To say Michael Steele has had a bad week would be an understatement. I wrote yesterday about the rumors that Steele could be facing a no-confidence vote at the end of the month, and today brought more bad news for Steele. In an interview with GQ magazine, Steele called abortion an “individual choice” and stated his opposition to a Constitutional ban on abortion. Steele’s comments to GQ appear to directly contradict his own comments during his campaign for chairman of the RNC that he is a committed soldier in the anti-abortion movement.
Reaction to Steele’s seemingly pro-abortion comments was swift and severe:
“Comments attributed to Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele are very troubling, and despite his clarification today the party stands to lose many of its members and a great deal of its support in the trenches of grass-roots politics,” former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.) said in a posting on his blog. “For Chairman Steele to even infer that taking a life is totally left up to the individual is not only a reversal of Republican policy and principle, but it’s a violation of the most basic of human rights — the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
While party insiders like Mike Huckabee had harsh words for Michael Steele, anti-abortion activists like Jill Stanek had even harsher comments for Steele:
“Michael Steele has just unmistakably proclaimed himself to be pro-choice,” she said in an e-mail. “You thought he was ’embattled’ last week over his Limbaugh comment? Ha. He has now stepped both feet into it.”
Yeah, I think it’s safe to say Michael Steele has stepped both feet into it.
Steele makes sense to me. I lean to the Right; I PERSONALLY advocate pro-life; but I believe that pro-chice is about justice and liberty that are PUBLICALLY/Constitutionally protected individual rights.
But I completely understand the enormity of the fight that Steele is in with Social Conservatives; and you know what, he might lose. But it’s a fight worth hashing out now, because the GOP should be the less government party and not have the rep of being the intolerant party.
Props to Steele for taking a stand; that is unless he apologizes tomorrow 🙁
http://www.wisgop.org/BlogBack.aspx?GUID=9cdf6b38-ea65-465e-8d24-7854fefbe848
Recent statement: “I am pro-life, always have been, always will be.”