Top social conservative leaders in key battleground states are urging John McCain not to pick a running mate who supports abortion rights, warning of dire consequences from a Republican base already unenthused about their nominee. <\/p>\n
McCain’s comments Wednesday to the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes that former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge’s pro-abortion rights views wouldn’t necessarily rule him out quickly found their way into the in-boxes of Christian conservatives. For those who have been anxiously awaiting McCain’s pick as a signal of his ideological intentions, there was deep concern that their worst fears about the Arizona senator may be realized. <\/p>\n
“It absolutely floored me,” said Phil Burress, head of the Ohio-based Citizens for Community Values. “It would doom him in Ohio.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In an email Burren wrote to leading evangelical activists and McCain aides tasked with Christian conservative outreach, he added that a pro-choice running mate “will end his bid for the presidency and spell defeat for other Republican candidates.”<\/p>\n
McCain almost certainly shouldn’t have said anything at all. He was unlikely to pick a pro-choice running mate anyway, but probably wanted to score some points by appearing open-minded on the subject.<\/p>\n
But now, when he picks a running mate who opposes abortion rights, McCain will look like he caved to pressure from the religious right, especially after they claim “victory” for having “forced McCain’s hand.”
\n
\nIn the meantime, the GOP base is worried about the possibility. James Muffett, head of Michigan’s Citizens for Traditional Values, joined McCain for a meeting on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
To select a running mate who supports abortion rights would be “wrong-headed, short-sighted, fracture the Republican Party and not allow us to capitalize on the Democratic Party’s fracture right now,” Muffett argued. <\/p>\n
“If he does that, it makes our job 100 times harder. It would dampen enthusiasm at a time when evangelicals are looking for ways to gin up enthusiasm.” <\/p>\n
McCain, Muffett said, got that message in their meeting. <\/p>\n
“Some people in the movement say it would be the kiss of death. He heard that in the room last night.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
My hunch is this is much ado about nothing. McCain is even further to the right than Bush on reproductive rights, and the likelihood of him picking a pro-choice veep, and risking the ire of the conservative movement, is very remote.<\/p>\n
But given McCain’s willingness to bring it up, expect the religious right to talk about little else until the official announcement is made.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few months ago, Chris Matthews asked John McCain if he would consider a pro-choice running mate, such as former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge. “I don’t know if [his position on the issue] would stop him, but it would be difficult apoteketreceptfritt.com ,” McCain said. This week, McCain reversed course a bit, saying he might […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}