Posted on 08/23/2008 7:40:52 AM PDT by WilliamReading
Good morning, this is John McCain, speaking to you at the end of an eventful week in the presidential campaign. All the talk today is about my opponent’s selection of his running mate. To his new running mate, my congratulations and I’ll get back to you real soon on your debating opponent.
The week began with a debate of sorts between Senator Obama and me at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. In case you missed it, the discussion yielded the line of the week, and maybe even of the campaign, when Pastor Rick Warren asked my opponent a very serious question. He wanted to know at what point, in my opponent’s view, does a baby have human rights? Senator Obama thought about it for a moment, and came back with the reply that the question was, quote, “above my pay grade.”
Here was a candidate for the presidency of the United States, asked for his position on one of the central moral and legal questions of our time, and this was the best he could offer: It’s above his pay grade. He went on to assure his interviewer that there is a, quote, “moral and ethical element to this issue.” Americans expect more of their leaders.
There seems to be a pattern here in my opponent’s approach to many hard issues. Whether it’s the surge in Iraq that has brought us near to victory, or the issue of campaign reform, or the question of offshore drilling, Senator Obama’s speeches can be impressive. But when it’s time for straight answers, clear conviction, and decisive action, suddenly all of these responsibilities are – well, as he puts it, “above my pay grade.” As mottos of leadership go, it doesn’t exactly have the ring of “the buck stops here.”
Often, too, Senator Obama’s carefully hedged answers obscure more than they explain, and this was the case in his conversation with Rick Warren. Listening to my opponent at Saddleback, you would never know that this is a politician who long since left behind any middle ground on the abortion issue. He is against parental notification laws, and against restrictions on taxpayer funding for abortions. In the Illinois Senate, a bipartisan majority passed legislation to prevent the horrific practice of partial-birth abortion. Senator Obama opposed that bill, voting against it in committee and voting “present” on the Senate floor.
In 2002, Congress unanimously passed a federal law to require medical care for babies who survive abortions – living, breathing babies whom Senator Obama described as, quote, “previable.” This merciful law was called the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. Illinois had a version of the same law, and Barack Obama voted against it.
At Saddleback, he assured a reporter that he’d have voted “yes” on that bill if it had contained language similar to the federal version of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. Even though the language of both the state and federal bills was identical, Senator Obama said people were, quote, “lying” about his record. When that record was later produced, he dropped the subject but didn’t withdraw the slander. And now even Senator Obama’s campaign has conceded that his claims and accusations were false.
For a man who talks so often about “hope,” Senator Obama doesn’t offer much of it in meeting this great challenge to the conscience of America. His extreme advocacy in favor of partial birth abortion and his refusal to provide medical care for babies surviving abortion should be of grave concern to reasonable people of goodwill on both sides of this issue. There is a growing consensus in America that we need to overcome narrow partisanship on this issue for both women in need and the unborn. We need more of the compassion and moral idealism that my opponent’s own party, at its best, once stood for. No one is above the law, and no one is beneath its protection.
Upholding these principles, and bringing Americans together on the side of life, is the work of leadership. And I can assure you that if I am president, advancing the cause of life will not be above my pay grade. Thanks for listening.
The situation is far worse than 99% of the people understand.
And part of the reason is that gross deception like that which is manifested in this piece are the order of the day in American politics.
Exactly so.
“The bottom line is that not a single child will be saved by voting for McCain rather than Obama. Not one.”
Not true. Have you ever heard of the Supreme Court? Do you know how they get on the Court? The President nominates them.
It’s all in the Constitution.
I have been a pro-life voter since I was 18 and first voted. My number one priority in a candidate.
Seven of the nine sitting justices were put there by Republican Presidents, mostly more conservative ones than John McCain will ever be on his best day.
And not one of these "justices" has the brains, the principles, or the courage to stand up against their fellow judicial oligarchs on behalf of the personhood of the unborn. All but one are basically legal positivists.
More than any other thing I know of, this fallacy is what is destroying the foundations of our liberty, as our country continues to be daily steeped in the blood of the innocents.
And so, any claims you make along this line consequently leave me cold.
Stephen A. Douglas ????
Of the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates ?????
