a prime example of what these authoritarian cultists (they are "conservative" like I'm a watcher of Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?) have in terms of intellectuality and principle.
Conservatives said they are frustrated and angry, blaming the GOP's massive losses in the 2006 elections on Republicans who deviated from a hard-line conservative agenda. The mood also puts added pressure on a slew of GOP presidential candidates set to speak to the CPAC meeting Friday.
Social conservatives are leery of Giuliani, who supports abortion rights, and of McCain, who authored a campaign finance law that limits interest groups' financial influence in political campaigns. Romney's evolution to a socially conservative agenda pleases some religious conservatives, but some are still unhappy with his earlier, softer positions on gay rights and abortion rights.
There really is no pleasing these goofballs, and I mean that quite literally. If Roe v. Wade were repealed, and every homosexual either killed or driven underground, they'd then move to force everyone to go to their church. There's always another issue for them to rally around, because that's really all they're about, is imposing their discontent on the rest of us.
Put it this way: these people want to make Tony Fucking Snow a viable candidate for John Warner's Senate seat next year. Judging from their own web page, they seem unclear on what the word "agenda" means -- unless, you know, their real agenda is just to sell intellectually empty and coercive shit to the iconodules in the grand ballroom.
Nah. That couldn't be it.
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