Sloganeering
An interesting little essay in Time by Amy Sullivan on the rise of personal religion in modern American politics. She says the Democrats really started it with Jimmy Carter but the Republicans soon ran with it, leaving the Dems in the dust.
I think this is essentially right, but then, when talking about Bill Clinton, something stopped me short: "Democratic leaders were happy to let Clinton sermonize. They had no interest, however, in changing their approach on abortion to reflect his 'safe, legal and rare' mantra."
Am I reading this wrong? How could Democrats, the pro-abortion rights party, possibly object to this? Obviously they want it safe and legal. And even if you support abortion, it doesn't mean you want a whole lot of it (and if you do, it doesn't mean you care what the slogan says as long as it's safe and legal).
posted by LAGuy @ 1:35 AM
2 Comments:
Perhaps this is covert propaganda for the Hillary campaign? Ever since the exit polls in November 2004 showed that the abortion issue was winning votes for the GOP, her rhetoric on abortion has become loudly "centrist", although her voting hasn't changed at all. Just recently I saw her saying "When I say that I want abortion to be safe, legal, and rare, I mean RARE!!"
The leading candidates these days rarely sit down with a hostile interviewer. If she did, it would be nice for her to be asked, "When you say that abortion is a tragic choice, do you mean that in the same way that having your tonsils out, or needing to have your car's timing belt replaced, is a tragic thing because it is costly and timeconsuming? Or did you have something else in mind?"
A better question to ask her is "we already know what you're doing to make it safe and legal. What are you doing to make it rare?"
If she starts talking about birth control, we'll see all three prongs of the formula are on the pro-choice side.
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