Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
A group of pro-choice Republicans vows a floor fight in Philadelphia over Bush's choice of Cheney.
Jul 26, 2000 | "Just once I'd like to see a ticket that I could be excited about," said Susan Cullman, national co-chair of the Republican Pro-Choice Coalition. Settled in front of the television in a hotel suite, surrounded by her troops, Cullman had just watched George W. Bush debut Dick Cheney as the Republican vice presidential candidate -- the very same Dick Cheney who, as a six-term congressman from Wyoming, boasted one of the most stalwart anti-abortion records on Capitol Hill.
For Cullman and the rest of the coalition, Bush's decision to tap Cheney served as the disappointing end to a running mate search after he publicly elevated a number of pro-choice candidates, including Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge and New York Gov. George Pataki.
"[Cheney] even voted for a bill that would have defined a fetus as a person from the moment of conception!" said Lynn Grefe, the group's national director, from one corner of the pink couch she shared with Cullman.
"From conception!" Cullman exclaimed. "That's not even a fetus. Isn't that a zygote?"
"What I want to know," asked Mary Wright, a local Republican activist, "is, if a fetus is a person, can it own property?" Laughter erupted from the group of 12 or so people who crowded the room. From there, the list of potential fetal rights grew to the absurd as the group grew giddy, while Dr. LeRoy Carhart, the plaintiff in the case involving a Nebraska partial-birth abortion law which went to the U.S. Supreme Court last month, tried to suppress a smile.
Camped in Philadelphia as the GOP begins deliberations over its party platform, Cullman, Grefe and their comrades have come to town to lobby delegates to the platform committee in the hope of removing the party's abortion plank, which calls for a constitutional amendment that would ban all abortion without exception. Though they'd prefer that their party simply take no position on abortion, they'd be happy to settle for a plank that stated the party's respect for a range of positions, including pro-life and pro-choice. But even that seems a quixotic quest, since Bush appears poised to placate the party's right wing by leaving the abortion language unchanged.
Quixotic or not, says Grefe, Bush's choice of Cheney has invigorated her group for doing battle on the platform.
"Up until breakfast this morning, I thought it was all a creative ploy by the Bush campaign to divert attention while Bush considered others," said Miranda Hooker, the 23-year-old state coordinator of the group's Massachusetts chapter. "Now I see they're just not that creative."
Get Salon in your mailbox!