The GOP Abortion Two-Step

For the classic example of what Matt and I are talking about, note George Allen’s performance on Press the Meat this morning. I’ll put the relevant parts up as soon as the transcript is online, but Allen gave the classic performance. Russert asked about overturning Roe, and Allen talked about how Roe has been “interpreted” to prohibit parental notification statutes. (I assume most of you know this, but–in several senses–sadly, no!) Russert repeats the question, and Allen keeps babbling about how parents have to be informed if their daughter gets a tattoo. Now, it would be nice if the highly-paid host was aware that Allen was lying through his teeth. And it would be nicer if a non-useless Democrat would have pointed that out, but alas we were dealing with Joe Biden. But we really need to learn something from this. Here’s the Shorter Republican Party on abortion:

Q: Do you think first-trimester abortions should be banned?

A: We need parental notification laws!

Q: But do you think first-trimester abortions should be banned?

A: We should pass pointless laws arbitrarily banning a particular second-trimester abortion procedure! We can give it a scientifically meaningless scary name! Scary names, people!

Q: Do you agree with your party’s platform, which would make abortion first-degree murder in all fifty states?

A: States’ rights!

Q: ?

(Repeat ad infinitum ad nauseum)

What does this tell you? Again, it should be obvious to anybody more competent than Joe Biden what the play is here. Unless we assume that the Republicans are irrationally keeping an extremely popular position under wraps, and that every public opinion survey is wrong, we should make knowledge of the Republicans’ actual position on the issue as clear as possible, as often as possible. Do what the Republicans do: no matter what comes up, debate the issue on favorable terrain. Any Democrat should immediately point out that overturning Roe has nothing to do with parental notification; it’s about whether pre-viability abortions should be criminalized. Period. Every time the Democrats talk about John McCain, in addition to showing a lot of pictures of the “maverick” getting all smoochy-woochy with Mr. 36%, they should pound two points over and over again:

• John McCain wants to privatize Social Security.
• John McCain supports the South Dakota abortion law. John McCain supports banning all abortions. John McCain believes that states can force you to give birth to your own sister or your rapist’s child.

Let him dodge and weave around this and destroy his “straight talking” reputation, or endorse positions that are both awful on the merits and highly unpopular. It ain’t rocket science.

…in response to Pithlord’s comment, to be clear McCain is on the record saying he would have signed the SD bill.