Choice -- UPDATE

As an exercise for the class, a mixed-media assignment.

First, this video of serial-adulterer and direct-mail con-man Newt Gingrich making his umpteenth appearance on David Gregory's "Meet the Press" clown show where, as usual, the Gingrich Rules were  in full effect, leaving Newt unfettered by either conscience or moderator to act as a veritable bullshit cyclotron.

The astute reader will notice how automatically Mr. Fundamentally/Basically reverts to his all-time-favorite, all-purpose hysterical rhetorical construction -- "most radical, extreme _______ ever" (as in, "What do you mean you're out of chicken nuggets? That's the most extreme example of extreme radical European socialism I have ever seen!" or "Consuela, back in your radical extreme country that might pass for an adequate floor-scrubbing, but you're in America now, so unless you want me to call INS..." or "Callista, I don't care that it's called a Singapore Filibuster and everyone else in Leadership loves it -- I call it the most radial, extreme Socialist use of glow sticks and turkey livers ever.") -- to caricature the Democratic Party position on Choice.

(The astute reader will also notice how pusillanimous-to-the-point-of-catatonia Tom Friedman was. Tom Friedman is soft and stupid and used to the deference of toadies so when confronted with a red-faced wingnut thug in full, roaring, fake-dudgeon, he cowers and equivocates because cowardice and equivocation are both fundamental AND basic to the Fake Centrist's DNA.)

So according to Newt, the extreme, radical "Abortion" platform of the Democratic Party is little more than a license which permits Barack Obama to sit outside women's uteri and mow their perfectly-healthy children down as they toddle out of the womb.

The astute reader will now compare and contrast Newt Gingrich's fascist bombast to the actual language of the Democratic Party Platform.

Here is the 2012 Democratic Party Platform section on "A Woman’s Right to Choose":

Protecting A Woman’s Right to Choose. The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay. We oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right. Abortion is an intensely personal decision between a woman, her family, her doctor, and her clergy; there is no place for politicians or government to get in the way. We also recognize that health care and education help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions. We strongly and unequivocally support a woman’s decision to have a child by providing affordable health care and ensuring the availability of and access to programs that help women during pregnancy and after the birth of a child, including caring adoption programs.

Got that?  Safe.  Legal.  Available regardless of ability to pay.  And bulwarked by strong support for every proven method of reducing unintended pregnancies.

Care to see the same section before ACORN stole the election for the Kenyan Usurper?

Here is the 2008 Democratic Party Platform's section on "Choice":

Choice 

The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right. The Democratic Party also strongly supports access to comprehensive affordable family planning services and age-appropriate sex education which empower people to make informed choices and live healthy lives. We also recognize that such health care and education help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions. The Democratic Party also strongly supports a woman’s decision to have a child by ensuring access to and availability of programs for pre- and post-natal health care, parenting skills, income support, and caring adoption programs.

Safe.  Legal.  Available regardless of ability to pay.  And bulwarked by strong support for every proven method of reducing unintended pregnancies.

Care to see the same section before the Kenyan Usurper ever got his hands on it?

Here is the 2004 Democratic Party Platform section on Choice:

We will defend the dignity of all Americans against those who would undermine it. Because we believe in the privacy and equality of women, we stand proudly for a woman's right to choose, consistent with Roe v. Wade, and regardless of her ability to pay. We stand firmly against Republican efforts to undermine that right. At the same time, we strongly support family planning and adoption incentives. Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.

Safe.  Legal.  Available regardless of ability to pay.  And bulwarked by strong support for every proven method of reducing unintended pregnancies.

Are you noticing a pattern?

Care to see the same section from back when the Kenyan Usurper was teaching law at the University of Chicago and directing a project to register African American voters in Illinois?

Here is the 1992 Democratic Party Platform section on "Choice":

Choice 

Democrats stand behind the right of every woman to choose, consistent with Roe v. Wade, regardless of ability to pay, and support a national law to protect that right.

It is a fundamental constitutional liberty that individual Americans—not government can best take responsibility for making the most difficult and intensely personal decisions regarding reproduction. The goal of our nation must be to make abortion less necessary, not more difficult or more dangerous. We pledge to support contraceptive research, family planning, comprehensive family life education, and policies that support healthy childbearing and enable parents to care most effectively for their children

Safe.  

Legal.  

Available regardless of ability to pay.  

And bulwarked by strong support for every proven method of reducing unintended pregnancies.

Rock-steady, decade after decade.

Here, on the other hand, is mere fraction of the Republican Party's actual history -- actual, vicious, medieval history -- on the subject of women, abortion

 

 and rape:



After Gingrich's braying fraud, someone needed to be on-hand to tell the "Meet the Press" audience that in Newt Gingrich's America, women will be reduced to brood mares,  put on Earth to serve as divine vessels of male seed.  That in Newt Gingrich's America, a woman would be compelled by a federal Religious Purity Police to bear her rapist's children  -- forced to bear her rapists' child under threat of prison or death;  forced to bear her rapists' child even if it kills her.

After Gingrich's baying lies, someone needed to be on-hand to shove his bullshit right back down his throat.

Instead we got Tom Friedman, folding up like your 401K after Bain Capital sank its fangs into it.

Instead we got Tom Friedman, because David Gregory chose to have it that way.


UPDATE:

It seems punching back hard on choice and calling out the Conservative's medieval "Handmaid's Tale" agenda does have an entertainingly salutary effect: it makes the scuttlefish at places like Ed Morrissey "Hot Air" chew enough glass to actually quote a Centrist tool like David Brooks as he gets all Victorian breathless and fainty at the Democrats veering into those icky "social issues" that  those smelly "human beings" seem way too concerned about but which every good Whig knows are so much better left unmentioned and suppressed (no link's to crazy people):

Brooks: Man, these Democrats really love abortion, don’t they?

POSTED AT 8:41 AM ON SEPTEMBER 5, 2012 BY ED MORRISSEY

Do they ever. Until the Democratic convention got into prime time, speaker after speaker went to the podium to hail the Democratic Party sacrament, to the point that one would have thought that the source of most woes in America was an epidemic of conception, rather than say, oh, jobs. The focus shifted a little when primetime coverage began, but by that time I’d dozed off.

I wasn’t the only one to notice that my prediction for Abortion-Palooza had come true. New York Times columnist David Brooks told PBS that his one “cavil” was that voters want to hear about jobs and the economy, not taxpayer-subsidized abortion on demand:

... “The one cavil I will have … is this speech has — [it] reinforces something we’ve heard all night, which was how much the crowd goes crazy and how passionate they are about abortion and gay marriage and the social issues. And tonight has been about that.

“And to me it should have been a lot more about economics, growth, and debt. And that better be the job of day two and day three because they did not do it here.”