Big Lizards:Blog:Entry “A "Choice" Cut of Steele”

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March 13, 2009

A "Choice" Cut of Steele

Hatched by Sachi

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele is in hot water again. Asked about abortion in an interview with GQ magazine, he answered that abortion was an "individual choice." This did not go over well with so-called social conservatives. Some people who should know better are now demanding Steele's head on a steel pike:

Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition, believes that Steele "is at odds with the pro-life platform" of the Republican Party.

Lou Engle calls Steele's position "extremely disappointing.... The law is supposed to protect human life, not permit the taking of it. And it can never be a 'choice' for an individual to take a life."

Gov. Mike Huckabee claimed that "the party stands to lose many of its members and a great deal of its support in the trenches of grassroots politics."

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council summed up the reaction of many conservatives:

I read the article last night so I am familiar not only with his comments about the life issue but also about the efforts to redefine marriage and 'mucking' up the Constitution. I expressed my concerns to the chairman earlier this week about previous statements that were very similar in nature. He assured me as chairman his views did not matter and that he would be upholding and promoting the Party platform, which is very clear on these issues. It is very difficult to reconcile the GQ interview with the chairman's pledge.

But did Steele really say he is pro-choice or offer a pro-choice perspective? Here is an excerpt from the above linked GQ article. The emphasis is mine.

GQ: How much of your pro-life stance, for you, is informed not just by your Catholic faith but by the fact that you were adopted?

Steele: Oh, a lot. Absolutely. I see the power of life in that -- I mean, and the power of choice! The thing to keep in mind about it… Uh, you know, I think as a country we get off on these misguided conversations that throw around terms that really misrepresent truth.

GQ: Explain that.

Steele: The choice issue cuts two ways. You can choose life, or you can choose abortion. You know, my mother chose life. So, you know, I think the power of the argument of choice boils down to stating a case for one or the other.

GQ: Are you saying you think women have the right to choose abortion?

Steele: Yeah. I mean, again, I think that’s an individual choice.

GQ: You do?

Steele: Yeah. Absolutely.

GQ: Are you saying you don’t want to overturn Roe v. Wade?

Steele: I think Roe v. Wade -- as a legal matter, Roe v. Wade was a wrongly decided matter. [Overturning Roe and returning the abortion issue to the states used to be the great goal of pro-lifers; when did it become "at odds with the pro-life platform?"]

GQ: Okay, but if you overturn Roe v. Wade, how do women have the choice you just said they should have?

Steele: The states should make that choice. That’s what the choice is. The individual choice rests in the states. Let them decide.

GQ: Do pro-choicers have a place in the Republican Party?

Steele: Absolutely!

GQ: How so?

Steele: You know, Lee Atwater said it best: We are a big-tent party. We recognize that there are views that may be divergent on some issues, but our goal is to correspond, or try to respond, to some core values and principles that we can agree on.

Ever since pro-abortion side started to use the word "choice" instead of "abortion," the word changed its meaning. Choice used to mean "a decision between multiple options." But the Left redefined "pro-choice" to mean "pro-abortion;" they don't consider it a "choice" to choose life. They never respect a woman making the difficult choice to give birth to her child (just look at how they attacked Bristol Palin -- or her mother -- for their "choices").

This is one of the Left's favorite tactics, which Dafydd calls "argument by tendentious redefinition": They secretly change the definition of a word, but still rely upon the impact of the original meaning to confuse listeners. Sadly, it seems to work (nearly) every time.

A "choice" should simply mean choosing one way or another. It can be a good choice or a bad choice. Since God gave us all free will, we always have a spiritual right to choose... even to make the wrong choice. If we didn't, we wouldn't have free will after all. A woman even has the right (the legal right) and the power to choose to abort her baby. It's a simple statement of fact, and it's not going to change nationwide anytime soon. (If we overturned Roe v. Wade, individual states could remove the legal right to abort a baby.)

It seems clear to me that Steele is saying that he's glad his birth mother made the right choice when she chose adoption over abortion. How can this statement be interpreted as support for abortion?

Social conservatives need to step back and take a deep breath. Why do they take someone's words out of context in order to attack their own party leader? Distorting your enemies' beliefs is a low blow, but distorting your friends' beliefs to make them out to be your enemies is a stupid and self-destructive blow. It's a circular firing squad.

Liberals rarely turn on each other like this, although a few are now turning on Obama's porkapalooza; but when they do, it hurts their party just as it hurts us when we do it. Don't Republicans realize that their bickering over a "choice" of words is muddying the party's message far more than Steele's less-than-inspiring interview performances?

If conservatives and Republicans think Steele's message is not clear, why not help him clarify it? Why not go on talk shows to defend Steele from liberal attack and explain what he really meant? That's what Ronald Reagan would do; he wouldn't start yelling "off with his head" just six weeks into Steele's tenure (Reagan's famous "eleventh commandment"). Reagan would never do the Democrats' wetwork for them.

