Republicans should give up on abortion.

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

Yes...because we should have the right to carry disease and to bash our civilization and brightest minds every chance we get...

Ingrateful Luddism... pass it on... ... I mean, if you don't like science, you can go live in Chad or the Congo.

Chad and the Congo might seem like paradises of humanity relative to the sick world you dream of.

[Person Man]

Yes...because we should have the right to carry disease and to bash our civilization and brightest minds every chance we get...

Ingrateful Luddism... pass it on... ... I mean, if you don't like science, you can go live in Chad or the Congo.

Chad and the Congo might seem like paradises of humanity relative to the sick world you dream of.

or the world ndly (quoting Justice White's Concurrance in Griswold) world that you dream of, for that matter....where burning books is valued more than reading them....face it...if it were for people like you, humanity would still be living in caves.

EDIT: Seriously though, there should be laws prohibiting the genetic counseling that would discriminate based on child's future gender, sexual orientation or race. There should also be administrative regulations and public health care coverage of genetic counseling/therapy as well. Every child should have the best chance at life that their parents can provide them....and this doesn't mean abortion, either. What it does mean is that we are going to have the same technology as they did in Gattica, but we will make sure as many of our children as possible will have access to this technology.

[phk]

Interestingly on the UCSD campus where I go to school.

A 1991 poll showed 77% say "yes" to whether abortion should be legal or not. By 2002 this number had dropped to 70%.

I think the main reasons for this swing if anything were the widespread availability of contraceptives, condoms and the coming of the pill.

Also interestingly during this time the amount of people who identified as "conservative" actually fell from 19% to 15%. While those who identify as far left increased from 2% to 3% and those who identify as liberal increased from 33% to 36%. The amount that identified as "moderate" stayed static at 46%

...you also got to remember that 1991 was a peak of pro-choice activism in this country and 2002 was a peak of religious right influence in this country.

Even than, self-described liberals increased by 4% and self-described conservatives decreased by 4%.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I agree. Abortion is legal since about 30 years in the USA and is accepted for all the developed countries.
Abortion is one of the typical social issues who encounters a very strong opposition before being applicated, but who is gradually accepted after that, until being almost uninamously approved by the people. The USA will probably know these evolution and the GOP needs to accept that.

[tmthforu94]

Well, Republicans should lighten up on abortion. For now, it should fade into the background. Maybe if we get a big lead in congress sometime, and have a Republican President, we can bring it up again. But for now, it is only alienating important voters.

[Person Man]

Well, Republicans should lighten up on abortion. For now, it should fade into the background. Maybe if we get a big lead in congress sometime, and have a Republican President, we can bring it up again. But for now, it is only alienating important voters.

Smart.

[Keystone Phil]

Well, Republicans should lighten up on abortion. For now, it should fade into the background. Maybe if we get a big lead in congress sometime, and have a Republican President, we can bring it up again. But for now, it is only alienating important voters.

Very interesting considering one of the images in your signature. Then again, I guess I should consider the other image in your signature and understand that opportunism is fairly common... 

[Person Man]

Well, Republicans should lighten up on abortion. For now, it should fade into the background. Maybe if we get a big lead in congress sometime, and have a Republican President, we can bring it up again. But for now, it is only alienating important voters.

Very interesting considering one of the images in your signature. Then again, I guess I should consider the other image in your signature and understand that opportunism is fairly common... 

Burn...

[paul718]

WHen we talk about the Republicans "dropping" or "giving up on" the abortion issue, what are we talking about?  The party platform?

[Keystone Phil]

Kind of like running for Senate in Pennsylvania when living conveniently close to DC in Virginia.  That's quite an opportunity.

...

Which is what almost every Senator does. God forbid the man be near his family!

I love how some of the biggest Santorum critics even conceded that that was a silly point to ever use against him.

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...so give up on two issues (especially the first) that will basically alienate a large chunk of our base. That...uh...makes sense, I guess...

By the way, I love the buzzwords used on issues that people don't like discussing like "alienate." Right, as if taking a stand on other issues won't "alienate" people that disagree with us.

[Keystone Phil]

See, isn't it annoying to have to constantly defend someone against idiotic assertions?

Haha, ok, we won't go down that road. 

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...

Some of us consider an issue that deals with life to be above just the state level. I don't care what your personal position is on the issue; just realize why some of us think it's a national issue.

Opposition to the war wasn't popular for the Dems but it was the right thing, in their opinion. Looks like it paid off.

I'm very sorry that we have some people in this party that now want to drop any issue that isn't popular enough. And then we wonder why we have so few real leaders these days...

I love your double standards, too. Apparently, being Pro Life and against gay marriage is now "offensive" to people outside of our base. Interesting. Now let's take your route and go super libertarian on economics. Let's just focus on that. After all, according to the elite, that's all that's "important"/worth your time. Yeah, let's really re-establish those stereotypes about the Rich Republicans. That won't turn people off.

