GOP Chair Steele's Comments On Abortion, Other Issues 'Challenge' Party, Washington Post Columnist Writes

Main Category: Abortion
Also Included In: Women's Health / Gynecology;  Sexual Health / STDs;  Public Health
Article Date: 09 Apr 2009 - 1:00 PDT

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The Republican Party "should start paying more attention to" Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele if it "wants to get back into the game," Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson writes in an opinion piece. Although Steele is "not a philosopher," he is "a clever politician," and "while he says things that are impolitic -- and just plain loopy -- he also challenges the party to confront the fact of its increasing marginalization," Robinson writes. For example, Steele "broke with Republican orthodoxy" when he said in a recent interview with GQ magazine that abortion is "an individual choice" and that homosexuality is not a choice, Robinson says, adding that Steele "had to take it all back -- but only after having made an important point." He continues, "It's one thing for the Republican Party to oppose abortion. It's another for the party to make abortion such a litmus test that it's impossible for GOP officials and candidates to even acknowledge that there's another side to the issue." The Democratic Party and "its enforcement of the pro-choice position" could receive "the same criticism," but Democrats "are much more closely in sync with public opinion on the issue," Robinson writes.

Steele's "heretical pronouncements" on abortion, gay rights and other issues "have reinforced an important point," which is that the GOP has "backed itself into a regional, ideological and demographic corner -- the one marked 'rural, conservative, white,'" according to Robinson. The party is "out of step with the nation it aspires to lead," he adds, concluding that "until room is made for those with a range of views ... it is hard to imagine how the party can achieve its dream of establishing a new 'big tent' majority" (Robinson, Washington Post, 4/7).

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