Bust McCain’s Moderate Myth
by Karina
Web Editor
Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota Action Fund
Dahlia Lithwick of SLATE explains that most women don't want to overturn Roe v. Wade, but don't seem to understand that John McCain does. Lithwick continues:
Voters, and especially women voters who want to make their own reproductive decisions, need to wake up and smell the asparagus. In July, for example, a Pew poll showed that 56 percent of the electorate didn't know where McCain stood on abortion. Listen up, because he's telling us now. To the extent McCain was ever independent-minded at all on reproductive rights, he's not anymore. In 2000, McCain begged Bush to amend language in the GOP platform, which calls for a human-life amendment banning all abortions and provides no exceptions for rape, incest, or danger to the life of the mother. This week he indicated that he won't work to change that platform. That's a position espoused by fewer than 20 percent of the electorate. In the religion forum last weekend at Saddleback Church in California, McCain announced that life begins "at the moment of conception" and promised, "I will be a pro-life president, and this presidency will have pro-life policies." In April he told Chris Matthews that "the rights of the unborn is one of my most important values." He has bragged about his consistent zero rating from NARAL. He has explicitly said that his Supreme Court choices will be animated by his desire to overturn Roe.
John McCain is not just anti-choice---he's anti-choice TO THE MAX. Of course he doesn't want that to get out amongst women voters and actual moderates. As Lithwick explains, McCain can't even try to appease pro-choice voters by, for example, selecting a pro-choice VP, because as soon as he even suggests something like that, he gets "smacked upside the head by his base."
So what strategy is McCain relying on to secure the votes of countless pro-choice voters? Confusion. McCain wants to trick you into thinking that he's a moderate, maverick. Don't let him fool you!
Check out the rest of Lithwick's column HERE. E-mail it or share it on facebook and help bust the myth that John McCain is a moderate.
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