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Jen Rubin has talked to the various campaigns about the SBA abortion pledge and does a nice job detailing why the pledge has resulted in so much confusion. She includes the provisions at issue, too, which is helpful for those trying to understand what all the fuss is about.
She’s right that both Pawlenty and Romney have come out looking fine, given the rationale they each used for reaching opposing conclusions (Pawlenty signed it, Romney didn’t).
This mini-debacle is a pretty good case against pledges, especially on the heels of the tax pledge dust-up between Tom Coburn and Grover Norquist, which has shined an uncomfortable light on the anti-tax lobby’s complicity in special interest favors in the tax code.
Maybe it’s time to drop pledges. Rubin writes:
The lesson of this may be to avoid pledges. They tend to be nothing but trouble, both in the primary and general election. They aren’t drafted, as we certainly saw in this case, with legislative precision. It is never quite clear if the point is really to “get” one candidate, and we have no way of knowing whether pledge crafters are communicating with only certain campaigns. The pledges have consequences the drafters never imagined. (Again, we saw that here.) Moreover, they detract from the central premise of a campaign: to select a candidate whose views and judgment voters trust. There’s no pledge for that. Making candidates hop each time a special-interest group squawks hardly makes the contenders seem presidential.
What is more effective in my view is for advocacy groups to make their own pledges: pledge to withdraw support for candidates based on certain conditions, or to give support based on others. Rally the troops. The Tea Party didn’t use pledges to change the 2010 election outcomes. They used good old political pressure.
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