Defund partial-birth Republicans

Forbes and Ashcroft Are Right

The resolution to deny party funds to candidates who oppose banning partial-birth abortion that was to be presented to the Republican National Committee meeting January 16-17 is right in principle and right in politics.

First, let's look at the principle involved.

Those who oppose the resolution to deny party funds to pro-partial-birth abortion politicians do not raise a moral objection to the position of those who favor the resolution. In fact, many resolution foes strongly oppose partial-birth abortion. Their argument against the resolution is solely pragmatic.

In a New York Times op-ed, even one-time Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld (R.) declined to make any moral criticism of denying Republican Party funds to politicians who insist on keeping legal the most gruesome of all abortion procedures. "To oppose the resolution, you don't have to be in favor of late-term abortions, which nobody is;' said Weld, who supports legal partial-birth abortion.

Instead, Weld argues the "slippery slope." "If the proposed resolution passes, what issue will be next?" he writes. "The possibilities are captivating. Suppose the presidential primaries in 2000 are won by someone who opposes the balanced-budget amendment. That's outside the current mainstream of Republican orthodoxy. Should the Republican National Committee withhold tens of millions of dollars from its nominee even if the Democratic candidate has taken the same position. Talk about a slippery slope!"

Excommunicating Duke

It must be asked: Why does Weld, who as a governor committed himself to keeping partial-birth abortion legal, insist on claiming, contrary to fact, that "nobody" is in favor of partial-birth abortion? For openers, clearly the doctors who take money for performing lateterm abortions favor the procedure.

Yet, politicians who move to retain the legality of this form of abortion, although they personally do not take up scissors and insert them into a baby's skull, labor to distance themselves from culpability for the act. No, Bill Weld and Bill Clinton don't "favor" partial-birth abortion, they favor letting other people perform partial-birth abortions.

This rhetorical distinction may feel good to the politician who uses it-and it may be adopted as the politically correct terminology of the liberal press-but it is next to meaningless in moral terms: The politician who works to retain a law that authorizes people to kill babies as they are being born is personally responsible for the consequences of his action-the death of innocent children.

No one wants to take responsibility for such a thing because it is so obviously evil.

So, the question is: If a politician works to legalize an action that is evil-so obviously evil that the politician himself doesn't want to claim moral credit for the consequences of his action in legalizing it-should a political party give him its money or not?

The Republican National Committee (RNC) answered the question in 1989. When former Ku Klux Klansman David Duke was elected to the Louisiana state legislature that year, the RNC subjected him to what it called "the political equivalent of excommunication." Then-RNC Chairman Lee Atwater convened the executive committee of the party and swiftly moved a resolution denying Duke "aid and assistance" from the RNC because his views "are abhorrent to the American tradition and have no place in the Republican Party."

"David Duke is not a Republican" said Atwater.

Duke's excommunication was not based on an explicit policy position he had taken in his campaign, but on his prior association with the Klan and the presumption that he was still, at a minimum, a covert racist.

Was the part right to draw a bright line separating itself from racists? Absolutely. Did the act of "excommunicating" David Duke from the party lead down a slippery slope, in which, in the words of William Weld, people were threatened with exile for being "opposed to capital gains tax relief' and "against school choice?" No, it did not.

The resolution before the RNC asks a lesser thing than "excommunicating" pro-partial-birth abortion politicians from the party. It asks merely that the contributions that Republicans make to the party not be turned over to those politicians and their campaigns.

Which is worse: to say to a child as it is being born that you will hate it for all of its days, and try to deny it equal opportunity, because of the color of its skin-or to give a doctor the legal sanction to jab a scissors in its brain?

Those, like publisher Steve Forbes and Sen. John Ashcroft (R.-Mo.), who want to deny party funding to propartial-birth politicians, are asking that a lesser penalty be imposed for a greater offense than when the RNC excommunicated Duke for racism.

The opponents insist it is wrong to apply "litmus" tests and that a bad "precedent" will be set. We are confident that if a "Republican" candidate arose who advocated a return to slavery that the party would refuse to fund that candidateand that even those Republicans who do not now want to fully remove the national party apparatus from financial association with those who advocate the egregious injustice of partial-birth abortions would then willingly acquiesce in using that litmus test to set a precedent for defunding. We submit that every Republican believes a line should be drawn somewhere. We believe it should be drawn somewhere this side of complicity in killing a partially born child.