Tag Archives: Rick Santorum

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Republican candidates should push incremental pro-life measures

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If Republicans want to stand out from Democrats on social issues, then we have to find ways to make our pro-family, pro-marriage, pro-child positions resonate with the public at large. For example, on the pro-life issue, we should not be focused on outright bans on abortion, but instead on incremental measures to restrict abortion accessibility.

Here are some ideas for incremental pro-life measures:

  • Outlaw sex-selection abortions
  • Require parental consent before having an abortion
  • Require that additional information be provided to women considering abortions (e.g. – mandatory sonogram)
  • Eliminate subsidies for abortion providers
  • Require all private insurance plans to have a version of each plan offered that does not cover abortion
  • Restrict the most vicious methods of abortion, such as partial birth abortion
  • Recognizing unborn children who are harmed during a crime as victims of that crime
  • Outlaw abortions after the time when the unborn child gains the ability to feel pain
  • Increase the tax deduction for children
  • Reward adults with tax incentives for getting married and staying married

Let’s take a closer look at the first item in the list.

Consider this front page story from today in Canada’s National Post newspaper. The title is “Canada is haven for parents seeking sex-selective abortions:  medical journal”. Canada is the only country in the developed world that has no law governing abortion. They are strongly pro-abortion.

But consider this excerpt from the article:

An editorial in a major Canadian medical journal Monday urges doctors to conceal the gender of a fetus from all pregnant women until 30 weeks to prevent sex-selective abortion by Asian immigrants.

A separate article in the same issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal warns that Canada has become “a haven for parents who would terminate female fetuses in favor of having sons” due to advanced prenatal testing and easy access to abortion.

“Female feticide happens in India and China by the millions, but it also happens in North America in numbers large enough to distort the male to female ratio in some ethnic groups,” said the editorial by interim editor-in-chief Rajendra Kale.

While few studies have been done to assess how frequent the practice may be among immigrant communities in Canada, the editorial points to research that suggests sex-selection is more common among immigrants from India, China, Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines who already have at least one daughter.

It cites U.S. census data from 2000 that shows male-biased sex ratios among U.S.-born children of Asian parents, and a study of 65 Indian women in the U.S. from 2004-2009 that showed 89% of them terminated pregnancies with female fetuses.

Kale told AFP he believes that several hundred sex-selective abortions take place in Canada each year.

[…]Kale’s controversial proposal was welcomed by conservative groups but opposed by the pro-choice advocates who warned that the debate extends much further than sex-selective abortion in minority groups.

Canadians are more liberal on social issues than Americans, yet they nevertheless oppose sex-selection abortions. According to a recent poll, 92% of Canadians oppose sex-selection abortions. It therefore seems reasonable  for Republicans to pass a bill to ban sex-selection abortions.

And in fact the “PRENDA” bill that Trent Franks introduced that does just that.

Excerpt:

A U.S. congressman has reintroduced legislation that would ban sex-selection or race-based abortions. Congressman Trent Franks, an Arizona Republican who is a member of the House Judiciary Committee, has brought back the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act.

The measure would prohibit knowingly performing or financing sex-selection or race-based abortions.

[…]“[T]he Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, or “PRENDA,” … restricts sex-selection abortion and race-selection abortion, and the coercion of a woman to obtain either. The woman seeking an abortion is exempted from prosecution, while abortion providers are held to account,” wrote Franks in a letter to colleagues on Monday.

[…][A] 2006 poll showed a majority of Americans would likely support the bill. A 2006 Zogby International poll shows that 86% of the American public desires a law to ban sex selection abortion. The poll surveyed a whopping 30,117 respondents in 48 states.

So the majority of Americans would support this measure.

Now comes the interesting part – the pro-abortion group Planned Parenthood, which receives taxpayer funding to perform abortion procedures, opposes the bill.

Excerpt:

As members prepare to hear from experts on how the sex-selection abortion culture has made its way from nations like China and India to the United States, according to one study, Planned Parenthood, NARAL, ACLU and a total of 30 pro-abortion groups banded together for a letter opposing the legislation, the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act.

The claim the bill, sponsored by pro-life Rep. Trent Franks, an Arizona Republican, is “simply more of the same from the anti-choice extremists choice extremists in the House” and they urged a no vote on it.

