"Pro-life" Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA-18) urged mistress to get an abortion

[PragmaticPopulist]

He's probably gonna get a primary challenger. But knowing the GOP primary electorate, he could easily survive.

[PragmaticPopulist]

Ultimately if people hold conservative or liberal beliefs the hypocrisy or moral failings of a candidate are irrelevant, so long as the votes back up their preferences. It is not wrong for a conservative to prefer keeping Murphy vs electing a Democrat.

Well, if you don't want to factor in the idea of integrity, dignity, and so on, one could easily take this kind of hypocrisy (and what he said about his staffers writing the pro-life stuff) as a signal that he is not committed to those views, and whatever his current votes have been, he might not be dependable for anti-abortion legislation. Ditto for other stuff he says.

I think 2016 of all elections showed what happens when a politician becomes viewed as very untrustworthy. Not to say that it would play out the same for a candidate in a House race (they don't get nearly as much attention, obviously), but trust still matters.

Honestly, his quotes on the issue in the alleged texts to his mistress make this situation worse than the DesJarlais situation (you may remember that I was a huge Starrett supporter in the primary) because he pretty much said that he isn't pro-life and doesn't want his social media supporting pro-life ideas.  I absolutely want him primaried, but he would still be marginally better than a liberal, pro-abortion Democrat.

And, I vacillate a little on the issue of how to treat the women who get abortions.  In the short run, I don't think it is fair to punish them because they are victims of the lies of the abortion doctors and the abortion industry, though they should face mandatory counselling.  After a few years of it being illegal, I would support some punishment (saying that they could not, in good faith, have failed to understand their act), but still less severe than the doctors.  Right now, it would help no one to throw grieving victims of the abortion industry in jail.  Abortion doctors, on the other hand, should face life in jail without parole as a minimum sentence with the death penalty in play, just like for other murders.

See, if you really believe deep down that abortion the same as killing a baby then you'd at least have to put the death penalty on the table for mothers to be intellectually consistent.  After all, they paid the doctor to "murder" the "baby," no?  I'd argue even folks like ExtremeConservative won't make that jump because deep down they know that killing a fetus simply isn't the same as killing a baby.  You wouldn't say "let's give person A who hired a contract killer to murder Person A's kid a pass because Person A is really just a victim of the lies spread by the murder-kids-for-money industry," would you?  Of course, deep down most of us know abortion - while obviously horrible - is not the same as murdering a baby and thus are rightly horrified by the idea of executing a mother who gets an abortion.

I strongly disagree with your accusation.  Being pro-life is the main reason for my political views in the first place- because I believe that abortion is worse (not even the same) than killing a random stranger in the street.  Unfortunately, enough women have been deceived by the abortion industry to not realize what they are doing, so they aren't as morally guilty as a regular murderer.  Once we have a strong enough public information campaign, the more I think about this (i.e. a while down the road), I would support first-degree murder charges for the mother and the father (if he knew at all and didn't do every possible thing to stop it).

While I don't agree with ExtremeConservative's views, by saying that a Republican is better than a pro-life Dem, he's confirming that he's not a single-issue voter, so I'll give him that much.

Here's a question for ExtremeConservative: in the unlikely event there is a race between a pro-choice R and a pro-life D, who would you pick?

Before you ask, I would pick the D, because abortion isn't one of the most important issues to me.

[PragmaticPopulist]

Sabato's Crystal Ball: PA-18 goes from Safe Republican to Likely Republican.