That didn’t take long.
According to a LifeNews article, Republican political consultants are “calling on the GOP to abandon pro-life issues.”
The article goes on to explain all the reasons why this would be a foolhardy move for the Grand Old Party. I’m not going to go through those arguments. I’m not writing this blog for the people who run either of the political parties.
What I will say is, I told you so.
I’m not prescient. I have no crystal ball. But I work alongside Rs every day. Given the centralized way the Republican Party functions, working with Rs in Oklahoma plugs me into the party thinking from all over these United States of ours. What I mean by that is that local Rs take their positions, get their legislation and even their talking points from think tanks and centralized leaders who also give the same instructions to all other Republican elected officials.
The Democrats did not use this model at all until about 10 years ago. I know. I’m a Democratic elected official. They started moving toward it in the wake of Republican victories early in the 21st Century. The reason? It worked.
Now you have people running for local offices in both parties who have their campaign pieces printed and mailed from centralized party campaign headquarters that may be (in Oklahoma, they always are) thousands of miles away from them and their voters. Many times the candidate not only doesn’t approve the ad, they are downright appalled by it when it airs.
I’ve been spared this, largely because no one in the official end of the Democratic Party likes me enough to “help” me. The party faithful have done their best to defeat me in elections. The chances that the party machine is going to come swooping in to “help” me are slim to none. Think clouds and silver linings.
Both parties are somewhat controlled by centralized committees and think tanks; the Rs almost totally, the Ds becoming more so. Even though the Ds are moving rapidly in this direction, they still don’t have the party control two-step down as well as the Rs. We still write our own speeches, and some of us still get ourselves elected in do-it-yourself campaigns. Most of the Rs were beamed into office and not only don’t think for themselves, they don’t understand politics and the job of legislating well enough to be able to think for themselves, even if they wanted to.
I’ve seen these people get yanked around by party analysts over and again. One of the most ugly was when the money men who run the party showed their true colors on pro life issues. These money men not only aren’t uniformly pro life themselves, a lot of them are openly aligned with groups like Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood has drawn its governing boards from among the wealthy in whatever communities it resides since Margaret Sanger began the organization. They interlock their boards with medical associations, chambers of commerce and, more importantly, the most powerful people in the various chamber’s back rooms.
A good percentage of the money men who actually own the Republican Party don’t like the party’s position on social issues. They don’t agree with them. They’ve been willing to put up with campaigns that were run on these issues because what they wanted was to control the power of government. Those issues delivered it to them. It worked. Now, they’re not so sure that it’s continuing to work.
I knew the pressure to dump social issues would start after the election was over. I knew it because I’ve seen this same pressure being applied to Republican office holders even before this election.
All this goes back to something I’ve been saying for a while. Don’t make a false god out of your political party. Don’t bend your knee to the R and the D. Without us, without our votes, both political parties are empty shells. Do not give them your vote or your support in a blind fashion.
Christians are going to have to “chose this day who we will serve.” We’re going to have to make this decision over and over as challenges rise from within our political parties, our circle of friends, our jobs, even our families and for some of us, our churches themselves.
My advice … my request … is that if you are a Republican, you need to contact the RNC and let them have it for even considering dumping pro life issues. Send them an email by going here.
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