If you don’t remember, Romney saw a little baby in a woman’s womb with ultrasound. That changed his mind totally and existentialy. That is the point. There is no going back at all. Every woman should have an ultrasound to see the little baby growing inside her and watch the monitor. It’s clear.
Romney changed his position after seeing an ultrasound/
In the slavery debate, the central moral question of the day, Douglas came down on the side of states’ rights as being supreme to the unalienable rights of human beings.
In the abortion debate, McCain, Ron Paul and others take the exact same position.
Saying “Let the states decide,” when you’re talking about the God-given and therefore unalienable rights to life and liberty of the people is at best a gross misunderstanding of what America is, and at worst a cynical ploy that serves as an excuse to ignore the demands of your sacred oath of office.
That’s what makes this piece of writing so horrid.
Judge Blackmun, the author of the majority decision in Roe v. Wade, said in the text of the decision that if the unborn child was a PERSON, they were therefore protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.
John McCain, by now saying that life begins at conception, is admitting that they ARE a PERSON, but in any numbers of his policy positions says that you can still kill them!
This is wicked, and represents the destruction of the very basis of our liberty as described in the Declaration of Indendence.
There’s no getting around it: McCain is WORSE than Blackmun.
Romney “changed his position” after seeing polling numbers that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that his decades of extreme leftism and radical support for abortion, the gay agenda, gun-banning, socialized medicine, etc., wouldn’t sell in a Republican presidential primary.
Wake up.
Romney changed his position after seeing an ultrasound/
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When was that ?????
Source ???????
Romney “changed his position” after seeing polling numbers that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that his decades of extreme leftism and radical support for abortion, the gay agenda, gun-banning, socialized medicine, etc., wouldn’t sell in a Republican presidential primary.
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Yes...
I saw an ultra sound in 1978...my youngest child...
But decades before that I knew “it was a child”
Even in 2002, 25 years later, Romney was still ignoring the fact that the being in the womb was a baby, anjd argued for the right to be an abortion pushing Gov of a liberal state...
Since Romney is too stupid and to uneducated to know the contents of the womb is a BABY..
He is too stupid and uneducated to be VP and maybe POTUS
can he even find his dog house door ????
How stupid do you have to be not to know WITHOUT seeing an ultra sound that there is a baby in there ???????
Romney saw a little baby in a woman’s womb with ultrasound.
________________________________________
When was that ?????
Source ????????
In the slavery debate, the central moral question of the day, Douglas came down on the side of states’ rights as being supreme to the unalienable rights of human beings.
In the abortion debate, McCain, Ron Paul and others take the exact same position.
__________________________________________
So does Romney......
“But people need to wake up and quit allowing themselves to be deceived “
I really don’t think the majority of FReepers are deceived. I believe many are voting AGAINST Obama, and personally, I will make my decision based on who McCain picks as running mate.
McCain is more pro-life than Obama is, but Hitlery is more pro-life than Obama is. Big deal.
One would wonder, then, why he would then make exceptions for rape and incest.
I have no desire to abandon common ground with anyone who thinks that, but it does represent my profound disappointment with McCain as a leader or as an intellectual. He is wholly incapable of consistency on this issue, because he does not understand it. If he does not understand it, he cannot defend it properly, and he unwittingly gives credence to the idea that abortion is just a matter of personal choice.
Because of the principle of self-defense, the exceptions for rape and incest must remain legal ... pregnancy does increase mortality thus a female who is raped or parents who discover pregnancy due to incest must be able to protect. BUT, if the pregnancy termination does not happen early, immediately, then the self-defense should not be an automatic death sentence for an innocent other. And again, exceptions should not argue the rule.
The principle of self-defense does not apply here, because the baby is not responsible for the attack on the mother. The baby is the result of the attack, and thus should not be held responsible for the actions of his or her parents.
Thank you for expressing your opinion, calmly. I have expressed my opinion,a lso. The complexity of rights is not easily settled, but it’s certain the current state of the issues is screwed up to a demonic level. And the Democrat candidates for Pres and veep take a question of when the unborn should have rights and twist it to address the issue of when an indiviual life begins in order to obfuscate as much as possible to protect the evil we now endure.
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