I don't know how many of them actually won, have not researched that. I think heard about half of them won their races. What's more important to me is that the Democratic party, which used to stand up for the rights of women, is recruiting candidates who are willing to squelch those rights. Not just being accepting, but actively recruiting them.
I have often said that as our party tries to get back into power that we would allow two groups to pay the price. Women and gays. I think we are seeing that happening now.
I had not realized that 12 were recruited and that some had their anti-choice ads paid for by the DCCC, which is funded by Democrats like you and like me. Chris Van Hollen, I thought, was a little more understanding of the issues that Democrats have traditionally supported. More so than Rahm was when he was DCCC chair. Rahm would often pick Republicans who were wealthy enough to fund their own campaigns.
More on the topic from the New York Times in October.
Democrats Carrying Anti-Abortion Banner Put More Congressional Races in PlayThe political advertisement that aired in Montgomery, Ala., spoke plainly to conservative voters’ values. As an image of three toddlers in diapers flashed across the screen, a narrator intoned that Mayor Bobby Bright, who is running for Congress, “supports their right to life.”
...."The anti-abortion pitch is standard fare in Alabama’s Second Congressional District, a deeply conservative area that President Bush carried twice and that has been represented in Washington by a Republican for four decades. What makes the spot unusual is that Mr. Bright is a Democrat. And that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has been pushing hard for Mr. Bright’s election, paid for it. In fact, Mr. Bright is one of a dozen anti-abortion Democratic challengers the party has recruited to run for the House this year and has aggressively supported with millions of dollars and other resources in culturally conservative districts long unfriendly to the party.
That is the highest number of anti-abortion candidates the party has fielded in recent memory to run either for open seats or against Republican challengers, according to party strategists and a leading anti-abortion organization.
Here is the ad mentioned.
Bobby Bright's anti-choice ad paid for by the DCCCMore from Kristen Day, head of the Democrats for Life, the group that is now apparently controlling the party's message on women rights.
By 2006, the party had moved aggressively, recruiting Bob Casey, a candidate opposed to abortion, to run for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania that he ultimately captured, and putting together a slate of eight House challengers who also opposed abortion. Six of those candidates won. But this year, the party has not only gone to great lengths to recruit such candidates, it has also provided them significant financial backing, underscoring a new pragmatism within the party, said Kristen Day, the executive director of Democrats for Life, an anti-abortion group.
Here is Chris Van Hollen's explanation of why this is a good thing and how it will help women's rights in the long run. He is head of the DCCC this year.
“You help take the wedge issues off the table in these districts and allow the Democrats to focus on kitchen-table economic issues that unite Democrats and have the support of independents and even some Republicans,” he said.
Right, Chris. And I have some swampland in Florida to sell you. Take wedge issues off the table, recruit candidates who are right wing in their views...and they will put them right back on the table.
The Democrats have given in on
Plan B emergency contraception, they have raised the funding for abstinence only education and they are openly recruiting anti-choice candidates. Now where's that swampland?
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