Anyone with more than a middle school education understood what he meant. He articulated the conservative position on abortion fine, certainly better than Romney or half the idiots in the republican party.

You wanna talk logic? Where’s the logic in the position that abortion is wrong except in the cases of rape and incest? And yet, that is one of the key ingredients in the response from Romney et al., even going so far (as I understand it) as to misrepresent Ryan’s position on the matter. (As I understand, Ryan is a no exceptions guy – very principled and logically consistent.)

And yeah, the dims do have a perverse form of principle – part of it includes always backing their guy up and holding to their ideas, legislation, etc.no matter what the short-term cost. (I give you exhibit A: Obamacare). The dims stuck to Obamacare despite the fact that it polled horribly and that they suffered heavy losses in ’10 and may well lose in ’12. They are more committed to Obamacare than most establishment republicans are to its repeal, so the law may very well be here to stay. That’s what I meant by my last sentence – history bears out that those with the most strident belief in their ideals and the most willingness to hold to them no matter what eventually gain the upper hand.

When the Republican establishment (not just the pols, but pundits as well) jumps on the dims’ bandwagon, they implicitly affirm the dims’ position. In other words, it’s just a form of capitulation.

My middle school education comment was a linguistic one, not a political one. Basic knowledge of vocabulary and skills of inference would lead one to understand what is meant. Of course, reaching such understanding assumes that the person in question really seeks the truth. THAT’S where I come to the conclusion either one is ignorant or dishonest.

With language, you have a choice of lexicon. What the RINOs and many here are promoting is the lexicon of the left. Lexicon conveys worldview, inter alia. Right now, you are seeing many on the right play into the assumptions that (a) the left gets to make the accusations and we have to play defense, (b) we should never speak critically* of claims of rape or any other women’s issue, (c) that at least some abortion is okay. In other words, you are seeing people on the American right use the lexicon of the American left.

What we should be using is a different lexicon, based on different assumptions.

For instance in counterpoint to a, b and c:

(a) the left has a lot of ‘splainin to do. For instance, before they get to make ANY accusations, they need to explain themselves on the following issues :

– their pedophile protection act
– their president’s support of the murder of babies who survive abortion
– and on and on.

We could use the actual lexical items ‘democrats hate children’ or ‘democrats like sex offenders’ or whatever.

(b) we don’t see women and we don’t see men and we don’t black or white. We see people. And some people do perjure themselves for convenience sake. In a court of law, we are very cautious about taking accusations at face value. In the decision to kill a baby, we sure as hell expect such claims to not be taken merely on someone’s word. The lexical items could be something like ‘acting judiciously’, ‘protecting innocent life’When the caterwauling starts about rape victims, you move to item (c):

(c) We believe a baby in the womb is alive. And we are outraged at any attempt to murder such a baby. But we find especially heinous the idea that if nothing else, a baby should be executed for the sins of its father. That is a perversion of justice in the truest sense and completely unamerican.

But to successfully change a lexicon requires consistency and certainty, just as truly learning a language requires.

And I can tell you, the American right, as a group, cannot and will not meet those requirements.

* in the academic sense of ensuring epistemological and factual integrity

Yeah, he made a dumb (biologically speaking) argument. Misogynistic? Nice feminist language there. Oh yeah, and it’s disingenuous too. There is the issue of whether or not a rape really happened when a woman claims it. There are plenty of cases where women claim rape after they have ‘buyer’s remorse’ – either after they realize they were drunk, or they don’t like the guy or they get pregnant when they’re ‘not ready’.

And this sort of trash has the same effect that fake claims of racism have – it leads people to question legitimate claims of rape.

You, the GOP, Hannity et al. are implicitly granting the dims their point – you can’t dare criticize women or question false claims of rape used to murder babies, and that babies who are conceived in rape should be executed for a crime they didn’t commit – whether you mean to or not.

You know what else is a huge issue? Obamacare. But despite dreadful polling and heavy political losses, the dims are sticking to it. You know why? They know they are more committed to it than the GOP is to repealing it. And so they know they will come out on top. That sort of commitment changes cultures and history, right or wrong. It’s that sort of commitment that we lack on the right and it will lead to the destruction of conservatism in America and to the American way of life.

Cowardice in the name of expediency is ALWAYS a losing proposition.