Truth - Al Franken [49]
No. His crime was that he had the same position on abortion rights as other Catholic politicians like Rudolph Giuliani, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maine Senator Susan Collins, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, New York Governor George Pataki, and then–Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. All were personally opposed to abortion, but didn’t agree with Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, who believes abortion doctors should be executed.1 Instead, they agreed with notable Southern Baptist sinner William Jefferson Clinton and scholarly Jew Al Franken, who believe that abortions should be safe, legal, and rare.
Giuliani, Schwarzenegger, Collins, Murkowski, Pataki, and Ridge did differ from Kerry in one key respect—they were all Republicans. For some reason, Archbishop Burke had no problem with pro-choice Republicans partaking of the body and blood of their Savior.
Neither did the most shameless members of the right-wing press. But Kerry was an affront to G-d H-ms-lf. C-l Th-m-s—excuse me. Cal Thomas, writing on the right-wing opinion site Townhall.com, proclaimed that “Kerry has a choice: either ‘resign’ as a Catholic, or withdraw from the presidential race.” He was joined by the National Review’s William F. Buckley and L. Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center.
Sean Hannity, unsurprisingly, weighed in as well. “I choose to be a Catholic,” he explained in a discussion of whether Kerry should receive communion, “but that’s the point. They set the rules. And if you don’t like them you can ask them to change it or you can go to another church.” Since Sean describes himself as “a big death penalty supporter,” I can only assume he has left the Catholic Church for something a little more bloodthirsty.
None of these pundits mentioned that only 28 percent of American Catholics believe abortion should be illegal. Nor did they rail against the avowedly pro-choice Catholic “public figures” who happened to be Republicans. It wasn’t just that no Republicans had ever been put in this position. Until John Kerry, no Democrat had ever faced it either. As CBS News reported on April 6, 2004, “The denial of communion to a Catholic eminent politician would be unprecedented.”
So why Kerry? Kerry was the first Catholic nominee since John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who faced concerns that, as a bootlicking papist, he was in thrall to the Vatican and would do its bidding by, for instance, relocating the White House to Vatican City. But ten years after Kennedy took one in the squash, the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that women had the right to make decisions about their own reproductive systems.
It wasn’t enough to browbeat pro-choice Democrats for being pro-choice. In order to divide Americans enough to conquer them, the right had to convince the public that Democrats just hate pro-life people.
There is one piece of evidence to support this claim, and it pops up like a dandelion in every election cycle. It’s called the “Bob Casey Wasn’t Allowed to Speak at the 1992 Democratic Convention Because He’s Pro-Life” myth. In the summer of 2004, everyone from Bill O’Reilly to Chris Matthews touted the story of the brave, pro-life Pennsylvania governor who lost the right to speak because he wouldn’t toe the party line on the rights of the unborn. Like other myths, such as the one about alligators in New York sewers, this myth isn’t true. The real reason Casey didn’t speak at the Democratic Convention in 1992 is, get this, because he wouldn’t endorse the Democratic candidate for President of the United States.
Counterintelligence operative Robert Novak learned this the hard way when he tried to use the Bob Casey myth in an argument with someone who actually knew something, eyewitness Paul Begala. From the June 28, 2004, Crossfire :
NOVAK: I would say that the difference between Republicans and Democrats is, Republicans let all kinds of people