“[T]he bill will effectively exacerbate already existing disparities by limiting some women’s access to comprehensive reproductive health care and penalizing health care providers,” they allege.

They claim:  “Instead of addressing health disparities and ensuring accessible and culturally competent medical care for all women, the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act will further isolate and stigmatize some women — particularly those in the Asian American and Pacific Islander and African American communities — from exercising their fundamental human right to make and implement decisions about their reproductive lives.”

Nancy Northup, President of Center for Reproductive Rights talked about her group’s opposition to the bill with Fox News and said it is an “anti-choice” measure that she claims is a “trumped up bill for a trumped up problem,” and a “ridiculous waste of congressional resources at a time when the U.S. economy is faltering.”

“This bill is a cynical and offensive attempt to evoke race and sex discrimination when actually it’s about taking women’s rights away,” she said.

So I think this is enough to show that abortion can actually be an asset to a Republican candidate. So long as the person is able to focus on incremental measures that are supported by 60% or more of the population, then the pro-life issue would not be a liability in the 2012 election contest. In fact, it could be very useful to have Obama have to go on record as being opposed to a ban on sex-selection abortions. Most voters have no idea exactly how liberal Obama is on the abortion issue. Raising incremental pro-life measures in a debate situation would be a good way to bring out his extremism on the life issue. Candidates like Rick Santorum, who actually have a record of proposing incremental measures, will be particularly effective in making such arguments.

To learn more about the effects of sex-selection abortions in countries that allow it, you can check out this Wall Street Journal article.

News

Eric Metaxas endorses Rick Santorum, urges Gingrich and Perry to drop out

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Everyone knows Eric Metaxas – he is the author of great biographies of William Wilberforce and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The Wall Street Journal is talking about something Eric said on Sunday.

Excerpt:

Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry should drop out of the race before South Carolina’s Saturday primary, prominent conservative author Eric Metaxas said at a Sunday prayer breakfast.

Mr. Metaxas said he was optimistic some of the candidates competing for the state’s conservative voters would take themselves out of contention to allow South Carolinians to coalesce around an alternative to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

“It’s more likely that some of these wonderful men that are running will hear God’s voice and get out of the race before Saturday for the good of this country,” Mr. Metaxas, who has endorsed former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum,  said Sunday at a weekend gathering of the South Carolina Republican Party – a day after Mr. Santorum picked up strong support from conservative Christian groups. To be effective, the candidates must drop out before next Saturday’s contest, he said.

“This is the last exit before the bridge,” Mr. Metaxas said in an interview later. “They’ve been dividing the vote and so if they don’t do this now, they will harm the country because they can’t hang on to the bitter end.” Other presidential hopefuls, Texas Rep.Ron Paul and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, are less relevant, Mr. Metaxas said.

Mr. Santorum, who spoke at the breakfast after Mr. Metaxas, did not  explicitly urge other candidates to drop out, but appealed to voters to gather behind him, regardless of his perceived shot at seizing the White House.

“Will the people of South Carolina vote their conscience or will they let people…. tell you who’s the one you should choose because we have to win?” he asked.

Across the pond, Tim Stanley of the UK Telegraph is suggesting something similar.

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Commentary

Wall Street Journal: Rick Santorum is a supply-sider for the working man

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Just to refresh everyone, a proponent of supply-side economics is someone who believes that economic growth is driven more by innovation and entrepreneurship, and less by consumer spending and government stimulus spending. Supply-siders are all about creating wealth – by letting creative people have the money invent something valuable that consumers will want to buy – like an iPhone or a Kindle. Demand-siders are all about redistributing wealth – by having the government take from one group of people to give it to another group of people – like a Solyndra loan or a Chevy Volt subsidy.

Here’s the Wall Street Journal article about Rick Santorum, and where he fits on the scale.

Excerpt on his economic plan for businesses:

‘I’m someone who believes that making things creates wealth,” says Rick Santorum. It is primary day in New Hampshire, and the former Pennsylvania senator and current presidential candidate is describing his plan to slash corporate tax rates. To encourage companies to make things, he would completely eliminate the federal income tax on manufacturers. For all other businesses, the rate would be cut in half, to 17.5% from 35%.

