The Pro-Life Candidate

Now that it is clear that Sarah got the nod because the GOP wouldn't accept a pro-choice vice president, the McCain presidential campaign has been firmly hitched to the right-wing agenda of the pro-life evangelical base. He is now openly the candidate of the pro-life movement.

Maybe you were inclined to accept McCain's claim to maverick moderation, despite his voting record and public statements (and his zero ratings from NARAL and Planned Parenthood), but this latest accomodation of the radical right-wing of his party proves that he is no maverick, and no moderate.

Here's Sarah Blustain writing in The New Republic:

During his political career, McCain has participated in 130 reproductive health-related votes on Capitol Hill; of these, he voted with the anti-abortion camp in 125. [snip]

He has voted in favor of the global gag rule, which prevents U.S. funds from going to international family-planning clinics that use their own money to perform abortions, offer information about abortion, or take a pro-choice stand.

And he has voted to appoint half a dozen anti-abortion judges to the federal bench, as well as Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, and Robert Bork to the Supreme Court...

...McCain also joined efforts supported only by the radical wing of his party. He voted, for instance, with only one-fifth of the Senate to remove family-planning grants from a 1988 spending bill and with only 18 senators that same year against allowing Medicaid to pay for abortions in cases of rape or incest.

In 1994, the year after abortion provider David Gunn was killed outside a Florida clinic, McCain voted with 29 members of the Senate against establishing penalties for violent or threatening interference outside abortion clinics.

I'm sorry, but you can't be an agent of change and vote with Bush 90% of the time; you can't pretend to be a maverick and then vote with the most extreme radicals of your party to restrict the reproductive rights of women; and you sure as hell are no moderate if you pick Sarah Palin as your running mate.

For more about what the Palin pick tells us about John McCain see Memeorandum.

Technorati Tags: Sarah Palin, John McCain, Pro-Life, Maverick, Other Pretenses of the Right-Wing

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