I've been tossing this idea around for a while, now. The one sure way to guarantee that the GOP won't be in power any longer is to take the "social conservative" (a military-industrial media code phrase for "whacked out extremist fundagelic) vote away from them. In a rare moment of honesty best understood by noting that it was in a speech given to like-minded conspirators at the Council for National Policy, who publicly admit that they are determined to take over our government, Jerry Falwell explained how:
"The Republican Party must always place a social conservative at the top of the ticket if they plan to win the White House. A Republican candidate for President cannot win unless political, fiscal and social conservatives are all energized. Our people cannot be energized with a pro-choice candidate. We cannot be energized with a candidate who is not strongly pro-family, i.e. one man married to one woman, exclusively. Evangelicals may not vote for the Democratic candidate. But, they will simply not vote and the Republican loses."
http://www.policycounsel.org/18001/19532.htmlThis time, we should believe Jerry. The question is, if we can't stop the GOP from winning with one anti-choice, anti-gay candidate after another, how can we take the issue away from them, and is it worth the effort?
A majority of Americans (56%
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/01/09/alito.poll/ ) "would not support the nomination if they were convinced during the hearings that Alito would overturn the landmark abortion ruling, Roe v. Wade, that guaranteed the right to an abortion." He did nothing to assure anyone that he won't overturn Roe. In fact he made comments that strongly suggest that he will actively work to overturn Roe. He did nothing to reassure us that his questionable record qalifies him to serve on the highest court in the land. Yet, by the end of the hearings, the corporate media whores and his crying wife had the Democrats on trial, even though the hearings should have always been about his fitness to serve on the court. At this point it looks like he will be confirmed by a 10-8 party line vote in committee, and a nearly straight party-line vote in the Senate.
In other words, his confirmation was virtually assured in the election of 2004, so it is at the polls that we have to defeat future judges like him by defeating the party that appoints them (and blocks Democratic nominees by the "pocket veto" to make room for even more.)
we can only defeat them if we accept and understand that the extreme right wing churches are pressing their agenda by judicial activism, using the GOP to place judges on the bench who agree with them. One need only look to Harriet Miers and her rejection for lacking a public record as a staunch opponent of privacy rights to verify this. Meanwhile, the GOP is using the extreme right wing churches to gain and hold the power to appoint judges who will support their pro-corporate, strong government, anti-people agenda. The question is, why do we keep letting them, when the means to stop them is so obvious?
SETTLE THE QUESTIONS that motivate such a large part of the GOP's base.
I'm not a lawyer. I wouldn't even pretend to know how to word it, what it should cover, or how to get it on the ballot, but it's time for America to vote on a constitutional amendment that will guarantee that our right to be left alone by the government when it comes to decisions that affect whether we live or die, and our quality of life. If it passes, it won't matter how many extremist, activist judges like Alito get on the bench, the consititution itself will unambiguously support doctor/patient privacy. If it fails the right to privacy will become even more of an endangered species than it already is, but at least we'll know for sure that we don't stand with the majority and we can abandon this issue that has been a big loser for us for so long, and the GOP will lose those anti-choice voters who don't believe that bigotry against gays is acceptable.
We have nothing to fear in terms of having the majority on this issue.
There were 114,915,703 votes cast in the 2004 Presidential election. If we can believe the media and the exit polls 20% of those voters were so-called "values voters" who cast their ballot the way their pastor told them to. That corresponds to roughly 23 million votes that went to President Bush in an election that he won by roughly 3.5 million votes. If you want to be precise, he actually won by roughly 120,000 votes in Ohio. (Leaving aside the fair questions about the accuracy of the count, given the lack of verifiability, here's another interesting figure: 8% of Americans will vote for a sitting President "in a time of war" even if they hate pretty much everything else about him. That's over 9 million MORE votes on top of the 23 million "values" votes, compared to the 3.5 million margin of victory.) Additionally, depending on how the question is worded, polls routinely show that it is a minority of Americans that ranges from only 15-20% if the question is "do you favor making all abortions illegal" to as many as 40% if the question is "are you anti-abortion" who would be available to be rallied to oppose such an amendment. Need I remind you of the public response to the congress' and President's actions in regard to the Terri Schiavo case?
They are the minority, not us! This should be a losing issue for them, not a winner! Why don't we press it, once and for all, and take as much as 35% of the vote away from the GOP? Of course it will be a fight, but haven't we shied away from a confrontation over privacy rights and abortion for too long already?
Of course, there are other things that might fit into the same amendment, or be worth the effort to write into another law for consideration by the people of this country. For example, we might want to clarify, once and for all, the separation of church and state issue by defining "marriage" and "civil union" as the domain of the church and the state, respectively. Only the church can declare someone married, but it carries no legal standing. Only the state can declare a civil union valid, and it carries all of the legal and financial weight that is necessary to protect a spouse, cover them with an employer's insurance, allow them to go into the emergency room, etc. Such a clarification would end the church-sponsored bigotry in a hurry, IMO.
Does anyone out there know how to write an amendment, how to get it on the ballot in all 50 states, and put this issue to rest?
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