[Is Mitt backpedalling from his backpedalling from his backpedalling ..., or is he etch-a-sketching again?]
A friendly question for pro-life Romney enthusiasts
By Phil Lawler | August 31, 2012
www.catholicculture.org/commentary/the-city-gates.cfm?id=399
If you were already so certain that Mitt Romney is a great champion of the pro-life cause, why are you exulting over a single sentence in his speech?
“As president, I will protect the sanctity of life.” That was it. One sentence—9 words—in the course of a 38-minute speech. Not a developed thought but a throwaway line. Not a concrete promise, not a plan of action or proposed legislation, but a stock phrase.
Is that really all it takes to make pro-lifers happy? Are we really so desperate that when a presidential candidate makes a polite nod in our direction, we swoon—like the smitten high-school sophomore who is so excited that the star quarterback smiled at her, and doesn’t notice that he already has a steady girl?
Look: Romney’s pro-life credentials are shaky. His campaign now says that his latest gaffe–a virtual acceptance of the Roe decision—was a misstatement of his real beliefs. But it’s the sort of misstatement that could only be made by someone who has not devoted enough attention to the issue to recognize the pitfalls in the language.
There are reasons for pro-lifers to choose Romney in this year’s election. He is not a hardcore ideologue, not a sworn proponent of legal, accessible, taxpayer-funded abortion on demand. He is not Barack Obama. That might be reason enough to vote for him.
But it’s no reason to ignore his shortcomings. It’s no reason to pretend, when he tosses you a bone, that he’s treated you to a steak dinner. On the contrary, it’s reason to ask him to heighten the contradictions between himself and Obama, to take a stronger stand.
Romney promises to protect the sanctity of life. Good. What does that mean to him? What does he plan to do about it? Those are the questions that pro-lifers should be asking on the day after the convention. He gave us a polite nod, and we should respond with polite applause—not with rapturous joy. He said he would do something and we should ask for specifics, demanding more, rather than wasting our time trying to convince each other that he is the answer to all our prayers.
In politics as in the repair shop, the squeaky wheel gets oiled. If pro-lifers are satisfied with a throwaway line in a candidate’s speech, that’s all we’re ever likely to get.
Those that either support Romney or are considering voting for Romney must do so prepared to engage in a full time, high pressure campaign to steer him away from his real inclinations.
The only way he might at least some of the time choose the more moral option in any given situation will be because of fear of a highly organized and unified revolt on the part of “social conservatives.”
And it will have to be done over and over and over again without rest.
And it needs to be started now.
Every time he opens his mouth the letters and calls must pour in.
Any in fighting must be made subordinate to presenting a unified front.
Otherwise there is no chance of reining him in. And even with this approach there are going to be very serious problems as the best possible case.
Kathleen,
This is so very true,but, you must keep in mind that your only alternative now is Obama and he is openly supporting abortion at any stage for any reason. Therefore, Rommey is the lesser of 2 evils. ( You go to war with the army you have , not the army you wish for.)
The country is prochoice because most baptized American Catholics are – period.
Had the Sixties Revolution and Vatican II not occured and had popes and bishops forbade heretiical insanity and moral relativism to supplant orthodoxy and chastity, BY NOW America, given its Catholic birth rate prior to the Council ( and, later, Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe ) would have become OVERWHELMINGLY A MAJORITY CATHOLIC nation.
Of course, that didn’t happen.
And, of course, since God leaves sinners to their own devices, matters have spun completely out of control. Hence, there are no clear decisions which even CAN be taken any more.
Romney belongs to a goofball sect that is not even Christian. Yet, we’ve never even had an actual Christian ( i.e., a believing, practicing member of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church ) as president. Not once: JFK was a public heretic.
What remains of the “Republic”, politically and para-culturally is shot.
What IS “American culture”, anyway? Was there ever such a beast? The Constitution is a relic. The separation of powers is meaningless and federalism died on July 3, 1863 at Gettysburg, PA.
It is said that all optimists and all pessimists are idiots. If true, then the realists among us ( i.e., Catholics unaffected by either the world or the rotten anti-theology of the Modernists running the Church today ) are the only nartural reservoir of hope remaining.
It is also said that one must be careful for what he prays – he may get it. We have.
Now, let us pray God may receive what He deserves.
And THAT is the only “change” that will ever matter.
Now, let us pray God may receive what He deserves.
Amen. But let’s also pray that we get better than we deserve.
He withholds His wrath, I think, because His Son resides in many tabernacles, and because Americans have been very generous. For all the bad, this country has been a great comfort for the poor and oppressed. There is a fading trust in a God they don’t know, and for some reason, God has granted a natural faith and hope that redounds to prosperity. This is a good thing, if used wisely.
He may let us fall to Communism tomorrow, and then we’ll watch many of our loved ones die of hunger in our arms. We’ll watch the slaughter of the weak and the elderly. Hussein has promised exactly that. This election might be our last chance to fight against that.
If the foreign student scholarship beneficiary does manage to hang onto power, he will be able to put at least two and perhaps four new masonic marxists on the Supreme Court.
If he’s in a hurry to turn us into a canton of Peking, he’ll just pick up a phone and execute his own secret Executive Orders.
If not, he only will have to wait a few years before the blackrobes do it for him.
Blackrobes – oh yes, SCOTUS. The Indians’ name for missionaries came to mind, which brought bishops to mind. (Who wears a cassock anymore?) The only solace, if the USCCCP succeeds in their wish to keep Hussein, is that they’ll be lined up first. Actually, Hussein will probably borrow the Peking model of the “Patriotic Church.”