Gary Bauer's Doublespeak on Right to Life

In a Washington Post Op/Ed piece, Gary Bauer, president of American Values and chairman of Campaign for Working Families, has gone after Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist over Frist’s change of heart to support federal funding for stem cell research. In typical wingnut fashion, Bauer basis his attack on the right wing’s "pro-life" belief. However, it appears to me that the right wing is interested only in protecting "unborn" life, and could give a good god damned about the rest of us who are already living and breathing.

In his piece, Bauer states, "The sanctity of human life is still the defining issue in American politics. And, whether it’s abortion or fetal research, "pro-life" is still the only acceptable position for Republican presidential aspirants, because it is still the issue about which the party’s base — conservative Christians — is most passionate." So, its not war and the death’s of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men and women and children, nor the deaths of a few thousand American soldiers. Its not about actually doing real stuff to protect Americans from terrorists, the most important thing is protecting a woman with mush for a brain from having her final wishes carried out, and protecting a little blob primordial goo "protected" from being used to possibly save an actual person’s life.

Bauer makes another interesting point. He calls out how Reagan, Bush the first and Junior were all pro-choice until some great epiphany, when they all became pro-life. He tries, in the usual Repub way, to spin this as some good thing. I see it as pointing out the total hypocrisy of the republicans. Obviously, these people all became pro-life about the time they decided to run for office…or just after they got beat the first time. That is not something to be bragging about, even to make Bauer’s weak point.

Bauer calls debates about health-care plans and tax codes secondary, but goes on to say, "The true measure of any society is whether it protects and enhances the life and dignity of the person. The rights to health care, to nondiscrimination or to fair taxation are false and illusory if the right to life, … is not defended with maximum resolve."

So, to hell with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Forget heathcare for those of us that risen to the level of sentient being, regressive taxation is okay, and its perfectly fine to bash the queers, so long as some zygote in a petri dish somewhere doesn’t result in a cure for Parkinson’s Disease, or help heal spinal cord injuries. Sadly, this is the thinking of the sheep making up the wingnut branch of the Republican party.