One thing that has always impressed me about the Right is their incessant willingness to try and tie their own agenda to the larger political issues of the day, primarily by associating things they don’t like to things that are unpopular, no matter how strained the connection.
For example, last week after President Obama lifted the “global gag rule” and rescinded the Mexico City Policy that President Ronald Reagan instituted in 1984 which banned U.S. funding for international health groups that perform abortions, promote legalizing the procedure or provide counseling about terminating pregnancies, anti-choice activists swung into action to decry the move, with the Susan B. Anthony List calling it a “bailout” of the abortion industry.
On a related note, Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser and Rep. Michele Bachmann even penned a joint op-ed for The Washington Examiner tying our current economic crisis to the issue as part of the right-wing attempt to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood:
It’s no great surprise that President Obama is requesting billion-dollar projects and programs. Just days after his election, he said that we shouldn’t be concerned about the deficit in the short-term because the government would have to spend our way out of the recession.
But, shockingly, the Obama White House is poised to go further than ever before by accepting the abortion industry’s recent demands for over $1.5 billion in taxpayer funds.
For it’s part, the Family Research Council also blasted this “bailout,” but then took it a step further by accusing Obama of now exporting torture:
Yesterday, President Obama issued executive orders banning the torture of terrorists but today signed an order that exports the torture of unborn children around the world … Thanks to his actions today, U.S. taxpayers will be forced to take part in exporting a culture of death. We have a responsibility to respect the policies and traditions of the other countries, which have laws recognizing the right to life of the unborn, and it is an insult to fund organizations that are intent on overturning those laws by promoting an elite ideology of abortion on demand.
You know, the FRC’s concerns about “torture” might carry a bit more weight if they had actually spoken out against torture when the Bush Administration was systematically employing its use rather than, you know, saying nothing.
