In the 1988 Presidential debate, Mike Dukakis was asked if he would support the death penalty if a person raped and killed his wife. Dukakis gave one of the worst answers of all time and rambled on about how crime was down and he doesn’t support the death penalty.
Should Palin be asked if her 17 year daughter was raped, would she still think her daughter should not be able to procure an abortion?
If I was the debate moderator, I’d ask the question. Most pro life pandering Republicans immediately backslide as soon as the abortion issue hits home. I’d love to see Palin squirm over such a question.
I doubt she’d squirm. And I think she has already been asked this question about her (then 14 year old) daughter during her run for governor. She said she would not allow her 14 year old daughter to abort a pregnancy that was the result of rape.
It’s the one thing I like about her: she’s consistent.
I think that would be a great question. I would like to see them ask her what she would have done if her daughter had chosen to get an abortion.
Pushing her on all these kinds of social positions isreally win-win for the Dems. Either she reveals herself to be a hardline extremist, which turns off moderates, or she back-pedals from them and says she agrees with McCain, which pisses off the fundies again.
That’s great. Let’s get her on national television saying she’d force her own child to have a rape baby. Let’s see how that plays with voters outside the hardcore right.
I think this is the reason that they are keeping her hidden right now. She’s said a lot of stuff on the record that is pretty extreme, including her belief that the IUD is immoral and should be illegal since it works by preventing a **fertilized embryo **from implanting (ftr I could not find her original quote on this, but found her position paraphrased in an Anchorage newspaper). I think she is okay with other methods of birth control though. But there is no question that her extreme viewpoints are a major turnoff to moderates.
I find Sarah Palin’s positions on sex education, creationism, conservationism, abortion rights, and earmarks to be generally disingenuous, often hypocritical, frequently short-sighted, uniformly incorrect, and in the case of the first two items willfully moronic.
Having said that, my answer to the thread question is no. Such a question is not fair. A person’s principled position can be quite at odds to his emotional response. As an example, I oppose inflicting the death penalty for rape. But if someone raped my wife or little sister, I’d kill him as soon as I could.
Would it be fair? In the sense that a similar question was asked to a Democratic in the past, sure. In the sense that it is a pertinent question for a political debate in that it might shed further light on a candidates qualifications, policies, or beliefs? No. Putting the “personal” touch to the question adds nothing to the debate but a sense of sordid curiosity and emotional baggage. Palin;s policies, personal beliefs, and qualifications can be discussed, even attacked, without turning a Vice-Presidential debate into the Jerry Springer Show.
“But what is your teenage daughter was raped . . .” Whatever follows is irrelevant. The question is disgusting.
Here is the Wikipedia entry on the Dukakis question from 1988:
The issue of capital punishment came up in the October 13, 1988 debate between the two presidential nominees. Because she knew the Willie Horton issue would be brought up, Dukakis’s campaign manager Susan Estrich had prepared with Bill Clinton an answer highlighting the candidate’s empathy for victims of crime, noting the beating of his father in a robbery and the death of his brother in a hit-and-run car accident. However, when Bernard Shaw, the moderator of the debate, asked Dukakis, “Governor, if Kitty Dukakis [his wife] were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?” Dukakis replied coolly, “No, I don’t, and I think you know that I’ve opposed the death penalty during all of my life,” and explained his stance. After the debate, Dukakis told Estrich he was sorry and didn’t realize it was that question[7]. Many observers felt Dukakis’ answer lacked the passion one would expect of a person discussing a loved one’s rape and death. Many — including the candidate himself — believe that this, in part, cost Dukakis the election, as his poll numbers dropped from 49% to 42% nationally that night. Other commentators thought the question itself was unfair, in that it injected an irrelevant emotional element into the discussion of a policy issue and forced the candidate to make a difficult choice.
Although I think the issue is quite relevant, I’m not sure questions about her daughter are going to be a very profitable strategy. If it were up to me, I’d zing her instead as a liar. She went in front of the crowd at the Republican National Convention and told outright lies about her stance on earmarks. It’s one thing for Dana Perino to lie her ass off every day (She’s America’s answer to the Iraqi Information Minister. She’s almost a theological conumdrum – can God create a lie so whopping and baldfaced that even Dana Perrino wouldn’t say it with a straight face and act like you were the asshole for doubting her?)
