As the Republican Convention gets underway, there is some hand-wringing regarding Roe v. Wade by progressives after the nomination of Sarah Palin for Vice President.
Fred Thompson gave a very strong Pro-Life message tonight at the convention. I am here to tell you that it does not matter.
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Initially, the headline of this diary may seem counter-intuitive, as the "Right to Life" or "Pro-Life" or "Anti-Abortion" groups usually align themselves with the Republican Party.
These people who identify themselves as Pro-Life and also Republican are being duped and manipulated by the Republican Party year after year, election after election.
Most Republican candidates will tell their adoring constituencies that they are against abortion. Why do the voters not ask the reasonable follow-up: What are you going to do stop abortion? That question never seems to get asked, as if there is a tacit understanding that as long as Republicans state their opinion on abortion, that is sufficient to win the voter’s support.
Why are the Republican voters and Right-Wing religious types (note that I do not use the word "Christian" to apply to these people) satisfied with words and no action?
A very interesting parallel can be made between abortion and Osama bin Laden. Republicans have sworn that they will put an end to each of them. George Bush said that we were going to get bin Laden, "dead or alive". Now George Bush says that he doesn’t think about bin Laden that much and has disbanded the CIA project that was devoted to finding him and killing him.
John McCain says that he will follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of Hell to kill him. Yet, as Barack Obama pointed out in his acceptance speech last Thursday night, John McCain won’t even follow bin Laden to his cave in Afghanistan, where he is hiding!
While the Republicans controlled the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court (see Presidential Election, 2000), they have done nothing to permanently end abortion in this country. They have not attempted to kill Osama bin Laden. What is the relationship between bin Laden and Abortion?
Abortion is to the Republican Party as Osama bin Laden is to the Bush Administration. They are icons that the Republicans can rail against and vow to defeat, much to the delight of people who do not know better. Abortion has continued on, despite the Bush Administration’s claims that it is against it. No hand has been lifted against Osama bin Laden, despite documented opportunities to kill or capture him.
The Republicans know that if they did anything about abortion, they would have nothing to brag about, nothing to impress voters about the moral correctness of their positions. They would have nothing to offer every four years to the unwitting masses who believe that people like George Bush, Dick Cheney, Tom Delay, and Donald Rumsfeld are Christian men who would stop abortion in a heart-beat, if they only had the power.
Well, guess what? They have had the power for many years and done nothing about abortion at all. They are using it as single-issue litmus test for Republican candidates. Now, we have Sarah Palin being described as Pro-Life, but she has not done anything as an elected official to stop abortion.
It is the same with Osama bin Laden, the War on Terror, and Bush’s War on Civil Liberties. As long as the bin Laden issue remains unresolved, and he is not captured or killed, he serves nicely as Bush’s bug-a-boo with which Bush seeks to frighten and enslave the American people, taking away one Constitutional right after another.
Osama bin Laden understands this, as he swaps this unspoken pledge for his safety for support for Bush. What? Support for Bush? That doesn’t make any sense!
Yes, it does, when you realize that every time Bush and the Republicans have been in trouble, bin Laden conveniently releases another video threatening "Death to America". George Bush and Osama bin Laden have a mutually beneficial relationship, as bin Laden can point to George Bush as the reason why Al Qaeda must have more recruits join his organization.
To those that understand the duplicity of the Republicans, it is easy to conclude that while they are in office, the Republicans will pose no threat to abortion or Osama bin Laden.