I couldn’t help but notice that, having spelled out his pro-life worldview and having insisted that the Republican party is “pro-life” by principle, Sam Brownback was a bit unprepared for the professorially attired and frequently interrupting Wolf Blitzer: Would Brownback support a pro-choice Republican nominee for the U.S. presidency (i.e. Rudy Giuliani)? Without explicitly stating that he would support Giuliani and without any hint of qualification, Brownback explicitly stated that he would support whichever candidate earns the Republican nomination. So, let’s do a little deduction using one hypothetical, yet plausible premise (P2):
P1: Brownback will support the Republican nominee for the U.S. presidency.
P2: Rudy Giuliani is the Republican nominee for the U.S. presidency.
P3: Rudy Giuliani is a pro-choice politician.
Conclusion: Brownback will support a pro-choice politician for the U.S. presidency.
Why do I point this out? Because I have curiously followed a number of Catholic blogs who have worn their support of Brownback on their template and have, perhaps not entirely unrelated, decried any suggestion of support for pro-choice politicians among Catholics. So here you have a Catholic, pro-life politician who has garnered the support of many Catholics concerned with ending abortion, perhaps not least among whom is Fr. Frank Pavone, president of Priests for Life. And this politician went on record last night for the second time stating that he would support a pro-choice Republican nominee for the presidency.
So what now? Now that Brownback has publicly stated that he would support a pro-choice nominee for the presidency, will we see a massive defection of prospective Catholic voters to other pro-life candidates? I do not know. I, myself, I have never supported Brownback because I have been skeptical of his “pro-life” credentials, concerned over his inability to handle even simple questions without stumbling and I have not found him to be particularly striking as a real leader. A senator? Sure. A president? No. And after touting his pro-life position for the greater part of his political career, he was out-foxed by the Wolf on a national stage.
Don’t expect Fr. Pavone to divorce Brownback. You see, Fr. Pavone’s admonition that Catholics have a duty to vote pro-life is conditional, not absolute. In elections past, Catholics could always count on at least one pro-life candidate in the presidential race, and more often than not, that candidate was a Republican. In such cases, Fr. Pavone has made it abundantly clear that Catholics have a moral duty to vote pro-life. But in 2008, Catholics may face an unprecedented conundrum: both the Democrat and Republican nominees may be policy-making pro-choicers. So does Fr. Pavone remain steadfast, stalwart and sustained, encouraging Catholics to stand up for the Gospel of Life by taking our voting block over to a third-party candidate, once and for shouting from the rooftops to our undemocratic two-party system that we will not be taken for fools and we will not budge on our principles of life? We could only hope. As Michael Iafrate noted awhile back, Fr. Pavone is not consistently defending life in the political sphere. Fr. Pavone’s words:
In this context, the question also arises as to whether one is required to vote for a third candidate who does not have a strong base of support but does have the right position. The answer is, no, you are not required to vote for this candidate. The reason is that your vote is not a canonization of a candidate. It is a transfer of power. You have to look concretely at where the power is really going to be transferred, and use your vote not to make a statement but to help bring about the most acceptable results under the circumstances.
Of course, our conscience may be telling us, “Don’t say it’s impossible to elect the candidate who doesn’t have a strong base of support.” Of course, it is possible to elect almost anyone if the necessary work is done within the necessary time. God doesn’t ask us to base our choices on “the possibility of miracles,” but rather on solid human reason. The point is that if there’s a relatively unknown but excellent candidate, the time to begin building up support for that person’s candidacy is several years before the election, not several months. What you have to ask as Election Day draws near is whether your vote is needed to keep the worse candidate (of the two, less acceptable but more realistic choices) out of office.
So ought we to vote pro-life if one of the two dominant candidates is pro-life? Ought we to vote pro-life if neither of the two dominant candidates are pro-life? No. All of Fr. Pavone’s talk about ending abortion definitively in America by consolidating the pro-life vote ends here. He introduces a manufactured category to the matter: “realistic choice.” So as a Catholic, I do not need to vote pro-life as long as that vote goes toward a “realistic” candidate? Is “realistic” an emergency moral category whose glass is broken in the event that a Republican nominee for president is pro-choice? “Realistic” releases me from any moral obligation to vote pro-life? I should not feel compelled to find a pro-life third-party candidate for whom I can vote in good conscience? I should not do the more Catholic and the more democratic action of voting for a third-party? I should allow practical politics to trump pro-life principles? Why, then, can I not just vote for a “realistic” pro-choice candidate anytime, even if there is a “realistic” pro-life candidate in the race?
Fr. Pavone exacerbates his double-talk by suggesting that a pro-choice candidate could be an “acceptable” candidate. If both candidates are pro-choice, one may be more “acceptable” than the other. Really, Fr. Pavone? And how so? Is there another behemoth non-negotiable issue that can overshadow a candidate’s public desire to protect right to the murder the unborn? Perhaps socialized medicine? Perhaps tax-cuts? Perhaps immigration reform?
The fact is that both Fr. Pavone and Sam Brownback have revealed at a very deep level where their allegiance to the pro-life cause lies. Instead of losing the faith of his party by conscientiously objecting to his party’s nomination of a pro-choice candidate for the presidency, Brownback will compromise his pro-life record, will support that candidate, and will publicly encourage us to vote for that candidate. Instead of launching what could be the greatest campaign for life in the history of the American political sphere by abandoning the two-party system and bringing with him scores of Catholic voters, Fr. Pavone wants Catholics to stick within the two “realistic” parties. I suppose Catholics will have to wait for Fr. Pavone to provide us with his take on the runner-up issue to abortion in order for us to discern which of the two party candidates is “less acceptable.”
Allow me to be candid: Brownback is a disappointment. As the Elephant Biz brilliantly opines: “So, while he’s pro-life when it comes to abortion, Brownback is pro-choice when it comes to pro-choice Republican candidates – he could vote for one but hopes you and believes you can’t.”
If you want to know who the most pro-life candidate out there is, it’s Mike Huckabee for my money. Tonight he outshone his Catholic counterpart on the pro-life talk. If abortion truly is the most important non-negotiable–and I know for many Catholics it is–than Brownback is not your man. Consider Huckabee’s pro-person response to the question as to what is the most pressing moral issue today:
“I really believe if you define a moral issue, it is our sanctity of understanding [the value of] every single human life…We value every life of an individual as if it represents the life of us all.
“We shouldn’t allow a child to live under a bridge or in the back seat of a car…People are treated as expendable. The unique part of our country is that we elevate and celebrate human life.”
Huckabee’s momentum is picking up, too. As Joe Klein of Time observed after the second GOP debate: “Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee seems to be winning the battle of the religious conservatives against Kansas Senator Sam Brownback. Huckabee is colorful and funny. In the second debate, he drew whoops from the audience when he said the (Republican) Congress has “spent money like John Edwards in a beauty shop.” Brownback appears bland, by comparison, young and not very authoritative, a Senator who seems like a member of the House. Of these six, Huckabee seems most likely to survive.”
For more on Huckabee, check out ProLifeBlogs round-up here. Bye-bye, Brownback.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In