Posted on 07/08/2008 1:43:12 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The 2008 presidential election is "foremost about the United States Supreme Court," the president of the National Right to Life Committee said at the group's annual convention Thursday.
"It's not the economy, stupid," said Dr. Wanda Franz, referencing President Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign slogan. "No, for us, it's the Supreme Court."
The power of the president to appoint judges to the U.S. Supreme Court, potentially changing the composition of the court and moving it to the right or left, is the "overriding issue" for this election, Franz said, speaking before an audience of pro-life advocates in Arlington, Va.
"Whoever wins the presidential election will determine the character of the court for decades," she said.
National Right to Life, and the pro-life movement at large, must work to elect a president who will appoint justices "guided by the Constitution" and who are amenable to undoing actions of previous judges, Franz added.
The committee's political action arm has formally endorsed Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the presumptive Republican candidate.
Electing a president who will appoint pro-life judges is, for the National Right to Life Committee, the most important issue this election, Vice President Anthony J. Lauinger told Cybercast News Service.
"We believe that the protection of innocent human lives has to be a civilization's number one priority or that civilization will not long exist," Lauinger said. "The other issues that are being talked about in the campaign all are less important, in our perspective, than the protection of innocent human life."
In her remarks at the opening session of the National Right to Life three-day conference, Franz acknowledged that many Americans have other concerns and priorities that are influencing their presidential candidate preference. But if, for example, the next president makes poor economic decisions, Franz said, voters can make changes in the next election.
For the past 35 years, the pro-life movement has worked to overturn Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton - the 1973 Supreme Court decisions that overturned laws outlawing abortion.
Shaping the federal judiciary will be second only to national security as the legacy of the next president of the United States, said former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.).
Thompson, the keynote speaker at the opening session of the conference, was endorsed by the National Right to Life Committee when he announced his candidacy for president in 2007.
Thompson voiced support for McCain, noting that the Arizona senator has supported "sound constitutionalists" as judicial nominees and has been consistently pro-life. On the other hand, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, will bring about changes the pro-life movement does not want, Thompson told the audience.
"If Sen. Obama is elected, he will, through Supreme Court and federal court nominations, cause this trend to accelerate, and that will bring about changes in this country that no one in the room, and most Americans, want to see," Thompson said. "And no one in this room will live long enough to see [the changes] rectified."
The upcoming 2008 elections are important, said Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell, because they determine who has the power to make decisions that will decide the future of abortion in the United States.
"Not only in the federal election ... but in all these state elections, because ultimately much of the decisions that are made on the issue of abortion are made by state legislators," said McDonnell, speaking at the opening session.
Conference attendees told Cybercast News Service after the opening session that they concurred with the speakers.
"It is absolutely vital to have a court that is on the right side," said Gregg Trude, executive director of Montana Right to Life.
"We are very hopeful that the next Supreme Court vacancy is filled by someone who believes what the Constitution says and believes that it is the role of judges to interpret the law and not to make the law," Lauinger said.
The National Right to Life Committee is the largest pro-life group in the country. Its 36th annual conference is taking place July 3-5 in Arlington, Va.
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Amen, baby. We've got two choices for president. I'm going with McCain.
That’s really the bottom line. McCain’s flaws are mere pimples compared to Obama’s flesh-eating disease.
McCain’s flaws are mere pimples compared to Obama’s flesh-eating disease.
Well said!
Less Democrats = More Babies
NobamaNation, just abomination...
bookmark
I trust FDT.I dont trust mcnutts as far as I can throw him.Conservatives dont believe what comes out of mcnuttss’mouth.Everyone seems to forget what a pain in the arse mcnutts was on a whole host of issues.
God determines the character of the court every day. Our nation has come to be ruled by nine supreme demigods who answer to no one, and seek to make their authority limitless. Meanwhile, this wicked and perverse generation is committing suicide by child sacrifice. As for Fred Thompson, he is an equivocator on abortion who only wishes to exploit this cosmic treason against God as a political issue. Abortion has about as much a chance of ever being ruled to be a Constitutional violation by the SCOTUS as slavery did.