And, no, being dedicated to our base isn't why we lost in these past two cycles. Being dedicated to our base didn't lead to an economic collapse. People didn't vote on ideology; they voted after they were thrown into a panic. I'm never going to be one of those people that say we lost because McCain wasn't conservative enough. However, the simple fact of the matter was that he didn't have in place a campaign that turned out that base that helped us so much in 2002 and 2004. Palin couldn't do that alone.

[Marokai Backbeat]

And, no, being dedicated to our base isn't why we lost in these past two cycles. Being dedicated to our base didn't lead to an economic collapse. People didn't vote on ideology; they voted after they were thrown into a panic. I'm never going to be one of those people that say we lost because McCain wasn't conservative enough. However, the simple fact of the matter was that he didn't have in place a campaign that turned out that base that helped us so much in 2002 and 2004. Palin couldn't do that alone.

You bring up 2006, but then focus on one specific reason of why Republicans lost this election cycle. Did you lose in 2006 because of an economic collapse?

I'm not sure what you mean by "people don't vote on ideology" anyway, because the first thing you're going to do about my above post is say "No, we lost there because of the war." People always vote on ideology. Certain events may highlight certain negative aspects of a particular ideology, but people still vote on it.

I'm at a loss for why you or alot of Republicans can't understand that taking a hard stance against something that has widespread support (Abortion) or taking a hard stance against something with continually gaining popular support (Gay Marriage) is a wise move (strictly politically speaking, please don't drone on about how I don't care about 'life') for a party to make. It seems that many in the party are determined to make sure the Republican Party remains the Oklahoma Party.

And before I end this, something just dawned on me. You're saying that people don't vote on ideology, they voted because they were thrown into a panic? Were people not thrown into a panic by the Republicans in 2002 and 2004? Just wondering.

To become more popular and expand your reach, as Ive said repeatedly, the Republican Party has to stop putting such heavy emphasis on social issues, and become more tolerant of other opinions. There are several Democrats that I can think of on this board alone that would become Republicans if they didn't feel like it was hijacked (well, it is) by religious fundamentalists. Many Republicans, even some from the families of popular Republicans of decades past, have either switched their political affiliation or just stopped caring about the party altogether, and it's not because of economics, it's because you've become the Palin/Huckabee Party.

[Lunar]

Why not just run the right candidates for the right districts?  Emphasize life on national campaigns due to a decision calculus based on how many people you're turning off, how many people you're turning on/organizing with, and what the national mood cares about.

I don't think the national public's attitudes towards abortion has really changed that much since when Bush got elected and had a sizable majority in Congress.

I mean, this thread argues it from a strategical standpoint and that's the way to address the issue in this context.  If the national mood changes, then so be it.  I'm not convinced that the organizing and energizing benefits of having a pro-life candidate are outweighed by all the people supposedly being turned off by it.  Hell, I think the people most turned off by it are feminists that aren't going to the GOP.  What about the people lukewarm towards the issue?  And surely the GOP still has the slightly more winning issues involving parental notification laws and whatnot, even though lately such propositions aren't doing super hot.

But social issues are always going to be behind social conservatism and there's always going to be social conservatives as a huge constituency in the electorate, whether they know they're social conservatives or not.  The next frontier is the gays and the GOP's ahead on that.

It's probably more likely than not that we'll never see another Democratic presidential nominee that opposes gay marriage.  Even Obama opposed Prop 8

[Marokai Backbeat]

I'm not saying that Republicans should drop the issues entirely, I'm just saying, with issues like Abortion where there is alot of support, placing such a heavy emphasis in opposition to Abortion isn't always a wise move nationally. In the South, I'm sure you can get alot of support for anti-abortion candidates, but does the Republican Party want to focus on the morality of one region and apply it to the rest of the country? Don't they want to avoid being a regional party?

Though popular support for Gay Marriage is on the rise each year, it would be silly for Democrats to run a candidate that supports Gay Marriage and talks about it on the campaign trail at every opportunity, and pledged to appoint "pro-gay justices" and so on. Democrats are wise enough to place emphasis on liberal social values where necessary, but they also know where to ignore (or outright oppose) the issue. Republicans have no such tact, most of the time, anyway.

[Smash255]

See, isn't it annoying to have to constantly defend someone against idiotic assertions?

Haha, ok, we won't go down that road. 

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...

Some of us consider an issue that deals with life to be above just the state level. I don't care what your personal position is on the issue; just realize why some of us think it's a national issue.

Opposition to the war wasn't popular for the Dems but it was the right thing, in their opinion. Looks like it paid off.

I'm very sorry that we have some people in this party that now want to drop any issue that isn't popular enough. And then we wonder why we have so few real leaders these days...

I love your double standards, too. Apparently, being Pro Life and against gay marriage is now "offensive" to people outside of our base. Interesting. Now let's take your route and go super libertarian on economics. Let's just focus on that. After all, according to the elite, that's all that's "important"/worth your time. Yeah, let's really re-establish those stereotypes about the Rich Republicans. That won't turn people off.

