Purging the Pro-Lifers Democratic AGs bar anti-abortion candidates from any support.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/purging-the-pro-lifers-11574122435
Anti-abortion Democratic officeholders are about as rare as pandas, but many in their party’s leadership won’t be satisfied until they’re extinct.
On Monday the Democratic Attorneys General Association decreed that it will only give money and strategic help to AG candidates who “publicly commit” to supporting access to abortion. The message: If you’re a pro-life Democrat, or merely one with misgivings about the party’s opposition to any restriction on abortion, don’t run for attorney general. Or for any other office.
Mark this as one more step toward making America’s two main political parties into warring cultural camps with no room for individual conscience. American politics was healthier, and less polarized, when Democratic ranks included pro-lifers and some Republicans favored abortion rights. Compromise and tolerance were easier to come by.
This decree is especially disappointing because attorneys general are candidates in the 50 states with different political cultures. But these AGs seem intent on imposing their principles on candidates from Alabama to Alaska. A spokesperson for the organization tells the Journal that in 2018 pro-choice candidates ran “incredibly close races” in red states such as Arizona, Georgia and Texas. That’s a nice way of saying they lost.
Meanwhile, Louisiana’s Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards won re-election on Saturday despite having signed a bill that requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. Democrats who win statewide in the South, as Mr. Edwards has now done twice, typically signal their independence from the party’s national left flank.
Today’s coastal Democrats seem not to appreciate that their refusal to show any tolerance for conservative social values is one reason the country elected Donald Trump.
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