KEEPING THE ABORTION-RELATED HEAT ON THE RNC…. Ben Smith reports this afternoon that RedState’s Leon H. Wolf wants heads to roll at the Republican National Committee for having a health care policy — for 18 years — that covered abortion services.
For thirty years, we have fought tooth and nail to prevent our tax money from being used to pay for abortions. Turns out, we were apparently doing it through donating to the political party that was ostensibly on our side. This betrayal is so fundamental to the majority of people who donate to the RNC that it’s almost unspeakable. I have no doubt that many of the staffers there will miss the point, so allow me to make it clearly: you have caused every person who donated to support your livelihood to become involved in what they perceive to be a grave moral evil.
The RNC’s defense thus far seems to be excusable negligence; blaming it on some (surely departed) staffer who checked a box almost 20 years ago, and whoops, we weren’t careful enough. So sorry. It won’t happen again.
Not good enough. Not even close. […]
In order for the RNC to regain the trust of their donors, they must disclose the names of all people involved in any way of the selection of their health care plan. And those people must be summarily fired. No severance packages, no golden parachutes; fired. For cause.
No pro-lifer in good conscience can give them a dime until this happens.
But here’s the part RedState misses: the RNC’s “problem” isn’t really a thing of the past. This anger misses the point of what’s happened here.
As we talked about this morning, all the RNC has done here is opt out of abortion coverage for RNC employees. RedState wants an explanation of how this went unnoticed for 18 years.
But more important is the underlying logic. The new-and-improved RNC policy will insure its employees through Cigna, and Cigna will still pay for abortions, just not for RNC employees. In other words, RNC premiums will go to the company, and the company will then use its pool of money to pay for abortions. That’s the “fix” RNC Chairman Michael Steele scrambled to make.
RedState and the Republican National Committee support the Stupak amendment, and according to its reasoning, the RNC will still be indirectly subsidizing abortions with its premiums. Leon H. Wolf wants an explanation for the previous mistake, without realizing that very little has actually changed here.
Either the RNC agrees with this assessment or it rejects the reasoning behind the Stupak measure. It’s one or the other.
