Here’s a note I sent today to a friend’s discussion list concerning the Constitution Party’s implosion over the Nevada state party’s abortion stand. — RDM

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by Rod D. Martin
May 22, 2006

Gentlemen,

Please pass on to your list a couple points in response to Perry Coghlan’s defense of the Constitution Party.

1) Perry says no one thinks the Nevada state chairman’s beliefs are reflective of those of the Constitution Party; and yet clearly plenty of people do, since the Ohio and New York Constitution Parties have now seceded from the national Constitution Party over this issue.

2) Perry says that Mr. Hansen’s beliefs (which include abortion in case of “danger to the mother’s health,” fetal defects, etc.) are not the views of the state party in Nevada; but clearly that’s a red herring, since he remains state chairman there, since Jim Clymer says his wife will be handling any abortion legislation which comes before the state legislature, and since the Nevada party continues to run him for Governor. The national party could have disciplined him or his state, or could even have removed Nevada from the national party, and chose not to. Given the likely abortion stance of any Republican candidate in the state, they are tacitly supporting (and the Nevada party is actively supporting, with their de facto blessing) the GREATER of two evils.

3) Perry says the national party is not “supporting him in any way”, but clearly that’s false since they’ve kept Nevada in the national party — at the cost of Ohio and New York, which stayed faithful on the abortion issue! Howard Phillips even personally stated that the issue of federalism was more important in this case than the issue of these pro-abort beliefs.

4) Perry says that this is all some kind of effort to “get rid of the Mormons”; however, I’d like to know just where any Constitution Party member gets off allowing a Mormon in their midst in the first place! We have been told again and again that the Constitution Party is the “pure, Christian” party, and that unless you want to “vote for the lesser of two evils”, you must vote for them. But by Perry’s logic, we must either conclude that he believes Mormons are regenerate and will properly reflect God’s will as civil magistrates, or that he believes voting for a “little bit of evil” would be fine, just so long as it wears the right party label. In either case, all of his arguments for the Constitution Party (and against the rest of us) over the past 16 years go right out the window, purely because it’s now his ox getting gored.

5) Finally, Perry says he is horrified at the reaction against Howard Phillips, and how quickly men have turned on him. But let’s get real here: Howard has been “quickly turning” on old friends — from Ronald Reagan to Herb Titus — for decades. He is not without charisma, but neither was Hitler; and he has betrayed everyone who every disagreed with him (or in Reagan’s case, just failed to employ him) all his life. This man’s deeds are returning to him.

They couldn’t return over a better issue. Politics in a free society necessitates compromise, because men disagree, and the nature of freedom is that they all get their say. But the Constitution Party has denied this from its inception. Good men like Perry and hypocrites like Howard (and Dougie) have spent the past 16 years beating all the rest of us to death for our supposed lack of “purity”, which is defined as whatever they happen to think this week. The fact that Republicans disagree with each other — and worse, that conservative Republicans have not booted out every Republican liberal — is cited as proof that we are all compromisers and fiends of the worst sort, selling out our mothers for “the scraps from the humanists’ table”.

Well now here they are, with their own little “situation”: a state party leader, a founder of their party and their candidate for Governor of a state, who believes in a set of abortion “exceptions” big enough to allow 90% of all abortions ever performed, indeed, a definition Hillary Clinton has endorsed. And their reaction is to allow it in their midst, look the other way, and even to keep Nevada — undisciplined in any way — while letting more principled state parties like Ohio and New York leave in disgust.

So how exactly are they different from the men they’ve lambasted all these years?

Answer: they are different in only one way. The men they lambasted and attacked all these years weren’t hypocrites and liars. And they now most certainly are (Perry aside, of course).

So how does it feel, gentlemen, to meet the enemy and realize it is you?