I’m not sure why no one believes that I mean the actual words I write , but all I said was that the “red meat” talking point of the anti-Palin press was wrong: She didn’t mention the word abortion in her speech last night.
Yes, the picture she presented was pro-life: “You could argue that the dwelling on her family helped make the point nonverbally . . . . And you’d be right,” I said.
But she didn’t mention the word abortion in her speech last night. My only purpose in the post was to note the point, as an answer to the rapid Palin haters.
Let’s dwell on it for a moment, however, as long as we’ve reached this point by a misreading what I wrote.
The key is the long-term fight against abortion, and for that fight, public rhetoric is as important as personal action. Maybe more important. Palin is pro-life, but how is she going to speak to the nation about it? Not just in this election, but in all the elections in which she is going to figure now that she’s a fixture on the nation’s political stage? We do need to know.
Consider these lines from our brilliant friend Hadley Arkes in the pages of this magazine:
In 1999, when he was preparing for his first presidential campaign, Mr. Bush took soundings among prominent conservatives, and the word went out: he was emphatically, decisively, on the side of the pro-lifers. He could be depended on to do the things that President Reagan and his own father had done before him to preserve a coalition that included pro-lifers. But, as the report went, he did not feel that he could “lead” with the issue of abortion. Either it was impolitic to make this question his defining issue, or he did not feel confident of his own facility in making the argument. He would speak on this vexing issue only when it was absolutely necessary for him to do so.
The result of a president who would walk the walk but not talk the talk was, as Hadley lays out in detail, not entirely a gain for the pro-life movement.
It’s not always wise merely to parrot the talking points of the two campaigns—the Republican talking point that Palin is going to be a leader of the pro-life movement, even though we haven’t yet heard her speak about abortion, and the Democratic talking point that the speech was pandering to the social-conservative base, even though it never mentioned abortion.
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