Catholic and Enjoying It!
Republican leadership and commentators are cooling to social conservatives’ mounting cries to make defunding Planned Parenthood a nonnegotiable item in budget talks, challenging the provision as both bad politics and bad policy.
“This is shortsighted political posturing,” former John McCain adviser Mark McKinnon wrote in a March 4 column for the Daily Beast. “It’s overreaching, and it’s why Republicans get a bad name with many independent voters and women. … Republicans would be well advised to keep their focus on real economic issues that have impact, like entitlement reform.” [MPS Translation: we’re happy to sacrifice the unborn and the old, but don’t ask us to consider our commitments to corporate welfare or defense spending. No way are these negotiable]
Republican leadership also appears unenthusiastic at the idea of shutting down the government over the Planned Parenthood issue. In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody last week, House Speaker John Boehner explained his party’s decision to pass a two-week stopgap budget measure, which funds Planned Parenthood.
“There will be an opportunity some time [but not now, never now] in order to win the big war, and we’re looking for that opportunity,” he said. “I don’t think this short-term CR is the opportunity that will get us there.”
Support for Planned Parenthood is coming from unusual quarters.
“On this issue, Republicans and conservatives are dead wrong,” Dick Scaife, a prominent Republican donor, wrote in a Feb. 27 Pittsburgh Tribune-Review op-ed. “Abortions are a minor aspect of Planned Parenthood’s mission to provide reproductive health care, education and other services to Americans, regardless of income.” [I can *feel* the passionate devotion to the unborn from “Republican leadership”. Can’t you?]
Still, the continuing resolution amendment to defund Planned Parenthood, introduced by Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) is backed by most Republicans. And it has attracted the endorsement of a prominent fiscal conservative: Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist. [Thanks be to God for the rank and file trying to hold the “leadership’s” feet to the fire. However, given that guys like Scaife write the checks…]
“Mike Pence’s battle is not just another social-issue skirmish. It’s a test of economic and budgetary seriousness,” he wrote in a National Review op-ed on Monday, co-authored with Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser. “Planned Parenthood must be privatized. Economic and social conservatives agree — this one is nonnegotiable.” [Damn right it is!]
But with Senate negotiations starting and the specter of a shutdown looming when the two-week fix runs out on March 18, Republican leadership appears unwilling to take a stance on whether defunding Planned Parenthood is “nonnegotiable” — as anti-abortion leaders asked in a letter last month — or could be bypassed in the budget process. [Damn right they are. Because They. Don’t. Care. In their view, prolifers are for exploiting, not heeding.]
“The House vote on the Pence amendment is nothing more than symbolic unless it remains intact through the legislative process,” a Feb. 24 letter from 26 anti-abortion leaders said. “Defunding Planned Parenthood must be a nonnegotiable in the continuing resolution, and we urge you to accept nothing less than this outcome.” [Good for them. May God hear them and move the hearts of “Republican leadership”]
When asked whether Republican leadership would commit to making the defunding nonnegotiable, Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said he was unfamiliar with the letter and that Republican leadership stood by H.R. 1. [Letter? What letter? Our position, for the moment is that we stand by H.R. 1, while sending out all sorts of signals that we have no intention of, you know, really standing by it. Can’t you people just shut up and vote Republican?]
“Our position is H.R. 1,” Steel told POLITICO. “Given that the Senate failed to do its job and take up H.R. 1, we passed a two-week CR.”
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