Saturday, May 14, 2011

Gingrich--biggest election since 1860

I drew this quote from msnbc.com: "Republican Newt Gingrich told a Georgia audience on Friday evening that the 2012 presidential election is the most consequential since the 1860 race that elected Abraham Lincoln to the White House and was soon followed by the Civil War.

"Addressing the Georgia Republican Party's convention, Gingrich said the nation is at a crossroads and that the re-election of Democratic President Barack Obama would lead to four more years of 'radical left-wing values' that would drive the nation to ruin."

What struck me as ironic about this comment is that Gingrich is comparing this race with the Lincoln race, and he's doing so in Georgia.  I don't think he intended the overtones this comment brings with it in context.  The context might lead one to conclude that Gingrich thinks that the 1860 race went the wrong way.  After all, Lincoln advocated the authority of the federal government over the rights of individual states like Georgia, and Georgia opposed Lincoln. Furthermore, Gingrich stands for a substantial reversal of the trajectory the Lincoln administration solidified with regard to federalism.

The current Republican party has ironically done a 180 flip since Lincoln and become the party of states' rights over the authority of the federal government.  It is no wonder it is strongest in the south.  Well intentioned conservative Christians have innocently thought they were voting for an anti-abortion agenda when what they were really voting for was a states' rights agenda.  After all, overturning Roe vs. Wade only throws the issue of abortion back to the states--it doesn't stop a single abortion.

So let's be very clear.  Christian voters need to recognize that their votes for Republican presidential candidates these last forty years in the name of abortion has never come close to being anything of the sort.  It is a bait and switch on the innocent and well intentioned.  Vote for more of Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, and Antonin Scalia if you favor states' rights like the pre-Civil War south.  A vote for them because you're against abortion is like bombing an entire city because you think enemy #1 might be hiding there.  There might just turn out to be a lot of collateral damage with no promise you'll actually hit your target.

P.S. Indiana just passed the toughest anti-abortion law since Roe vs. Wade--no abortions after the 20th week.  And it had nothing to do with the Supreme Court.

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