The Rand Paul Abortion Fiasco

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) appears to be a double-minded man on abortion.  How he can last week be the primary sponsor for a Life at Conception bill and then the following week tell CNN in an interview that there are “thousands of exceptions” is beyond me.  The Hill reports:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Tuesday he’s open to “thousands of exceptions” to a ban on abortion.

Paul has said he believes life begins at conception, but in an interview with CNN the Republican emphasized he is also a physician who treats each case individually.

“What I would say is that there are thousands of exceptions,” Paul told CNN host Wolf Blitzer in response to a question about exceptions to a ban.

“You know, I’m a physician and every individual case is going to be different and everything’s going to be particular to that individual case and what’s going on with that mother and the medical circumstances of that mother,” he said.

The comments come just a week after Paul, a possible White House contender in 2016, introduced the “Life at Conception Act.”

I will state for the record.  If you believe in “thousands of exceptions” you are not prolife.  If you believe that life begins at conception and believe in ANY exceptions other than perhaps the life of the mother then there is something seriously flawed with your worldview.  Some say he was taken out of context, but even so, it was not a well-thought out statement. It was politically flawed.  It made him look like a flip-flopper.

So Senator Paul likely just took a huge step backwards with Iowa’s social conservatives and this is just after I gave him props for looking like he was well-positioned for the 2016 Iowa Caucus.

Scott Conroy at Real Clear Politics quotes me about Senator Paul’s upcoming trip to Iowa:

Shane Vander Hart, editor-in-chief and founder of the Iowa-based Christian conservative news and commentary site Caffeinated Thoughts, noted that Paul’s support among Republicans in the state already extended beyond the network that his father had constructed.

“He has a great base of grassroots activists to build on, so I believe he will have an advantage coming into Iowa,” Vander Hart said. “I believe he has the ability to build a bridge with social conservatives that his dad could not quite accomplish in 2008 or 2012.”

I was given some grief over this by the new Iowa political satire site – Iowa Gif-t Shop which was linked at the top of The BeanWalker last night:

This comes days after Iowa Christian conservative blogger Shane Vander Hart said this:

….

Shane Vander Hart was all like:

Well yeah, kinda.  A prophet I am not.  Contrary to what the author of Iowa Gif-t shop thinks, I talked with Scott Conroy before this news broke it was just published after.  Obviously I would have said something different had this news come out before.  I also want to be clear that my comments to Conroy are not to be construed as an endorsement anyway.  I just thought he was positioned well.

But hey some people are good at snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory.  Senator Paul you shot yourself in the foot, especially since you committed the *unpardonable sin* of making me look bad.  Can’t have that :).

Rand Paul Photo Credit: Talk Radio News Services via Flickr (CC-By-NC-SA 2.0)