The Other McCain

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Democrats Believe Secret to Winning Back Congress Is … Pro-Abortion Voters?

Posted on | February 17, 2011 | 15 Comments

Dave Weigel at Slate has the lowdown on their strategy:

The man in charge of taking back the House for Democrats is talking about rape. When the Republicans took Congress, says Rep. Steve Israel, a New York Democrat, they didn’t focus on creating jobs. “They focused on redefining rape.”
He’s referring to the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, the first of several bills Republicans introduced to chip away at the unpopular bits of “Obamacare” . . .
“We need to bring out 9 million independent voters,” Israel explains. “If you do a geographic analysis of them, they live in about 37 fairly suburban, moderate districts across the country. Those 9 million independent voters, in those 37 [districts], elected Republicans because Republicans said that they would, on Day One, focus on revitalizing jobs. And what did they do on Day One? They redefined rape. That is not what those independent voters expected from the new Republican majority.”

And guess which target is at the top of the DCCC’s list?

The new members include lots of people who took over suburban districts that had been trending more liberal. The Republicans who won, in most cases, didn’t run on abortion. They got pro-life support—the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List endorsed 14 Republican congressional candidates who took over Democratic seats. But Democrats remain convinced that the new class was never smoked out.
Take Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle, R-N.Y., one of the Democrats’ favorite examples. She started in politics as a spokeswoman for Operation Rescue in the 1980s. She didn’t hide this fact, but when she began running, she said she’d “be really careful not to make this a referendum on abortion.” Her opponent, incumbent Rep. Dan Maffei, tried to make abortion an issue. He lost. And when Buerkle got to Congress she immediately became a prominent pro-life advocate.

Regular readers here know all about Ann Marie Buerkle. Barely two weeks before Election Day, a poll showed her trailing by 12 points, but she won by 567 votes and was the last Republican to clinch victory in the historic mid-term election.

Buerkle is a member of the important House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and, as one of her constituents said in a letter to the editor, she is fighting against regulations that business leaders “believe are hindering job creation.”

No GOP freshman is more vulnerable. None will be attacked harder in the 2012 campaign. In fact, Democrats are already running attack ads against her. And the only way she can fight back is if the people who helped get her elected will give now to help fund Ann Marie Buerkle’s re-election campaign. Every $25 or $50 helps.

Category: Abortion, Ann Marie Buerkle, Democrats, Election 2012, New York

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