Maybe McCain’s A Conservative After All
WHO’D A THUNK IT?
By Mande Wilkes
FITSNews – August 15, 2008 – His trigger-happy irascibility notwithstanding, there’s not much we like about Republican presidential nominee John McCain. He equivocates on major conservative issues such as immigration, often seeming more like a left-leaning Independent rather than a Republican.
But this week, in a conversation about his vice presidential choices, he let on that he might understand a little more about conservatism than we thought.
In what many consider to be a wince-worthy gaffe, McCain commented that a veep prospect’s abortion stance is not necessarily reflective of his suitability for the job. Such a declaration is tantamount to saying that the pro-life position is not a necessary ingredient of conservatism, the implications of which challenge the gospel that being pro-choice is antithetical to conservative values.
While the pro-choice position may indeed be diametrical to Republicanism, it’s certainly not inconsistent with conservatism. And that’s just one of the ways in which conservatives have gotten it so wrong in millennial politics.
Conservatism, succinctly stated, seeks to maintain free will through the absence of government-imposed limits. Of course, the conservative philosophy appreciates the value of personal and spiritual limits, the effects of which probably bar abortion. But in no way does conservatism – the honest version, at least – operate to make abortion a regulated activity, and certainly not to raise it to the highest echelon of the platform.
McCain’s statements do a good job of unraveling the relationship between abortion and conservatism, giving us hope that there might actually be a conservative candidate in the race after all.
Of course, then he goes and says something like this and reinforces his haplessness all over again.
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