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Douthat's Disingenuous Anti-Choice Blatherings
TalkLeft —
... Ross Douthat is right that the Republican Party did not, strictly speaking, get wiped out because of their anti-choice stance. That is just a constant albatross around GOP necks with women voters. And of course the reactionary image the Republicans have earned is a part of the overall image problem that it has. But that does not explain the 2008 election - 8 years of the George W. Presidency explains it. But when Douthat decided to discuss the choice jurisprudence (Roe and Casey, he seems to have no awareness of Carhart), he began the familiar nonsense: ...
No More Mister Nice Blog — ... On the op-ed page of today's New York Times, Ross Douthat attacks a straw man -- the argument that abortion politics doomed the GOP in the 2008 election. ...
A Movement That Can - And Cannot - Compromise
Ross Douthat —
I have an op-ed in today's Times on what will be a familiar theme to most of my readers: The pro-life movement and the possibility of an abortion compromise.
Hullabaloo — Absolutist Liars by digby BTD at Talk Left takes Ross Douthat to task for his disingenuous ramblings asserting that "Pro-Life" advocates are allegedly willing to compromise while the pro-choice advocates are absolutists. As he points out, the abortion laws are hardly sweeping as it is. Third trimester abortions are nearly unheard of and second trimester abortions are difficult and arduous to obtain. We have states making it nearly impossible for women to exercise their constitutional rights by failing to provide any low cost reproductive services and the anti-choice zealots forcing doctors who provide them out of the state. It's not like women haven't made many compromises ...
Litmus Tests
Ross Douthat —
To my comment that pro-lifers have spent most of their political capital over the last decade working within the Roe/Casey framework to push very modest restrictions on abortion, Conor Friedersdorf writes: ... pro-lifers have often made the compromises that Ross articulates insofar as they have focused on those issues. But are pro-life voters willing to elect politicians
who favor legal abortion, but also support "modest state-level
restrictions, from parental notification laws to waiting periods to
bans on what we see as the grisliest forms of abortion"? My sense is
that when it comes to politicians they are willing to support,
pro-lifers aren't willing to ...
Abortion 'compromise'
Political Animal —
ABORTION 'COMPROMISE'.... The Atlantic's Ross Douthat had an interesting item in the New York Times yesterday on abortion politics, specifically pushing back against the notion that the Republican Party's defeats in 2008 were the result of voter frustration with the GOP's opposition to abortion rights. Now, I'm not altogether sure just how common the argument is. In fact, while I can think of plenty of political observers who urging the party to modernize its approach to culture-war issues, I don't know of any prominent voices blaming the Republican defeats on its abortion position, making this something of a straw-man. But for the sake of discussion, let's go ahead and concede Douthat's central point -- the GOP had a ...
The Real Abortion Absolutists
The Corner on National Review Online —
[image] [image] NRO BLOG ROW | THE CORNER | ARCHIVES SEARCH E-MAIL PRINT RSS [image] [image] Monday, December 08, 2008 [image] The Real Abortion Absolutists [ Yuval Levin ] Ross Douthat s op-ed on abortion politics in yesterday s New York Times is characteristically level-headed and cogent, and very well worth your time. 12/08 09:32 AM [image] [image] [image] © National Review Online 2008. All Rights Reserved. Home | Search | NR / Digital | Donate | Media Kit | Contact Us ...
Ross Asshat And His Straw Fetus Of Doom
Firedoglake —
Photo by birderboy
Hooray! Ross Asshat, er, Douthat, has finally figured out the one single thing which caused the GOP to lose the last election: It's the abortion, stupid!
AN iron law of recent American politics dictates that any Republican setback at the polls will be quickly pinned on the pro-life movement. You might think that the Republican ...
Is Planned Parenthood Pro-Life?
Ross Douthat —
If you want a reason why an abortion compromise isn't possible, try this contrast: My idea of a plausible middle ground on the issue requires the overturning of Roe v. Wade, followed by a move toward a system in which abortion is legal but discouraged in, say, the first ten weeks of pregnancy, and basically illegal thereafter. Whereas Will Saletan and Freddie De Boer, both serious-minded pro-choicers, are convinced that a plausible middle ground would involve pragmatic pro-lifers throwing their support (and tax dollars) behind America's largest abortion provider, on the grounds that its commitment to preventing unplanned pregnancy makes Planned
Parenthood "the most effective pro-life ...
So we beat on, wanks against the current
Firedoglake —
In light of the smackdown of conservatism in November (it was in all of the papers) I find it interesting/amusing that certain parties on the right think that now is the time to negotiate a compromise on abortion. On their terms, of course: ...
About That Pelham Remake ...
Ross Douthat —
Ross' Bio [image] Subscribe to RSS News Feed Subscribe to this blog by Email Books [image] Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream Buy the book [image] Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class Buy the book Archives Recent Posts Monthly Archives Categories Essays The New York Times , December 2008 A Movement That Can (And Cannot) Compromise Compromise, rather than absolutism, has been the watchword of anti-abortion efforts for some time now. But the pro-life movement can't give up on overturning Roe without giving up on its very reason for being. The Washington Post , October 2008 Not So Wonderful Now Forget ...
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Abortion?
Ross Douthat —
I admire the persistence with which Will Saletan argues for common ground in the abortion debate, and attempts to sell his fellow liberals on the notion that reducing the abortion rate belongs in the Democratic Party's agenda. But I remain unconvinced that his preferred method for such reductions - a dramatic new push, whether political or cultural, to expand the use of contraception in the United States - would produce anything like the results that he envisions. Consider, for instance, the idea that the government should dramatically expand eligibility for free contraception through Medicaid, a notion that conservatives objected to when it was tacked onto the stimulus package, and which Saletan ...
Should Republicans Emphasize the Abortion Issue?
Weekly Standard Blog —
David Frum has written a column in The Week magazine called "The pro-life delusion" in which he claims that a recent Gallup poll showing that 51 percent of Americans self-ascribe as pro-life
is wrong. Worse, it’s misleading—and threatens to send Republicans careening in precisely the worst possible direction in pursuit of votes they will not find.
Charles Franklin of Pollster.com explains the poll’s big technical error. Gallup oversampled Republicans. At a time when only 1 in 5 Americans identifies as Republican, 32 percent of the respondents in Gallup’s survey group identified themselves as Republican.
Frum argues that this poll will lead Republicans to try ...
