How Anti-Choice Dems and Mike Huckabee Could Team Up to Screw Over America's Women

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How Anti-Choice Dems and Mike Huckabee Could Team Up to Screw Over America's Women
By Allison Kilkenny, True/Slant
Posted on November 11, 2009, Printed on November 11, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://trueslant.com//143871/

Two things caught my eye this morning that paint a pretty bleak dystopian future.

First, Politico reports that the latest Gallup polls confirm Mike Huckabee is the front-runner for the 2012 presidential nomination. Seriously. That’s the same Mikey Huckabee, who let Wayne Dumond, a convicted rapist, go free in order to appease his right-wing pals (Dumond went on to sexually assault and kill a woman in Missouri,) advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general population, believes in teaching Creationism side-by-side with evolution, supports building a 700-mile border fence along the Mexico-US border, and who doesn’t think gays or women should be permitted to serve in the military.

That guy. President. And sure, lots can happen between now and November 2012 that will promptly knock Huckabee out of his first-place rank. He could gain all of that weight back, become a raging alcoholic, and publicly shame himself when he projectile vomits all over David Letterman during his next Late Night visit.

Wishful thinking aside, even without a President Huckabee, there’s more bad news in Congress. Many Democrats with solid pro-choice records recently voted for the Stupak amendment. Nate Silver over at Fivethirtyeight.com poses the obvious question: What gives? Why would solidly pro-choice Dems vote against women’s rights?

Democrats are obviously worried about the reelection environment in 2010 (11 of the 20 pro-choice Democrats who voted for Stupak reside in districts that are rated as vulnerable,) but it speaks volumes that the people they’re afraid of aren’t the ones that have been voting them into office, but anti-choice zealots who aren’t known for voting Democrat anyway.

Maybe in the frenzy to pass healthcare, these representatives figured gambling on women’s rights was an acceptable surrender. Or, as Silver hypothesizes, maybe they were hoping the pro-choice agenda was no longer a staple of liberalism.

Although the pro-choice position is still the majority in this country, Silver claims some polls indicate that position is losing ground. If Democrats continue this trend by voting to save their own hides come election, and not in the interests of their female constituents, and this approach then joins forces with a nut job President Huckabee (or anyone in the same vein,) American women are in a lot of trouble. ... http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/143871/how_anti-choice_dems_and_mike_huckabee_could_team_up_to_screw_over_america%27s_women_

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