Quote of the day
October 16, 2008
Just as 19th-Century Republicans eventually ran out of Union generals from Ohio, so the modern Republican Party has bumped up against the statute of limitations on campaigns against hippies.
October 16, 2008
Just as 19th-Century Republicans eventually ran out of Union generals from Ohio, so the modern Republican Party has bumped up against the statute of limitations on campaigns against hippies.
October 16th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
I apologize for hijacking this thread in the first post:
It struck me as McCain had a major “Ouch, I just stomped on my dick” moment last night. That was where he ridiculed the health of the mother as a consideration for abortions. I know he has some base problems, but saying that the health of a mother does not matter in medical matters had to have churned the collective guts of the female half of the population. Fetus’s don’t vote, but women do, and to cavalierly blow off their health as inconsequential likely just turned a whuppin into a rout.
Thanks John! Good work!
October 17th, 2008 at 8:20 am
It was surreal and politically stupid for McCain to talk about “health” with scare quotes like that.
That said, the point he was trying to make was a reasonable one, although irrelevant to what Obama was saying. As I understand it, there have been efforts to interpret “health of the mother” to include not just her physical, but also her emotional health. And since emotional health is not really amenable to medical scrutiny, it can be used as a loophole to circumvent bans on late-term abortions that would otherwise be illegal.
Restricting late-term abortions to cases where they are necessary to protect the life or physical health of the mother is a reasonable position to have. (In fact, it’s my position.)
Arguing in bad faith that Barack Obama wants to murder babies under the guise of caring about the mother’s health, is an unreasonable, untrue, nasty, and typically Republican position to take.
And advancing that bad faith argument by acting as though you don’t give a shit about a mother’s health, seems somehow emblematic of a McCain campaign that just can’t get it together. Ready, fire, aim.
October 17th, 2008 at 9:41 am
I understand that he was talking in code to the anti-abortionists, but to those not tuned in to the dog-whistle he was blowing it was really jarring. It was also really stupid. He already has the base vote, with the exception of some of the paleo’s like Chris Buckley, covered, so to put that out without explanation was not well thought through. Unfortunately Schieffer chose to move on at that moment, because Obama could have made some real hay with that one.
I rather enjoyed the debate. The format where the participants could actually talk to each other is much better than the serial press conference style of the other debates. McCain was not very comfortable in it, as evidenced by the dead-horse flogging of Joe, but I found it instructive. Obama was just sitting back watching McCain implode and enjoying every minute of it. Obama showed himself to be completely unflappable, which got him a lot of votes, I think.