And, no, being dedicated to our base isn't why we lost in these past two cycles. Being dedicated to our base didn't lead to an economic collapse. People didn't vote on ideology; they voted after they were thrown into a panic. I'm never going to be one of those people that say we lost because McCain wasn't conservative enough. However, the simple fact of the matter was that he didn't have in place a campaign that turned out that base that helped us so much in 2002 and 2004. Palin couldn't do that alone.

However, its not like you can really argue the base didn't turn out.  The base did turn out and voted very heavily Republican.  You lost because you got your asses kicked in among moderates, Dems did a good job at getting out the vote of people who typically didn't vote & young voters went heavily Democratic.

[Keystone Phil]

You bring up 2006, but then focus on one specific reason of why Republicans lost this election cycle. Did you lose in 2006 because of an economic collapse?

LOL @ the idea that we lost because of social conservatism in 2006.

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I'm sorry that you're that naive.

Yeah, people voted on the war. Last time I checked, that's not fully denouncing an ideology.

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...or determined to stand up for what people strongly believe. Civil rights in the south wasn't popular and the Dems stood by that. It took them quite awhile to recover from that but they stuck to it and ended up just fine.

I really find no need to continue this because you personally enjoy abortion or at least enjoy mocking the Pro Life movement every single chance that you get. Don't deny it either.

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They weren't thrown into panic by a party. Maybe you don't remember the headlines from those early October days. The Dems didn't have to do force the issue at all. It was there, people saw it, people didn't care to have a substantive debate on how to solve the issue.

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And like I told the other naive ones (again, I have no problem being arrogant with arrogant people that mock what I stand for), you shed social conservatism and you lose a lot of voters. It just so happens that people here a) don't care about social conservatism at all so losing those voters won't matter or b) are far left wing Dem hacks that want to throw bombs at social conservatism and really don't care if we lose voters over it.

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No, I really don't think that the base turned out. McCain's campaign struggled with GOTV. If we had a team in place that turned people out in droves like they did in 2004, we wouldn't have lost Indiana or North Carolina and probably could have won Florida and the Congressional district in Nebraska.

I'm not saying that we wouldn't have still lost but it wouldn't have been nearly as bad.

[Person Man]

I mean, even folks to your right don't think its a good idea to push abortion when you don't have the credibility on issues that are of more immediate import.

[Keystone Phil]

I mean, even folks to your right don't think its a good idea to push abortion when you don't have the credibility on issues that are of more immediate import.

Good for them.

I'm not saying that this has to be our top issue or anything but I'm not just going to support a "We really don't care about this. Do whatever" platform on this issue and people here are really foolish if they think that that would end up producing a net gain for us in support. We'd lose tons of voters and changing our position on that issue alone is not enough to gain a lot of support.

[Person Man]

Well, just do what the Ds have done on gun control. Still have it in the platform, but have a big tent on the issue and don't bring it up as often.

[Keystone Phil]

Well, just do what the Ds have done on gun control. Still have it in the platform, but have a big tent on the issue and don't bring it up as often.

I've stated enough times that I don't mind Pro Choice Republicans. I worked my ass off for one in 2004. However, I'm not going to just shut up about the issue/"don't bring it up as often" when I feel that it needs to be discussed.

[Person Man]

Well, just do what the Ds have done on gun control. Still have it in the platform, but have a big tent on the issue and don't bring it up as often.

I've stated enough times that I don't mind Pro Choice Republicans. I worked my ass off for one in 2004. However, I'm not going to just shut up about the issue/"don't bring it up as often" when I feel that it needs to be discussed.

...just be wise about it, alright... You're a smart guy..so you should know when it is most important to bring it up....and you can also take the advice from Smid and not try to demonize the opposition on the issue.

[Keystone Phil]

....and you can also take the advice from Smid and not try to demonize the opposition on the issue.

...

I don't know what isn't clear about my statement saying that I not only have no problem supporting Pro Choice candidates but that I actually worked for one in 2004.

[Person Man]

I know...but you have been quite hateful when dealing with some pro-choicers on this site....they were probably hateful...or at least offensive, too... but we all have to agree to stop.

[Keystone Phil]

I know...but you have been quite hateful when dealing with some pro-choicers on this site....they were probably hateful...or at least offensive, too... but we all have to agree to stop.

I haven't been "hateful." I speak up for what I believe. I may get "combative" when certain Pro Choicers get condescending and arrogant, tell me that I'm backwards, etc.

[Person Man]

I know...but you have been quite hateful when dealing with some pro-choicers on this site....they were probably hateful...or at least offensive, too... but we all have to agree to stop.

I haven't been "hateful." I speak up for what I believe. I may get "combative" when certain Pro Choicers get condescending and arrogant, tell me that I'm backwards, etc.

We just have to be civil, that's all.