GOP: Abortion to Be Other Main 2014 Issue

The Republican Party has no plan for immigration reform, no plan for a jobs bill, and no alternate plan for Obamacare.  And then there's the neglected issue of the nation's crumbling infrastructure.  Yet what does the GOP plan to make a major campaign issue in the 2014 midterm elections?  Abortion.  Again.  Why? Because other than gay bashing, it is the favor issue with the Christofascists.  And with a dwindling party base - the angry old white men die off a little bit each and every day - the rocket scientists in the GOP think abortion is a sure winner.  The New York Times looks at the coming election push.  Here are excerpts:

When the Republican National Committee gathers for its winter meeting here on Wednesday, the action will start a few hours late to accommodate anyone who wants to stop first at the March for Life, the annual anti-abortion demonstration on the National Mall. And if they need a lift to the meeting afterward, they can hop on a free shuttle, courtesy of the Republican Party.

“We thought it only fitting for our members to attend the march,” said Reince Priebus, the party chairman.

Abortion is becoming an unexpectedly animating issue in the 2014 midterm elections. Republicans, through state ballot initiatives and legislation in Congress, are using it to stoke enthusiasm among core supporters. Democrats, mindful of how potent the subject has been in recent campaigns like last year’s governor’s race in Virginia, are looking to rally female voters by portraying their conservative opponents as callous on women’s issues.

“Republicans have turned the floor of the House into the battleground for their relentless war on women’s health care and freedoms,” said Representative Steve Israel of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Every time they launch another extreme attack against women’s rights, they lose more ground with women voters.”

In the House in the coming weeks, Republicans will make passing the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” one of their top priorities this year.

Democrats say their success this year will depend on how close they can come, given lower turnout, to President Obama’s overwhelming margins with female voters . . . . 

Coupling the issue of abortion with a subject important to Republicans’ Tea Party followers — government spending — is one way the party is recalibrating its election-year message. Republicans say that by framing the abortion debate in terms of fiscal conservatism, they can make a connection to the issue they believe will ultimately decide who controls Congress next year — the Affordable Care Act.

Mr. Priebus, the Republican chairman, will attend the March for Life this week, rare for a party leader. So will Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader. In years past, Republican presidents have addressed the march by phone or video message to avoid speaking in person.

Nowhere was the power of the abortion issue more evident recently than in the governor’s race in Virginia, where the Democratic candidate, Terry McAuliffe, won in November in part because women preferred him by nine percentage points over the Republican, Ken Cuccinelli, whom Democrats portrayed as extreme on women’s issues.

It's not a matter of portraying Republicans as extreme on the issue.  They ARE extreme on the issue plain and simple.   And if they truly wanted to decrease abortions, they would back reality based sex education programs and making contraception widely available.  Yet they do neither.  In the end, it is all about trying to impose Christofascist beliefs on all citizens.