Every election year I take out NRLC’s Six Ways to Defeat Pro-Life Candidates by Carol Long Tobias and take a look. You see ways that pro-lifers defeat pro-life candidates every election cycle.
Last week I posted about a variation that causes pro-lifers to split the vote. That experience did teach me to be more cautious before doing something that hurt the pro-life movement.
Only five years or so later did I see one of the ways clear as day. Mrs. Tobias warns that pro-lifers shouldn’t “Expect the candidate to sound like a Right to Life chapter chairman”.Amen.
In that experience I was asked by national to meet with a primary winner in a congressional district in California. That district had lop-sided registration and there was no doubt this nominee would win and be called Congressman.
During the campaign he had beat a pro-life lawmaker and had sent out mailers saying he was pro-choice. I was asked to find out more.
The conversation went kind of like this:
Future Congressman: Look Mike I am pro-choice. It is pretty simple. I am pro-choice and that is it,
Me: What does pro-choice mean to you?
Future Congressman: It means I am against abortion, except in cases of rape and incest.
Me: What? (Sounded like I was in shock)
Future Congressman: It means I am against abortion except in cases of rape and incest.
Me: We need to talk……….
Obviously he didn’t have any idea what pro-choice meant. This candidate is now a Congressman and voted with National Right to Life about 90& of the time. Some years it has been %100.
Some candidates haven’t thought about every single issue or of the consequences that it may have. Some candidates that say they are pro-life are stunned on how many votes they maybe casting on that issue and haven’t thought about it until the campaign made them think about it.
In other words they haven’t spent their whole lives thinking about it. Sometime especially at the beggining they use the wrong terminology or don’t know every fact about what Planned Parenthood does. It is our job to help educate them and bring them our way.
What they will do and how they will vote is better to know then an early mistake in how to phrase an opinion or lack of detailed knowledge on a given item.
