Bart Stupak might have been destined for obscurity in the history of the House of Representatives had it not been for his vociferous advocacy for his pseudonymous restriction on womens’ access to a legal medical procedure in the (partially) Affordable Health Care for (part of) America Act. Now he will be known as the hero of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the religious right, for whom he is the poster boy of “conscience.”
Stupak uses a profile in today’s New York Times to complain that the Democratic Party spurned him. He’s voting his conscience; they’re a bunch of baby-killers.
Stupak complains that his party has marginalized him for his anti-abortion views, but that — cue the gloating vindictiveness befitting the opposition, rather than a party loyalist — he showed them by rounding up enough votes for his amendment, under threat of sinking the entire bill. (So much for the “conscience” of a “pro-lifer.”) He seems befuddled at why, say, cavorting at C Street and bringing the Catholic bishops calling to the House leadership might cause Democrats to push him to the sidelines. He’s only voting his conscience, after all!
Stupak wields his mighty threat like a kid who knows that his parents aren’t going to let him hold his breath until he turns blue. And like those parents, the Democratic Party knows at some level it will have to give into him because, despite the bishops and the Stop the Abortion Mandate coalition, it has enabled the growing anti-choice contingent in the party.
Stupak was elected in 1992 — before anti-choicers were explicitly sought out by the party leadership. According to the Times piece, “In the primary, he beat a candidate who supported abortion rights. But when he tried to hire Democratic political consultants for the general election, they refused — with expletives, he says — to work for a candidate with his views.”
How times changed. Why? Religion, or the claim that Democrats weren’t “friendly” to it. So in 2006 and 2008, the party recruited candidates who were more “friendly” to religion (in other words, were anti-abortion). That brought, among others, Bob Casey to the Senate from Pennsylvania — and he authored the Senate compromise that restricts access to abortion, in order to satisfy another Democrat, Ben Nelson. Shunned by the party? No — recruited by it, and then given trump cards.
Late last year, another pro-Stupak Democrat, Parker Griffith of Alabama, decided that he was really a Republican after all. Like other Democrats seeking to play the religion card, he had hired the services of a small circle political consultants who now offer assistance on that “religion-friendly” strategy. (One of the trailblazers of religious political consulting, Mara Vanderslice, also founder of the Matthew 25 PAC, is now a staffer for the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.)
Griffith had used the services of the Eleison Group, whose principal Burns Strider had been instrumental in forming the House Democratic Faith Working Group and was a consultant to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. During the 2008 campaign, Strider wrote that Griffith offers “the type of patriotic, faithful leadership we need in the United States Congress,” noting how comments he made squared with Baptist theology.
Eleison, which is also in the business of distributing “the most popular pork skins in America,” also lists pro-Stupak Bobby Bright as a client. Bright, also of Alabama, was recently profiled in the Times, too, for voting more with Republicans than Democrats (including against the health care bill, after demanding the inclusion of the Stupak amendment).
What the party leadership is out of touch with is not Stupak, but its own constituents. In an ongoing discussion of the efficacy (or lack thereof) of the successor to Obama for America, Organizing for America, Personal Democracy Forum’s Micah Sifry notes the disappointment of Obama field organizer Marty Evry regarding Stupak:
A third strike for Marta was seeing OFA whip its supporters around the House health care bill after the Stupak amendment was attached to it. The Stupak amendment, which came very late in the House debate on the health care bill, was decried by pro-choice activists, a core Democratic constituency, for how it may undermine insurance policies that cover abortion. But Marta was outraged by an email that went out from the state’s OFA director, specifically telling volunteers not to mention the Stupak amendment in their phone calls shortly before the House vote.
Poor Stupak! So unimportant that he doesn’t even get mentioned by Organizing for America.
