Single - Issue Solipsism--- The Nation

[Dr.Phool]

By Katha Pollit

I'm writing this column in Clinton, Connecticut, where I live part of the year and hope to vote in November. I'm abandoning the antiquated voting booths of New York City because I want to do my bit to help the Democrats take back the House and Senate. Connecticut is a major battleground. Democratic Senate candidate Ned Lamont gets most of the press attention, thanks to his surprise upset of Joe Lieberman, now running on the Egomania ticket, but for the balance of power in Congress the House races are the ones that count: If Joe Courtney beats Rob Simmons, and Diane Farrell beats Chris Shays, and Chris Murphy beats Nancy Johnson, little Connecticut will give the Dems three of the fifteen seats they need to take back the House. That's quite an opportunity! Or maybe not: NARAL ProChoice America wants Nutmeg Staters to vote for Lieberman, and for Republicans Simmons and Johnson. (They haven't made up their minds about Shays, who blotted his prochoice copybook in 2003 by voting to ban so-called "partial birth" abortion.) Just north, in Rhode Island, they're supporting Lincoln Chafee for the Senate against his Democratic challenger Sheldon Whitehouse. All these contests are close. NARAL's money, volunteers and stamp of approval could make a difference--perhaps even the difference.

With all due respect to NARAL, an organization I've supported faithfully for years, Are they out of their minds? "We're not a partisan organization," NARAL president Nancy Keenan told me when we spoke by phone. "Party politics are not where we get involved." But for the prochoice agenda to have a shot, Congress must change hands. It's that simple. The dwindling number of prochoice Republicans are the party's useful idiots, permitted to cast futile votes against the "partial birth" abortion ban or right-wing Supreme Court nominees like Samuel Alito and John Roberts, or in favor of federal funding for birth control and sex ed (while casting hundreds of other votes along party lines) because their function is to hold on to seats a more reactionary candidate--an antichoice hard-liner, say--couldn't win. That's why in the Rhode Island primary Bush campaigned for Chafee, who didn't even vote for him in 2004, instead of Chafee's challenger in the primary, Steve Laffey, whose antichoice and right-wing positions would have handed the election to the Democrats.

The Republican Party can do the math. Why can't NARAL?

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061009/pollitt