Meg Whitman certainly didn’t do her imploding campaign any favors with her cowardly refusal to join Jerry Brown in running a positive campaign from now through election day at Governor Schwarzenegger’s Women’s Conference in Long Beach. And if women knew that Meg was just as non-committal on choice as she is on her campaign strategy, they’d probably be even less impressed than they already are. Thankfuly, the Los Angeles County Democratic Party has an ad for that:
Truth is, Meg Whitman doesn’t care about social issues, just as long as she gets impose her radical economic agenda on the state. So she’ll just say whatever she thinks is likeliest to get her elected. Pathetic, all in all.
I think Whitman’s stands on economic issues are horrid and will certainly be voting for Brown (and Democrats generally). But even more horrid is intellectual dishonesty. Whitman clearly said that she’s pro-choice but not in every circumstance (she said “any” but it’s clear to any honest person that that is not what she actually meant) — she said she’s not pro-choice in case of late term or “partial-birth” abortion and she favors parental notification. You may disagree with these stances — I certainly do — but that is a different matter from claiming that she says whatever people want to hear. This is a sleazy dishonest misrepresentative ad meant to manipulate stupid people — much like all of Whitman’s ads.
is that it falls into the trap set for it by the anti-choice crowd: You’re either pro-life or pro-choice.
That’s a false dichotomy: it implies that if you’re pro-choice, then you must be anti-life. I don’t know anyone who could be called anti-life (well, except for warmakers). I think all people who are pro-choice are also pro-life – that is, they respect and nurture life, while retaining their right to make their own reproductive decisions – and having an abortion is usually a morally and emotionally wrenching event that echoes throughout a lifetime. That does not make one anti-life.
On the other hand, people who are “pro-life” are indeed anti-choice – their abhorrence of abortion is strong enough for them to demand that the state take away reproductive choice.
The true dichotomy is pro-choice or anti-choice, and this ad should have made that crystal clear.
How could she have voted on the ballot proposition for parental notification if she never registered to vote until this year?