Man, Bart Stupak is a real character isn’t he? Today, he made the cardinal mistake of politics and accidentally told the truth, namely that the health care bill is a good idea and is already extremely restrictive on abortion even without his stupid amendment, but that he still is going to vote against it. Why? It’s a matter of principle of course. “Principle” in this case is code for: “people with vaginas aren’t people. Unless they’re fetuses. In which case, they count double. Also, people with terminal diseases aren’t people, either. Oh, and when I said fetuses were people, I meant in theory, not like, actually.”
Jon Chait has a good read on this: “Bart Stupak sounds like a man who has backed himself into a corner, realizes he’s wrong (which he is), but can’t quite admit it.”
Still, I’m not quite sure that’s right. To explain, let me begin by mentioning that I’ve been thinking that I need to start using Stupak as an insult. As in “man, he really Stupaked that up.” Or “that guy is a total Stupak.”
Roughly speaking it means the sort of person who thinks it’s infinitely more important to make a fuss about being a principled guy than it is to actually have principles. It’s not about hypocrisy so much as it’s about bullheaded, self-indulgent incapacity to understand what’s going on. Hypocrites are people who espouse a belief but violate it. Stupak does that, of course. And doubly so actually since the bill he’s going to vote against a) will provide life-giving health care to literally millions of people – something a Catholic really ought to value and b) will REDUCE abortions compared to the status quo.
It’s the second that’s the real key here. See, it’s not that Stupak claims to care about values but in fact only cares about one particular value. It’s that he’s too stupid (or arrogant, I guess) to even bother to sort out what will be best for the thing he values. And that’s what’s infuriating about him and people like that. The firmness of conviction that is so strong it doesn’t seem to require any actual consideration about what to do. The fact that you value X means that whatever you support is de facto the right thing for people who care about X to support.
How it affects living, breathing people doesn’t matter. You’ve already decided that you’re right, so who really cares about actual people?
Nicely said.
Poor Joe Lieberman. Here he thought he could be the supervillain-turned-savior by being a total jack-ass and then voting with us in the end. Alas, you can't out-Stupak a Stupak.
Meanwhile, I do find it gratifying how nicely health care has summarized the problem with the abortion debate. Catholic hospitals support the bill. Catholic nuns support the bill. Crusty old men… er, Catholic Bishops… would rather keep lecturing us about how much better than us they are.