Note to candidates - avoid Jim Bopp at all costs...
One of the big stories of the day in GOP primary politics is conservative Senator Sam Brownback's new and eyebrow-raising assertion yesterday that he is suddenly "much more comfortable" than before about Rudy's abortion views. Brownback said this after meeting with Rudy yesterday.
Now there's been another key development in the story.
Jim Bopp, one of Mitt Romney's top social conservative supporters, just lashed out repeatedly at Brownback in an interview with me for his kind words about Rudy's abortion views, accusing Brownback in scathing terms of putting "personal benefit" before the pro-life cause.
"There's obviously something more going on here than fidelity to the pro-life cause," said Bopp, a legendary pro-life activist and lawyer who is an important voice for Romney because he vouches for his conservatism. "Brownback is angling for some personal political benefit by cozying up to Giuliani."
Bopp's stinging criticism of Brownback is somewhat surprising, because the support of Brownback, who recently dropped out of the Presidential race, is coveted by GOP candidates such as Romney because it would shore up their conservative credentials. Romney and Rudy are engaged in a heated war over the evangelical and social conservative vote.
Brownback's dalliance with Rudy, Bopp said, is "particularly surprising in light of his unwillingness to accept Romney's conversion, which happened several years ago. Now he is willing to accept Giuliani's statements of the last day or so."
"Giuliani is unequivocal -- he wants abortion to be legal," Bopp continued. "Brownback claimed that the raison d'etre of his campaign was protecting human life. "So the only way that you can look at what he is saying now and what he is doing now is that he is prepared to compromise the pro-life movement and cause to advance his own personal political agenda."
The suggestion here is that Brownback is cozying up to Rudy because he thinks the Mayor is on his way to winning the GOP nomination -- and that he's willing to throw the pro-life movement under the bus to be with the winner.
H/T: TPM
1 comment:
What a lot of these authoritarian jackass pro-lifers don't understand about Rudy's position is that his "it must be legal" is tempered with the clause "and rare."
Rudy's no dummy, he understands that if you give people an unobstructed view of ALL of their choices, MOST of them will automatically make the right choice. Only a handful of people consistently make wrong choices, and most of them end up in jail eventually for one thing or another.
I'm actually amazed that Brownback is clear enough in his thinking to understand Rudy's position, much less support it. It's a pretty complex stance for a variety of reasons, and I hadn't ever given Sam enough credit to think he'd be able to recognize it as being the best of all worlds: culturally, morally and constitutionally sound.
Post a Comment