The West is not the South (on Abortion)
I know I've gotten lazy and have grown to depend on SurveyUSA a bit, but since they break things down by states, its a great way to look at the West. Today, they put out a state-by-state breakdown of how people self-identify around the abortion issue.
No big surprise that Utah is at the top of the list (and Idaho near the top) of people saying they're "Pro-life." But when you look at the rest of the West, you see a very live and let live attitude coming through.
23. Montana 53 percent "Pro-choice"
26. Arizona 56%
27. New Mexico 56%
30. Wyoming 57%
34. Colorado 61%
38. Oregon 62%
38. Nevada 64%
41. Washington 63%
46. California 65%
Republican dominance in the West hasn't been born out of Southern based social issues, but rather a desire for government when its needed, but not all over your every move. The more the GOP pushes itself towards the religious politics of the South (Schiavo, 10 Commandments, etc...) the more it loses ground in the West.
Emmett O'Connell | September 12, 2005 | Comment on This Post (3 so far) |
Your Name: Your Personal Note: | Your Email: Friends' Emails*: |
Comments
I agree that voters in the West are more socially libertarian than those of us in the South and most of the Midwest. Pro-choice can mean a lot of different things though - it depends on how you ask the survey question. A lot of folks who think of themselves as pro-choice only want abortion on demand in the first trimester.
The problem that Democrats face with the abortion issue is due to intense pressure from single issue pro-choice groups, all Democrat candidates are expected to oppose bans on late term abortion and parental consent laws. A lot of swing voters are alienated by this positions and mildly pro-life voters who might otherwise vote Democratic have been turned off by the intensity of pro-choice sentiment within the party. Many Democratic activists have no tolerance for fellow Democrats with pro-life views. Democrats need to allow a diversity of opinion on this issue.
I am all in favor of your efforts to strengthen the Democratic Party in the West. I think that the South and the rural West do have some common values especially in terms of supporting the right to keep and bear arms. We cannot continue as a party to write us most of the center of America and will elections. Democrats cannot afford to write off any area of the country including difficult areas like the South and the Great Plains. If we continue to do so, it will be virtually impossible to ever build a Democratic governing majority.
Posted by: Right Democrat | Sep 12, 2005 6:56:09 PM
This is a Southern based social issue that will surely cause some discussion; namely, the 9th Federal Circuit Court ruled again that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional.
From my Centrist perspective, this is going to be a difficult issue for Democrats. I think we got tangled up in the entire seperation of church and state issue years ago. We allowed several special interest groups and the ACLU to pull us to the extreme left in pounding the Boy Scouts, prayers at graduation, banning Christmas & Easter programs in school, and now the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional.
While I agree that religion should not be forced on members of our society, our Democratic Party has supported anti-Christian groups that are extremely hostile to Christianity.
It may not be appropriate to teach Christianity in the classroom or to generally promote it in public schools, but the founding fathers certainly did not intend for our courts to ban Christianity from American society.
It seems to me, and I might be wrong, that Americans are getting awful tired of having their Churches and personal faith condemned all lthe time.
It would be in the best interest of our Democratic Party to distance ourselves from the special interest groups that continually attack America's Christian heritage.
Even though I am a liberal Christian, I can appreciate the importance of this soical issue to conservatives and evangelicals.
May we Democrats be more understanding in order to create a "Big Tent".
Take care.
Posted by: Mild Mannered Reporter | Sep 14, 2005 5:05:15 PM
Since Western Democrats aren't particularly beholden to national Democratic interest groups anyway, I think it's time to put a new spin on things.
The key to selling this issue with a positive Democratic spin again is to change the terms of the debate. Republican's desire to regulate this on a per-procedure and per-time-period basis means that Congress is trying to make medical decisions for you, instead of leaving them to you and your doctor. In cases where the life of the mother is at stake, this really isn't all that different from congress legislating acceptable forms of heart surgery, and it should be an affront to all Americans.
So, on the one hand, Democrats need to come out in favor of medical rights, and use it to try to overturn the Republicans' fight to ban particular procedures.
The flip side is that what most of the people in the middle on the abortion issue hate is abortion as a form of birth control. Democrats should steal an old Republican catchphrase that still plays well in the West and talk about "personal responsibility." We should be supporting parental notification laws, not opposing them. We should be proposing limits on abortion that, for example, require a doctor's statement that a procedure is medically necessary to get an abortion if you've already had one before.
This tradeoff -- people have the right to an abortion, but the responsibility to use it wisely -- implies a completely different dynamic from the Republican framing, which is "when is it okay to kill babies?" The new dynamic is one that Democrats can run successfully on.
Posted by: Centrist Democrat | Sep 29, 2005 9:27:56 AM
Ads by Google
(and yes, we know that sometimes they're very, very wrong. Other times, they're right on.)