[…]I ask if his corporate tax plan opens him up to criticism that he and President Obama are both favoring particular sectors of the economy, with Mr. Santorum picking manufacturing while Mr. Obama anoints green energy. “Oh, green energy is not a sector, I mean, come on. It’s like a half-dozen companies,” says Mr. Santorum.

Does this mean the Obama policy would be more legitimate if the president were favoring a larger group of Solyndras?

“He’s talking about handing out tax-free grants and loans,” says Mr. Santorum, who adds that his own plan “is a conservative approach. It’s supply-side. It’s cutting rates. Why are we cutting the corporate rate to 17.5% and making it simple? . . . Because we think it’s what’s necessary to grow the economy. . . . So if what’s necessary to grow the economy in one sector of the economy is different from another, then why should we have the same tax rate?” He argues that manufacturing has been hit particularly hard by the costs of regulation and litigation.

That’s pro-growth – we’re all going to have multiple job offers if he executes this plan – back to 4% unemployment like under Bush.

But what about his economic plan for taxpayers?

Mr. Santorum also believes that making babies creates wealth. It’s very difficult to grow an economy with a shrinking population, he says, pointing to the “demographic winter in Europe” as a cause of that region’s troubles. To help avoid that fate in the U.S., he wants to triple the per-child tax credit and also cut individual tax rates.

[…]On the personal tax side, rewarding child-rearing is consistent with the pro-life views of Mr. Santorum, who has seven children. But the case he makes seems to echo the analysis of some Wall Street economists, who view population growth as a critical advantage the United States will enjoy over China and the euro zone.

Mr. Santorum argues that the cost of Europe’s massive welfare states made it too expensive for young people to have families. He notes that with plummeting birth rates, many European countries have resorted to “baby bonuses” to try to reverse the tide, but the demographic picture remains bleak, while the costs of entitlement programs have exploded.

“Who are benefits promised to, overwhelmingly? Well, they’re promised to older people. And if you have a society like Europe that is upside down where there are a lot more older people than younger people, you have economic calamity,” he says. Asked if giving generous per-child credits will result in an even larger number of households exempt from the income tax and therefore amenable to more spending, he says his plan will drive growth and that, in turn, will bring more people on to the tax rolls. Elimination of deductions might also keep some people paying income taxes. He aims to balance overall taxes and spending at 18% of GDP. Spending has soared to 24% in the Obama era.

In a still-crowded field of non-Romneys trying to compete for the Republican nomination, Mr. Santorum could emerge in the Jan. 21 South Carolina primary as the man who can bring together the old Reagan coalition. A champion of cultural conservatives with a blue-collar background, he is also making the case for deep cuts in federal spending. His credibility on this last issue derives from the political price he paid for being an early promoter of entitlement reform.

And what about his plan for entitlement reform?

To prevent an economic calamity on this side of the Atlantic, he also proposes to cut $5 trillion from federal spending in five years. He calls the plan advanced by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan “a good starting point,” but he notes that few of the spending cuts happen in the first decade of the plan. Also, Mr. Santorum says that he wants to reform Social Security, not just Medicare and Medicaid. “I like the Ryan plan on the Medicare side. I don’t like waiting 10 years. I don’t like waiting 10 years on anything. I’ve also talked about Social Security.”

Has he ever, going back at least to the 1990s. Says Mr. Santorum, “Some guy just walked up to me at the [New Hampshire campaign] headquarters with a picture of me standing at the presidential podium in Kansas City, Missouri, in April 1998 when I went with Bill Clinton to talk about Social Security reform. I was the Republican lead on the issue,” he recounts, a dangerous proposition for someone representing Pennsylvania, a state with one of the oldest populations in the country. “And I won re-election after that, I might add.”

But after winning that 2000 election—his second Senate victory and his fourth straight win in Democratic territory—Mr. Santorum aggressively backed President George W. Bush’s call for allowing younger workers to own personal accounts.

It’s much easier to contemplate marriage when you 1) have multiple job offers and 2) you are keeping more of what you earn and 3) children are less of a burden on your income and 4) the government is not going to bankrupt those children with out of control entitlements. Marriage-minded men who want to start families will love this plan. It is a signal to men to start working, start marrying and start having children. Men think about these things, you know – losing our jobs, whether our children will be better off than we were, and so on. Santorum gets it – he has a pro-marriage, pro-family economic plan.

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