Divorcing itself from the Republican National Convention’s strong pro-life stance on abortion, the Nevada GOP made a move to abandon its pro-life stance by stripping life-affirming language from its platform. Nevada Republicans voted on a platform amendment measure earlier this month with the intention of walking away from the abortion issue. According to Nevada Right to Life:
On Saturday the NV Republican party decided to drop its pro-life plank and party chairman Mike McDonald said that abortion is a small issue. It’s not small now… Republicans in NV have been friends of life and this sends the wrong message to their base… The NV Republicans at the convention are overlooking the fact that on abortion pro-life is the new normal. Gallup is finding in their last series of polling that more Americans say they are pro-life than pro-choice and that almost 60 percent of Americans would ban all abortions.
Dave Hockaday of Lyon County explained the reason for eradicating pro-life values from the platform:
The issue was how can we back out of people’s personal lives. We need to focus on issues where we can have an impact.
Roger Stockton of Washoe county said the vote was motivated by a desire to make moderates feel welcome in the party:
I believe it is divisive to the party. I believe it alienates people who are within the party. We have to be the big umbrella accepting conservative and moderate candidates.
Mark Crutcher, who runs the pro-life group Life Dynamics, suggested that, based on this vote, the party change should its symbol from the strong elephant to the frill-necked lizard.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAo09yYOpCU&w=420&h=315]
The elephant, Crutcher observes, is known for defending its young. Crutcher said:
After all, elephants are noble animals who will take on a pride of lions to protect their young, and no one can even remotely suggest this is true about the GOP… The bottom line is that the Republican Party seems to be comfortable doing nothing while millions of unborn babies have their arms and legs ripped off, their chests crushed and their skulls collapsed. Apparently, like the goons down at Planned Parenthood, Nevada’s Frilled-Neck-Republicans are willing to just write these children off.
