Burnt Orange Report

Big tent vs. little tent

By Nathan Nance

Guest post by Nate Nance

As the 2008 presidential race draws near, I get closer and closer to making a pact with Satan to win the Florida panhandle and the election. So concessions are not out of the question when we get there. And you know I'm going to vote for whoever gets the nomination. I don't care if he's a convicted murderer, I'll still be on the phones talking to swing voters about how more evil the GOP is with their cuts in Head Start and pell grants and whatnot.

But right now, I'm not sure how much I welcome the idea of just anybody being in the tent when it comes to abortion rights and the very foundation of the party. I will concede that it is inevitable and probably good for the party to have more varied positions if everyone else will concede that not having a single, unified message with a solid front when Bush appoints up to 3 uber-conservative Supreme Court justices might mean the end of a woman's right to choose. At least PR wise, it makes sense for all Democrats to be pro-choice, even if they are anti-abortion.

"All Democrats are united around the idea that we should make abortion safe, legal, and rare," but "we also have to be open to people who are pro-life," said Simon Rosenberg, the president of the New Democratic Network who is mulling a run for the DNC chairmanship.
...
Democrats could accept a leader who opposes abortion rights, but would not tolerate a weakening of the party's position on abortion, (Louise) Slaughter said. The failing, she said, is that the party has not articulated its position well: "I don't think we ever said we're for abortion. We're for choice."

If this is going to be the new position for our party, we really need to figure out how we are going to articulate why some Democrats are for abortion rights and some aren't. The Republicans are going to get a pass on this one, but we have to have an answer that does not say "we compromised our position on abortion so that we would get more votes."

Does anybody have any suggestions?

This is a guest post by Nathan Nance. Nate is a sports/news clerk at the Waco Tribune-Herald and writer/editor of Common Sense a Texas-based Democratic Web log. He can be reached at nate_nance@yahoo.com