Filed under: Flip-Flop, GOP Hypocrisy, McCain, Palin, Religious Right, Women's Rights
The Republicans – so-called “strict constructionalists” – are constantly, self-righteously crying out ad nauseum that the Constitution should be interpreted strictly in accordance with how the Founding Fathers allegedly intended it to be. Because apparently since only the Founding Fathers mattered in 1776, only they should matter now.
What they fail to comprehend is that what made the Founding Fathers great, in certain ways, was that they saw the limitations of their time, sex, class and race, and founded the United States upon principles greater than themselves. In the Constitution, they created a living, flexible body of legal principles that envisioned the possibility of the United States growing into a Nation where slavery was abolished, where women of all races had the right to vote, and where all people had equality and liberty under the law.
Despite taking the position that the Constitution should be ”strictly interpreted,” even Republicans have to back down from this extreme position when faced with the absurd end point of their position. When questioned directly about exactly how “strict” the interpretation is supposed to be in their view, the Republicans (including McCain – Palin probably doesn’t even know what “strict constructionalism” is) flip-flop. They have to, because strict constructionalism would mean a return to how things were in 1776, including no rights for people of color or women.
This was pointed out to McCain recently on ”The View” when he appeared on September 12 and explained his belief that the Constitution should be interpreted in accordance with what the Founding Fathers wanted back in 1776. Blah blah blah. He stated: “I want people who interpret the Constitution the way our Founding Fathers envisioned for them to do.” In response, Whoopie Goldberg asked him the obvious question: “Should I be worried about being a slave, that we’d be returned to slavery, because certain things happened in the Constitution that you had to change.”
Confronted with such a piercing example of the problems inherent with taking strict constructionalism endpoint, McCain had to back down from the view he had just expressed a minute before and flip-flop on his stated position. Shaking his head, he thanked Whoopie for making the implicit point that strict constructionalism is absurd and unreasonable when taken to extremes, saying “That’s an excellent point and I thank you for it.”
So, if McCain doesn’t want to bring back slavery, and is not in fact a strict“strict constructionalist,” than why does he keep saying that the Constitution should be interpreted strictly? The answer is one word: Abortion. This is just one more example of McCain pandering to the religious right, and their one-issue-obsession with abortion politics. Apparently, the anti-choice brigade is so obsessed with controlling women’s bodies that it’s willing to put the entire country in even more jeopardy than it already is in (given the crashing markets and economic disasters littering Wall Street) by risking putting a completely unqualified and incompetent individual one 70-year old man’s heartbeat away from the Presidency.
In actuality, McCain doesn’t really believe in strict constructionalism – he just believes in interpreting the Constitution the way his anti-choice supporters want him to: against Roe v. Wade. Like choosing Palin as his running mate, McCain’s position on strict constitutionalism is just one more example of how he’ll do anything, compromise any position, flip-flop on any issue, in order to win the election.
A more accurate way of describing McCain’s approach to Constitutional interpretation, rather than ”strict constructionalism” (which he’s clearly not), would be to call it “religious constructionalism. Or perhaps just “anti-choice constructionalism.” Because that’s really what it comes down to for McCain’s conservative base of supporters – doing anything they can to limit women’s rights to control their own bodies and destinies. Oh, and guns. I almost forgot guns.
McCain’s conservative supporters are against the Government regulating guns but for the Government regulating women’s bodies – and because McCain’s religious conservative supporters are for it, so is McCain. If the guns could talk, they’d probably thank the Conservatives for their unfettered support, but they can’t, so instead they’ll just keep on killing deer, school children, and cops.
When you think about it, I mean really think about it, in a way that Palin hasn’t done about most of the national and global issues currently facing the country, it’s quite ludicrous that guns have more rights than women.
And, let’s talk about the deer for just a minute. The poor deer in the picture that Palin keeps holding aloft like an NRA badge of honor. The poor deer with it’s throat ripped out and blood pouring down it’s body, pooling on the ground, with Palin kneeling above it’s life-less eyes, with a beaming smile on her face. We’re supposed to buy that she’s pro-life?
How exactualy does such a blatant glorification of death square with her alleged “pro-life” position? Again, Palin’s not really for life. She’s against choice. There’s a difference and it’s an important one.
In 1776, the people living on what would become United States soil needed guns – we were living under the tyranny of the British Crown and we had just finished a revolution. We had more skirmishes to fight with other countries about borders and of course the Native Americans with whom we were also fighting about land (however wrongly). Back in 1776, women didn’t have rights, among other things, to education, to vote, to work, to marry who they wanted, or to decide when to bear a child or when not to. People of color also didn’t have rights across the board, and many were enslaved.
I don’t know about you, but despite how far we have to go, we’ve come a long way, and I for one am glad we’re not living in 1776 any more. I’m grateful that the Founding Fathers, despite the limitations of their time, thought beyond their moment in history and beyond their male bodies, and memorialized in the Constitution principles, such as liberty and equality, that were greater than themselves. What would the Founding Fathers say to learn that people like McCain and Justices like Scalia and Thomas, more than 200 years later, after all the gains we’ve made in building a more equal and free society, want to turn back to the clock to the days just after we won our freedom from Britain? They’d probably congratulate themselves on their forethought in establishing the checks and balances of our three branches of Government.
They’re always going to be individual crazies that want to impose their short-sighted view on the majority, but we’re a democracy, and we can make this country what we want it to be. We can can make it more free and more equal, or we can make it less so.
It’s our choice. It’s your choice. Vote.
- BC
