HOW SHE SEES IT Abortion is uniting moderate Republicans

By JENNIFER BLEI STOCKMAN
HARTFORD COURANT
Will the far right's drive to kick moderate Republicans out of their own party succeed?
If you believe this is likely, think again. An American Viewpoint poll last month found that 73 percent of Republicans believe the right to choose should be a woman's decision, not the government's. Sixty-one percent of GOP respondents said that they themselves might not choose abortion, but they would not take that right away from other women. That's a Republican majority for choice.
These numbers should constitute a wake-up call to party regulars. They should know that the function of primary elections is to select electable candidates to carry the GOP banner in November, not to provide a forum to purge ideological impurities. But they have yet to summon the political courage to stand up to the bullyboy right.
Arnold's strategy
However, there is growing evidence that Republican voters, if not their leaders, recognize that majorities are made in the middle. Last October, Arnold Schwarzenegger closed a double-digit gender gap in the last weeks of the California recall election, primarily because of his strong support for choice. He joins a long list of Republican governors elected in Democrat states -- all of whom support choice.
Could this be the beginning of a trend? In the May GOP primary in Pennsylvania, moderates brought the barest margin of victory to Sen. Arlen Specter, turning out in high numbers to reject his far-right opponent, Rep. Pat Toomey. Toomey focused the closing days of his campaign on his opposition to a woman's right to choose. In a Keystone Poll taken days before the Pennsylvania election, likely voters said that abortion was their No. 1 issue, and 69 percent of those surveyed said abortion should remain legal -- including 23 percent of self-identified conservatives.
Toomey's right-wing strategy clearly backfired on Election Day. Moderate Republicans came out to vote that Tuesday, and did so in greater numbers than social conservatives. Not only did the turnout rate of GOP voters in the moderate Philadelphia suburbs exceed the state turnout, more of them voted in the primary than came out to vote for the Republican candidate for governor two years ago.
Moderate vote
This suggests that the aggressive tactics of the far right are serving to activate the moderate vote. Over a hundred bills restricting choice have been introduced in Congress this year alone. President Bush signed the few that made it through with great fanfare, sitting before the cameras surrounded by a cadre of grinning white, male lawmakers. Those images may have done more to motivate the Republican majority for choice than any election ad.
If this GOP silent majority is now truly activated, it is good news for the party, which is still striving for majority status among registered voters. It's good news for the nation, a sign that the political system is correcting itself and fighting to return to the center. And more important, it heralds the distinct possibility that the far right's wish to purge Republican moderates will remain an ideological fantasy.
X Jennifer Blei Stockman of Greenwich, Conn., is the national co-chairwoman of the Republican Majority for Choice and is a delegate to the Republican National Convention in August. She wrote this for the Hartford Courant. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.