Call Palin a liar. Over and over. It did wonders against Al Gore.
You don’t think it has already “hit home” for her family? I can’t think of any other recent public figures where it has hit home more forcefully. She has given birth to a child with Downs Syndrome, a situation where most other people choose abortion.
And as if that weren’t enough, she has accepted her teenager’s pregnancy even though it could not have been timed more poorly. It seems safe to guess a lot of other politicians over the years have probably swept such pregnancies under the rug with an abortion.
I really don’t see why it is so hard to believe that the woman sincerely believes abortion is wrong and really does live her life accordingly. You can disagree with her views but I don’t see any sign that she is a hypocrite about abortion. She’s more conservative than I am, but I have a lot of respect for her in that she seems to live by the values she claims to believe in on the campaign trail.
I’m as pro-choice as they come, but if I was persuaded to the opposite stance, I’d have to answer the same way - that it would be wrong to abort a “rape spawn”.
After all, if abortion was the “killing of a human” (which I do not personally believe), then it would be just as “wrong” no matter who the parents happened to be - looked at it this way, why should it be a death sentence on anyone because their papa was a rapist? Wasn’t the kid’s fault - [s]he didn’t choose to have a rapist for dad.
Now, the obvious rejoinder is that mom’s right to not be forced against her will to bear a child trumps any rights a fetus may have, and I agree - in my opinion a fetus isn’t a “person” and effectively has no rights until its central nervous system has developed sufficiently to have conciousness. But that is an argument for pro-choice in general. Seems to me that Palin is simply being consistent - I always thought that the “pro-life, except for rape” position lacked moral consistency (why is it somehow “not murder” if the dad was a rapist? Makes no sense to me - either it is really “murder” or it isn’t - if “murder” is okay for “rape-spawn”, why limit it to pre-birth?)
If her daughter had the abortion, she would have been finished in the Republican party. You must take orders from the Religious Right if you’re going to run for elected office as a Republican. That means 100% pro life. No other position is acceptable.
I agree completely. I too am pro-choice and I find hypocrisy in the no-abortion-except-in-cases-of-rape-or-incest group. If the arguement against abortion is that the embryo is equivalent to a human life (which I personally do not believe)…then terminating a human life is immoral, regardless of how it got there. So even if dad is a rapist, the embryo is still an innocent life that must be saved.
I actually admire Palin for being consistent on this issue, in spite of not agreeing with her.
I really don’t understand the outrage this seems to engender. If you believe that teh act of conception represents the boundary point for human life, then how could you not make this decision? To do otherwise would be akin to saying, “Your daughter was raped. Would you kill an innocent person in order to spare her the emotional and physical burdens of carrying the pregnancy to term?” It would take a monster to make that choice.
Now, I don’t agree that the act of conception is the boundary point for human life, so I would allow my )hypothetical) daughter to make a different choice and support her in it fully. But if I did believe a fetus was teh ethical equivalent of a human being, then I could not in good conscious support killing one in these circumstances.
No it doesn’t. It is possible to see a fetus as a human life, even one with equal rights to the mother (not a position I take) and still support abortion rights without being “a monster.”
A person isn’t a monster if they wake up one morning and find lying next to them a person in advanced kidney failure, who has been connected to them while sleeping for life support purposes, and they then choose to unplug that person and continue with their life, even if they know that by unplugging them, it will cause death to the unfortunate kidney patient.
To assume someone must be a monster here is to assume every person who does not do the utmost to prevent the death of every other person in the universe is a monster. And that isn’t a defensible position, IMHO.
Oh that’s ridiculous. Cite that “most other people choose abortion.”
And without quoting any one poster in particular, I do not claim Sarah Palin to be a hypocrite on the issue of abortion at all. I do not say that her stance is inconsistent in any way. OBVIOUSLY she is going to choose the rapist’s spawn be carried to term. Duh! I would expect nothing less. So all y’all are arguing against a point I didn’t make.
The OP inquired as to whether a particular question would be fair to ask her in a debate. I pointed out that it’s already been asked and answered. I then threw in my own spin on what that answer actually means – forcing her child to carry her rapist’s spawn. Whether that’s consistent or not isn’t the issue. I think she answered the question the only way she possibly could. I simply disagree with her stance.