When Steele talks of "choice," on the government level, he's arguing for abolishing federal control of abortion policy in favor of a "states' rights" approach, where each state has a "choice" to decided whether abortion is legal or illegal... which right now they do not have. Striking down Roe v. Wade would do just that, and it would bring a breath of liberty to the top-down, national pro-abortion tyranny we have right now.

When Steele talks of "choice," on the personal level, he hopes women will make a the right choice of saving a life, just like Bristol, Sarah, and Steele's birth mother did.

But Republicans and conservatives seem determined to take his words in the worst possible light, lining up behind liberal Democrats in the march towards a permanent Democratic majority. With fiends like these, who needs enemies?

Hatched by Sachi on this day, March 13, 2009, at the time of 5:03 PM

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Comments

The following hissed in response by: Steelhand

Excellent post, Sachi. This is getting back to the Goldstein of Protein Wisdom vs. Patterico debate. It is about the power of words, and allowing the "progressives" to define terms. It is about reclaiming the word "choice."

There are a series of choices that a woman makes (in most cases) involved in a pregnancy: the choice to have sex, the choice to carry a child to term, the choice to raise the child herself or give the child to adoptive parents. Each of those choices have moral aspects and consequences.

NARAL and its sycophants in the Democrat party have succeeded in denuding the term choice into a single aspect, whether or not a woman carries a physically connected "fetus-tissue" to term. The moral aspects and consequences of the actions leading upto or resulting from this daily decision regarding gestation have been rendered moot.

Steele is filling out the term choice. He is recognizing that abortion on demand is legal. But he is moving the football forward for those of us who oppose abortion by reinvigorating the term "choice."

By demonizing him for the use of that word, the anti-abortion side does him a disservice, does their cause a disservice, and cements the NARAL definition of the word. If the only choice is abort or not abort, then Americans, who generally prefer choices over demands, are inclined to allow choices. When you include choices and consequences in what is always a series of events, you are empowering the public to understand the intentions of the speaker.

The above hissed in response by: Steelhand at March 14, 2009 4:13 AM

The following hissed in response by: Ken Hahn

I hope Mr Steele is a great chairman and I think it would be unfortunate to ask him to step down, but he has to stop making unforced errors. Like his dust up with Rush Limbaugh, the abortion remarks were poorly conceived. He has done little to inspire confidence on the technical side either. Still, I want him to do well. I want to give him a chance.

The chairman must not make remarks that can easily be misinterpreted. He must be clear and unambiguous. We have a President and Congress who will give us vast opportunities over the next four years. Michael Steele must be ready to exploit those opportunities. He has but a short time to grow into his position. I hope he does.

The lapdog media will not give him any chance to make minor errors. He will be under the microscope every minute in a way Howard Dean never was. He has to do better.

The above hissed in response by: Ken Hahn at March 14, 2009 12:08 PM

The following hissed in response by: Hal

GQ: Are you saying you think women have the right to choose abortion?
Steele: Yeah. I mean, again, I think that’s an individual choice.

I'm not sure how this could be unclear. Saying, "Women should have the choice, but I hope they choose life" doesn't sound much different from Bill Clinton saying, "safe, legal, and rare," or whatever the mantra was.

The above hissed in response by: Hal at March 15, 2009 7:09 AM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Hal:

Saying, "Women should have the choice, but I hope they choose life" doesn't sound much different from Bill Clinton saying, "safe, legal, and rare," or whatever the mantra was.

How did you get from Steele saying women have a choice between birth and abortion -- to claiming Steele says they should have a choice between birth and abortion?

You introduced a moral term (a "should") to what was a purely factual observation: That we all have choice, because we all have free will.

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh at March 15, 2009 2:20 PM

The following hissed in response by: Hal

How did you get from Steele saying women have a choice between birth and abortion -- to claiming Steele says they should have a choice between birth and abortion?
You introduced a moral term (a "should") to what was a purely factual observation: That we all have choice, because we all have free will.

Well, I don't think the context of the interview makes it a philosophical or legal pop-quiz. Perhaps I'm parsing things too much, but she uses the word "right" to describe the choice there. "Do you think it's a right?" "Yeah."

It's reminiscent of the middle-of-the-road approach. "I support abortion, but I think Roe was a bad decision and think it ought to be up to the states." That's how it reads to me.

The above hissed in response by: Hal at March 16, 2009 7:45 PM

The following hissed in response by: Sachi

Hal,

Steele has said over and over again that he is "pro-life." So the worst you can say about him is that he was ambiguous. A woman has a legal right to choose to have an abortion. That is a fact, not an opinion. Stating that fact does not make him pro-abortion.

As I said, "choice" means a choice, not "abortion."

The above hissed in response by: Sachi at March 18, 2009 5:36 PM