McCain's Double Flip-Flop on Abortion
In just the latest blow to his tattered maverick myth, the McCain camp is signaling its man will perform yet another about-face on abortion. Eight years after attacking George W. Bush's defense of a Republican platform which called for banning all abortions, even in cases of rape, incest and to protect the life of the mother, John McCain too will kowtow to the GOP's radical right. As it turns out, that surrender follows Mr. Straight Talk's earlier reversal on overturning Roe v. Wade.
During the 2000 campaign, John McCain ripped into then Governor George W. Bush for supporting a GOP abortion ban plank at odds with his stated position recognizing exemptions for rape, incest and the life and health of the mother. Just last year, the Arizona Senator reiterated that he wanted to revise the Republican platform to recognize those exceptions.
Alas, that was then, this is now. Already walking a tightrope between his party's conservative base and independent voters his campaign is now trying so hard to woo, John McCain is having yet another born-again experience on the issue. Facing threats from the likes of the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins (who claimed McCain would be "aborting his own campaign"), McCain backer Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) made clear the Republican nominee would likely abandon his earlier position. As ABC reported:
Despite McCain's support for changing the platform in 2000 and 2007, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., the co-chairman of McCain's Justice Advisory Committee, significantly downplays the possibility that McCain would revise the party's call for a nationwide constitutional ban on abortion with no exceptions.
"I don't think that's going to happen. I think you're going to see a platform process that is going to maintain that plank," said Brownback, a leading abortion rights opponent who endorsed McCain after ending his own White House bid.
"There are going to be a number of people supporting his nomination that want that plank left exactly as it is," he said. "They're going to be a strong majority."
Such a reversal would constitute John McCain's second major flip-flop on reproductive rights in 18 months, all in the cause of assuaging the Republican Party's suspicious social conservatives.
McCain in the run-up to his '08 presidential bid reversed course on the issue of overturning Roe v. Wade. In 1999, the supposed maverick was supposedly concerned about the health and safety of American women:
"I'd love to see a point where it is irrelevant, and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary. But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations."
But by 2006 with his knee-bending to Jerry Falwell and others now well underway, McCain announced to ABC's George Stephanopolous that he not only wanted to see Roe overturned, but supported a constitutional amendment banning abortion as well:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me ask one question about abortion. Then I want to turn to Iraq. You're for a constitutional amendment banning abortion, with some exceptions for life and rape and incest.
MCCAIN: Rape, incest and the life of the mother. Yes.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So is President Bush, yet that hasn't advanced in the six years he's been in office. What are you going to do to advance a constitutional amendment that President Bush hasn't done?
MCCAIN: I don't think a constitutional amendment is probably going to take place, but I do believe that it's very likely or possible that the Supreme Court should - could overturn Roe v. Wade, which would then return these decisions to the states, which I support.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And you'd be for that?
MCCAIN: Yes, because I'm a federalist. Just as I believe that the issue of gay marriage should be decided by the states, so do I believe that we would be better off by having Roe v. Wade return to the states. And I don't believe the Supreme Court should be legislating in the way that they did on Roe v. Wade.
Ever since locking up the Republican presidential nomination, John McCain has been trying to run away from both his party and his president and towards the middle of the road. On Sunday, his senior strategist Charlie Black engaged in some wishful thinking, labeling his McCain "slightly right of center." But when it comes to the abortion issue, as Jennifer Blei Stockman, the co-chairwoman of Republican Majority for Choice put it, "the word 'moderate' is going to disappear from any description of McCain."
UPDATE: CNN legal analyst and The Nine author Jeffrey Toobin notes that a McCain Supreme Court could overturn Roe in "maybe a year."
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