NYT Editorial: The Tide of the Culture War Shifts
Not long ago, it would have been unusual for a Democratic senatorial candidate in Iowa to run a powerful abortion-rights television ad like the one recently broadcast by Representative Bruce Braley.
The ad lists in detail the anti-abortion positions taken by Mr. Braley’s Republican opponent, Joni Ernst. In the State Senate, the ad says, she sponsored a “personhood” amendment (declaring a fertilized egg to be a person) that would have the effect of outlawing abortion even in cases of rape or incest, and would also ban many common forms of birth control. Ms. Ernst is even shown saying at a debate that she favors criminal punishment for doctors who perform abortions; the ad describes her position as “radical.”
Ms. Ernst’s personhood ideas, shared by at least five other Republican candidates for United States Senate this year, have been radical for years. What’s new is that Democrats are increasingly willing to say so. For years they were cowed by the religious right into changing the subject when abortion or birth control or same-sex marriage came up. But now, increasingly assured that public opinion supports their positions, Democrats have become more aggressive in challenging Republicans about their beliefs.
In Colorado, Senator Mark Udall, a Democrat, has sharply criticized the views of his challenger, Representative Cory Gardner, about women’s reproductive rights, running an ad that points out the dangers in the Life at Conception Act that Mr. Gardner has helped sponsor in the House. Senator Kay Hagan, Democrat of North Carolina, continually reminds voters that her opponent, Thom Tillis, has worked to make contraception less accessible. As speaker of the State House,
Mr. Tillis also made it far more difficult to get an abortion. Similar campaigns are going on in Michigan and Montana.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/29/opinion/the-tide-of-the-culture-war-shifts.html?_r=1
The decision to go on the offensive is in part designed to incite the anger of women and draw support in the November elections, particularly that of single women, who tend to vote in small numbers in midterms. But it is also a reflection of the growing obsolescence of traditional Republican wedge issues in state after state. For a younger generation of voters, the old right-wing nostrums about the “sanctity of life” and the “sanctity of marriage” have lost their power, revealed as intrusions on human freedom. Democrats “did win the culture war,” Alex Castellanos, a Republican strategist, admitted to The New York Times recently.
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