I wish Fred had, had more fire in his belly.
Fred Thompson, noted Constitutionalist and favorite candidate of FReepers during the primary season, endorses McCain. I guess he didn’t listen to all the political geniuses who pop up on FR and tell us McCain is a “socialist” and a “liberal Republican” and we should never vote for him.
I have seen dozens of articles like this over the past week or two. It looks like the GOP is grasping at straws trying to persuade conservatives to vote for McCain. We are still four months away from November and the GOP has little more than fearmonerging to use to sell McCain to the masses. We very well may be watching the collapse of a political party.
What the election maybe, possibly, will decide and give McCain a couple of nominations. What a Dem majority will do with those nominations is another question. What kind of Justices McCain will nomination is another whole question.
In my view, McCain has the liberal attitude. He is so sure of his own moral and other superiority, that he allows himself to say, what he needs to say to the bubbas to get their vote. Then in office, he can mentally justify "doing what is best for the country". Unforunately, that's going to apply to any Supreme Court nominations he makes, no matter what he tells us today.
"The power of the president to appoint judges to the U.S. Supreme Court, potentially changing the composition of the court and moving it to the right or left, is the "overriding issue" for this election, Franz said..."
While this is a nice theory, it's become obvious that only a Democrat president enjoys the privilege of effectively 'appointing' Supreme Court judges. There seems to be a different set of rules in place for Republican presidents, as evidenced by the difficulty that President Bush has encountered with his judicial choices.
He was my favorite, and while I'm no political genius, I know whether to believe
Fred Thompson, or
the historical evidence (e.g., McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy).
Since McCain's efforts for amnesty of illegal aliens, and against free speech, are facts not in question, I am obliged to reevaluate Fred.
That's not to say I wouldn't feel real good about Fred being on the ticket, because I would. He's still better than anyone else around, and a damn sight better than McCain. But his endorsement of McCain leaves me wondering why, and the possible reasons are all disappointing.
Fred is doing a lot of writing on conservative issues, just as he said he would go back to. I have not seen a whole lot if anything on him beating the bushes for McCain.
True. And paradoxically, if Fred accepted a spot on the ticket, that would be quite a high level of endorsement of McCain, wouldn’t it? Yet I’d be ok with that.
*sigh*
Pesky McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy...
These election results will not matter in regards to abortion. Very soon our culture is going to change drastically and dump abortion politics in the trashbin of history.
Dr. Franz is SO right! We've only just begun to dig ourselves out from under 35 years of liberal judicial activism. We have the opportunity to keep liberals from pushing their agendas for the next two generations, and we need to seize that!
No President governs alone, but relies on a huge staff, vastly larger than McCain has as a Senator. Look at who's around McCain. Thompson is trustworthy, and so are many of the others around McCain. Then look at Obama's preferred associates--people who idolize Che! For heaven's sake, don't put a friend of Ayers, Dohrn, Wright, Odinga, Kennedy, and Kerry in the White House, in command of the military, FBI, and with the power to appoint a Leftist majority to the Supreme Court.
If I believed that McCain would confine himself to appointing justices in the mold of Roberts, Alito, or Thomas, whether or not they'd ever actually get confirmed, I would be happy with having McCain in that position.
If, however, McCain would appoint people like Souter, we'd be better off letting Obama appoint people like Ginsburg. The more "Republican" judges vote leftist, it more effectively the Left can pretend the Court is apolitical and is making decisions based upon the Constitution. The more outrageously and overtly leftist the judges on the Court, the more likely it is that dissension against them will reach critical mass.
Barring a miracle at the Republican Convention, followed by a second at the polls, I see no realistic way this country can start moving incrementally away from oblivion. The only other sequence of events I can see to avoid oblivion would begin with widespread acknowledgment that there is a law superior to the Men in Black Robes. The sooner that happens, the better.
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