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Making sense of the the Romeny-SBA abortion pledge mini-debacle

Ryan Streeter
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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.

Could Republicans call Democrats' bluff on spending by offering to pull the Planned Parenthood provision for substantial increases in cuts?

Ryan Streeter

Jon Kyl just said on the Senate floor, “I cannot believe that its funding for Planned Parenthood that is holding this up.”

He reiterated that 90% of what Planned Parenthood does is abortion services, and he chastised Harry Reid’s floor speech in which the majority leader lamented (with the same sorrow in his voice as when he defended cowboy poetry festivals) that young women wouldn’t have anywhere to go to get their cholesterol checked, and so on. The services Reid was lamenting would be lost can be found through other health service providers.

Kyl claimed that this issue is a red herring, and that the Democrats are using it to avoid the spending cuts that they say they want but are trying to avoid like the plague. I think he's right.

So why don’t Republicans use it to call their bluff? Why not tell the Democrats that they’ll pull it from the package if the Democrats come up $20 billion from the alleged $38 billion they’ve agreed to? That would put the total at $58 billion, close enough to the Republican goal and a substantial concession from Democrats. The latter could claim they saved Planned Parenthood, and the Republicans could claim a victory on cuts.

My guess is that Democrats would balk, and then the Republicans could get out ahead of this Planned Parenthood issue, which the Democrats seems to be demagoguing successfully right now. If the Dems passed on the deal, the Republicans could say they were willing to remove a high priority from the list, and that the Dems showed their true colors: they are unwilling to cut a micro-sliver of a percentage of the federal budget.

If by chance such a bargain worked, Republicans could keep the Planned Parenthood issue alive with hearings that shine a bright light on how much the organizations spends and on what. There's plenty of time for that this year before next year's budget debates start.

Nov. 2 wasn't only about cutting spending, say abortion advocates

FoxNews reports that Nov. 2 has emboldened state-level initiatives by pro-life groups to place limits on abortions. 

A number of states are looking to pass bills similar to the one Nebraska just enacted.

Nebraska's law, which took effect Oct. 15, outlaws abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. It is a departure from the standard of viability, established by the 1973 landmark ruling in Roe v. Wade, which allows states to limit abortions in cases where there's a viable chance the fetus could survive outside of the womb, generally considered to be between 22 and 24 weeks.

It's important to remember that conservative activists are not just fiscal conservatives, as one might have gathered from the animus that drove people to the polls on Nov. 2. Many are also social conservatives. 

The ConservativeHome poll of conservative activists across the country reveals that 58% regard themselves as equally conservative fiscally and socially, compared to 37% who think of themselves as more fiscally than socially conservative.

The state-level action is a good thing for the conservative movement overall. It's where the action is, and in the national debate, increased attention to the issues will interfere with the GOP's need to build a broad coalition going into 2012.