I wrote a few days ago about Donald Trump’s indignant reaction to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s admonition that the GOP “stop being the stupid party.” Jindal’s reference to the “damage” done to the Republican brand from “offensive and bizarre comments” was widely interpreted as a reference to Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” debacle and Richard Mourdock’s similarly-themed comments about a pregnancy resulting from rape being a “gift from God,” though Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” tirade and the party-wide philosophy of “self-deportation” might also have made the list. Karl Rove has launched a new effort, brutally pilloried by the far right as a wishy-washy “establishment” concession, to support electable conservatives who aren’t prone to alienating half the electorate. (Of course, it doesn’t help Rove’s case that his American Crossroads is currently spending money on oppo ads against . . . Ashley Judd.)
Yesterday, confirmation arrived that Trump needn’t have worried that Jindal’s remarks actually presaged a change in policy. At least at the state level, the elements of the party furious with Rove and his ilk are still in full force, and even among “reasonable” conservatives like Jindal and Marco Rubio, the post-election consensus seems to be that the party needs a rebranding, not a rethinking. (For all the media attention given to supposed turning points like Eric Cantor’s warmed-over “Making Life Work” speech, none of the ideas are very fresh. There is a reason a moderate former GOP representative called the speech “putting lipstick on a pig.”) In Iowa, the GOP’s rank and file members have no intention of curbing the stupidity, despite losing ground in the state legislature in 2012. State Rep. Rob Bacon and eight of his fellow Republicans have proposed a bill that would define abortion as murder. The Ames Tribune reports:
It would alter the definition of a person in murder cases to “an individual human being, without regard to age of development, from the moment of conception, when a zygote is formed, until natural death.”
“It’s to protect the life of the unborn,” Bacon told the Tribune. “There’s still some of us that believe life begins at conception.”
Those charged with murder, under the bill, would include a mother who takes abortion-inducing drugs or a doctor who performs an abortion. It also grants no exceptions for rape, incest or to protect the life of the mother.
Bacon acknowledges that the bill will never become law, as a Democratic member of the judiciary committee has fumed that “We’re talking about the victim of rape would go to prison along with her rapist,” but he maintains that Republicans need to go on record as opposing abortion. (Apparently, Bacon is unaware of the myriad fetal personhood bills popping up in statehouses across the nation and the clinic-shuttering restrictions being imposed in places like Tennessee and Mississippi. He also missed the bill in Iowa’s last legislative session to mandate pre-abortion ultrasounds. How much more opposition can the party register?) “For some reason, we can protect eggs of a spotted owl,” he protests, “but yet we don’t put the same emphasis on our children.”
Got that? Zygote = child.
Most perplexing is that Bacon considers himself to be on the same page as Jindal. ““I know where Bobby’s at with this. I’ve felt long and hard after the last election that we need to change our message,” he said. But not the abortion message, evidently. Stridency on that one is OK; heck, the pig doesn’t even have to try to apply lip gloss. (There is a joke in here somewhere about a guy named for a pork product . . . .) To employ another animal maxim, a zebra can’t change its stripes. As the good representative promises, “Even if I’m in here screaming to empty walls, I will always be a voice for the unborn.”
Scream away, Rep. Bacon.
But I’ve got to go. My zygote wants me to make her a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.
. . . So Well Read. . . 