Matt Yglesias

Flip-Flopping on Abortion

In all likelihood the origin of the myth that John McCain is pro-choice is that it really is true that despite McCain’s solid pro-life record, back in 2000 he suggested modifying the Republican plank to call for the criminalization of abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or where failure to abort would kill the mother. That would be a far cry from the pro-choice position, but it would be somewhat more moderate than the current platform’s commitment to blanket criminalization. Then he lost the primary, his views swung to the left on a variety of views, and then starting with George W. Bush’s re-election campaign he swung his views on taxes, immigration, and a series of other issues back to the hard right. But as of April 2007 he was still mavericky on abortion:

Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., told ABC News Saturday that he still wants to change the GOP’s abortion platform to explicitly recognize exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.

But now his campaign says they won’t try to change the platform after all. Instead, the plan is to just try to avoid accepting any responsibility for his repeated cave-ins to conservative dogma.

Platform Watch: Vouchers Edition

I should probably read the new draft Democratic Platform at some point, because every time someone reads a part of it they seem to find something interesting. For example, Sara Mead notes that the new platform has dropped language about opposition to private school vouchers. Not, to be sure, in favor of embracing vouchers but instead the topic is gone. Overall it “has a stronger reform focus than the previous one, emphasizing that we need both reforms and resources to improve our public schools.”

It’s hard to know exactly what’s motivating the changes here, but the fact that the NEA strongly backed Hillary Clinton’s campaign seems like a likely factor to me with regard to these kind of things. The candidates didn’t stake out particularly different education approaches during the campaign, but the difference in underlying coalitions of supporters still probably makes a difference in terms of outcomes.