Douthat, FTW

As a Republican who favors keeping abortion legal AND overturning Roe v. Wade, I’m not sure I have a dog in the Douthat/Kmiec dustup over at Slate. But you’ve got to read Douthat’s takedown. Some representative lines:

What I don’t understand at all is Kmiec’s position, which seems to be that the contemporary Democratic Party, and particularly the candidacy of Barack Obama, offered nearly as much to pro-lifers as the Republican Party does. I am sure that Kmiec is weary of being called a fool by opponents of abortion for his tireless pro-Obama advocacy during this election cycle, but if so, then the thing for him to do is to cease acting like the sort of person for whom the term “useful idiot” was coined, rather than persisting in his folly. …

Kmiec’s suggestion that Obama took the Democrats in anything like a pro-life direction on the issue doesn’t pass the laugh test. (And nor, I might add, does his bizarre argument that because the goal of placing a fifth anti-Roe justice on the court is somehow unrealistic, the pro-life movement should pursue a far more implausible constitutional amendment instead.) …

I can’t begin to fathom why the GOP should consider taking any advice whatsoever from a “pro-lifer” who has spent the past year serving as an increasingly embarrassing shill for the opposition party’s objectively pro-abortion nominee.

Ouch. Douthat gets to the heart of the argument against the “Obamacons,” I think: it’s one thing to say you could never support a guy like John McCain–he’s done plenty to annoy conservatives, and some anger toward him would not necessarily be misplaced. But any conservative who argues that Obama is the superior candidate on the issues conservatives are most interested in is a fool (especially if you’re a social conservative).