Don't be fooled
To borrow a presidential debate catch-phrase, there you go again.
As GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum noted after Wednesday’s debate, the media’s game of late has been to 1) ask repeated questions of him and the other Republicans about their stance on birth control and 2) ask them why they’re talking so much about birth control.
Why do that? In an attempt to make Republicans look extreme and anti-woman. CNN commentator David Gergen even openly alleged it after the debate.
It has become clear that your main job as a voter in 2012 will be to not be fooled by the national media.
First things first: Despite their well-founded reservations regarding the birth control pill, none of the Republican candidates has any intent to make it less available. Period. End of report. They simply object to the Obama administration’s attempt to force people and institutions that are opposed to birth control and abortion-inducing “abortifacients” to offer such services to employees.
The Obama administration also has, with the help of a frothy lapdog media, somehow convinced some Americans that free birth control is now a civil right.
Meanwhile, as Newt Gingrich eloquently pointed out at the CNN debate, “Not once (in 2008) did anyone in the elite media ask why Barack Obama voted in favor of legalizing infanticide.”
It was the moment of an otherwise off-kilter debate, earning raucous audience approval – and for good reason: It’s true. However bluntly put, it’s true.
While a member of the Illinois state Senate in the early 2000s, Obama actually voted against a bill that would have prohibited the outright killing of infants born as a result of botched abortions.
Mr. Obama since has claimed the bill didn’t protect abortion rights under Roe v. Wade. But the truth is, it did: Abortion-preserving language similar to that in a federal law on the issue was inserted into the Illinois bill, and Obama still opposed it. Even though he claimed to support the similar federal law.
Even the liberal-leaning Factcheck.org has to admit it, writing, “Obama voted in committee against the 2003 state bill that was nearly identical to the federal act he says he would have supported ...” (emphasis added).
Likewise, in a RealClearPolitics.com article in 2008, Joel Mowbray concluded, “Mr. Obama contended that he ‘would have been completely in, fully in support of the federal bill that everybody supported,’ but that he voted against the 2003 Illinois bill because ‘that was not the bill that was presented at the state level.’ Except that it was.
“As it turns out ... the National Right to Life Committee wasn’t lying; Mr. Obama was.”
Regardless of whether you want to believe these things, just consider the incongruity of it all: Barack Obama gets a complete pass on actual votes against bills that would’ve protected born-alive babies from failed abortions – but the Republicans are hounded by theoretical questions about access to birth control that they have no plans to change.
Does that not seem a bit odd to you?
If only the media had the moral compass of, say, a high-schooler in Augusta.
Several at Aquinas High School held a “Shave ’em to Save ’em” hair cutting Wednesday – giving up their locks for lent and raising awareness for victims of abortion and a bit of money for the Augusta Care Pregnancy Center. The center provides loving help to women and girls in crisis pregnancies.
Kudos to students Nicholas Scicchitano and Garrett Merz for showing, as our newsroom put it, “sheer conviction.”
They may be boasting less hair for awhile, but at least these kids’ heads are on straight.
The national media could learn a thing or two from them.
Perspective being one of them.
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Don't be fooled