GOM wonders why John McCain, in seeking to firm up his evangelical support, hasn’t played the abortion card. After all, his record on abortion (with the not unimportant exception of his support for stem cell research) is as good as any pro-lifer could wish.
The answer, I submit, is that abortion has become a much trickier political proposition for Republican candidates than it was in the days when the Supreme Court could be depended upon to uphold abortion rights. Now, the Roberts court is a good bet to overturn Roe v. Wade, thereby making abortion an issue for legislatures to deal with. By publicly emphasizing his opposition to abortion, McCain lifts it up as a voting issue in November, knowing that a majority of Americans do not want to ban the practice. Does the Arizona senator want to hold himself out as the candidate who will undertake to bring the era of legal abortion to an end in the United States? I don’t think so.