ramesh ponnuru on romney and the abortion question:
I think we ought to be unsentimental about this question. Those of us who favor Romneys position on sanctity-of-life issues ought to care less about its sincerity than about its stability. We ought to care about whether he will abandon the position, that is, not whether he truly believes it. Pro-lifers would win very few votes in Congress if every representative voted his conscience, after all. Presumably a politician is more likely to stick with a position if he deeply believes it; but it is too facile to say that having flipped before, a politician will flop again.
As a test case, I offer the first President Bush. He converted from pro-choice to pro-life, and many questioned his sincerity since the conversion dovetailed so perfectly with his political needs. I myself think that he genuinely became a moderate pro-lifer: But does the answer really matter? He was a steady friend of pro-lifers during his administration, vetoing one pro-abortion bill after another.
If a politician cant project sincerity even when he is insincereor worse, cant do it when he really is sincerethen he is probably in the wrong business. The suspicious timing of Romneys change of mind may end up dooming his candidacy. But in that case, the most likely beneficiary is John McCain, the sincerity of whose own pro-life convictions has been questioned, and we will have to answer the same questions about him.
if pro-lifers want to support a romney candidacy, that’s really the question we need to ask — whether romney’s current position on abortion will change if he is elected. his earlier interviews weren’t helpful in determining the answer to this. i think that that his apparent change of heart is genuine, but i can certainly understand why many social conservatives aren’t convinced.
dean barnett offers a similar defense of romney’s past record here.
social conservatives will never get everything they want. we have had some of the most socially conservative presidents and some of the most liberal-friendly oval office occupants. what has been gained by the social conservatives as a result of their endorsement of certain candidates? abortion is still legal, gay marriage now exists in several states, and congress couldn’t make any progress on that flag-burning amendment. isn’t it possible that the president of the united states might not have the ability to make any major changes, no matter what his personal beliefs may be on these issues?
the same is true for mitt romney. he was lucky to accomplish as much as he did in massachusetts with the opposition he had.
tags: ’08 election, mitt romney, abortion