RUSH: The Gallup poll has the most interesting result out today. ‘More Americans ‘Pro-Life’ Than ‘Pro-Choice’ for First Time — Also, fewer think abortion should be legal ‘under any circumstances’ — A new Gallup Poll, conducted May 7-10, finds 51% of Americans calling themselves ‘pro-life’ on the issue of abortion and 42% ‘pro-choice.’ This is the first time a majority of US adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995.’ Now, look at me. The Republican Party, at this very moment, is in a tug-of-war between the country club blue-blood Rockefeller types (made up a lot of people, bunch of wealthy country club types) who want the Republican Party to get abortion out of the party. They don’t want it to be an issue. They don’t like the Christians being in the party. I’ve told you the stories.
I don’t need to repeat ’em, but I’ve told you the stories how in New York in the nineties, all these well-to-do Republicans would come up to me and say, ‘What are you going to do about the Christians and abortion issue? It’s killing us.’ When I was out in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, three weeks ago for a Milken Institute Forum, prior to going out on stage in the greenroom, I was talking to a bunch of Republican types who said that they had gone to a cocktail reception the night before at the home of a wealthy Republican in Beverly Hills, and the entire subject matter was devoted to how the party has got to get rid of abortion if it is going to have any chance of coming back and beating Democrats.
So what is the Republican Party going to do now with this news? And what are these country club blue-blooders going to do with this news? And why do you think this is happening in the first place? See, I’ve always known that abortion was a 50-50 issue. I don’t think it was ever an 80-20 pro-choice majority. It never was. Just like there were never three million homeless. But the number was out there, and the assumption — because the Drive-Bys and the Democrats dominated news cycles, the assumption was — that everybody that was ‘enlightened’ and everybody that was informed and educated and sophisticated was pro-choice. And make no mistake about it: pro-choice means pro-abort.
All you have to do is tell a pro-choicer that you’re pro-choice, too, ‘I just choose life,’ and they won’t let you in. The label matters. The label means something. So now, what are all these Wizards of Smart in the Republican Party going to do? All these people, say, at the Beverly Hills cocktail parties lamenting and complaining and whining that abortion — the ‘social issues’ is the code word for that, by the way — that the ‘social issues’ are killing the Republican Party. I’ll tell you what’s happening in America right now. We watch what’s happening to Carrie Prejean. We watch how a gay judge asks a question, to which she answers very un-offensively. She apologized even before she answered.
She apologized for offending. She said she believes that marriage is between a man and a woman — and there was a Gestapo unleashed against her. The liberal Taliban, essentially, was unleashed against her. And then they dug deep and tried to come up with photos saying that she did not meet the requirements of a Miss California. And all she did was state that her beliefs come from the Bible and religion. That’s the way she was raised, that marriage is between a man and a woman — which, by the way, it is. If we get to the point that when you’re asked if you’re married, and you have to say, ‘Yeah, I’m married: opposite-sex married;’ if we get to the point where you have to specify that you’re opposite-sex married, well, you’re going to get a backlash and a revolution, and it’s already happening.
The debauchery in the popular culture… Do you remember the 2004 presidential elections and all the Wizards of Smart pollsters had gone out and they were predicting Kerry was going to win for this reason or that? It came out Kerry didn’t get close, and it turned out that there was this big mass of voters that voted on values that they had missed, that surprised everybody. The exit polls said it was the values. And the Democrats for the first week after the election said, ‘Yeah, we’re going to have to shore up our relationship with values voters.’ They’re still there, and they’re watching all this, and they’re watching what’s happening to their schools, and they’re watching what’s happening to popular culture, and they’re watching what’s happening to marriage.
They’re watching all this. We’ve got the most anti-life president you could possibly imagine being elected. We got a guy who supports partial-birth abortion. We have a guy who supports the killing of babies who successfully are born, despite being intended to be aborted. I mean, you can argue around the margins that’s really what he voted for but it was the practical outcome. Yet here’s the Gallup poll: 51% of the American people — the first time ever a majority in a poll — say they are pro-life. So if you want to ask yourself why, it’s due to the fact that more people than you know are paying attention to the rot that is happening in their lives (in their towns, communities, states, wherever, cities) in their culture.
There was also news this week that 40% of births in America are to single women — and in the Washington Post, this was treated as progress. That is the right number, 40% of births are to single women, and it was treated as progress. Do you know why? Because it showed women were liberated; they did not have to hitch themselves to a man or get married to have a child. I’m sorry. We have not gotten to the point where most Americans think this is progress, because most Americans are paying taxes to support families where there is no father, or where there is only one parent. And they see that children born into those families have a much bigger obstacle to overcome as they grow up than otherwise.
They see all this. Now, they don’t have any leaders that are out there representing them. They don’t have any leaders that were out there proposing legislation or even talking about this, but the people are there. So when they’re asked about it, such as in this poll, the American people pop up. We see single-parent, out-of-wedlock births. A lot of Americans now see that they are paying the health care, the home loans, the cars loans, and everything else for families comprised this way. They are paying home loans for people that come out of out-of-wedlock births. It’s all around them, and people do not want this to happen — and those who can have left and fled places where this is happening.
And that’s how you end up with blue cities, because the people who can afford to get out of there get out of there — and what you’re left with are solid 90%, 95% Democrat-voting blue cities. And the Democrats at the end of the day look at that and say, ‘That’s great! Whatever it took to get 95% of the voting bloc in this X city for us, fine!’ ‘Cause that’s all that matters to them is their power. So this is an interesting poll result from Gallup, and I’m going to be watching very carefully to see just exactly how the Republican Party decides to deal with this. All of the enlightened guys — all the enlightened consultants, all the enlightened media people on our side, all the enlightened political party people on our side — I’m going to see how they react to this and how they deal with it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, there’s a New York Times story on abortion today, Sheryl Gay Stolberg. And the headline says, ”On Abortion, Obama Is Drawn Into Debate He Hoped to Avoid’ — The confluence of two events — his commencement speech on Sunday at the University of Notre Dame, in Indiana, and his forthcoming choice of a candidate to replace Justice David H. Souter, who is retiring from the Supreme Court — threaten to upend Mr. Obama’s effort to ‘tamp down some of the anger’ over abortion, as he said in a news conference last month, and to distract from his other domestic priorities, like health care.’
Now, the question, ladies and gentlemen, how can Obama be drawn into a debate on abortion he hoped to avoid? I thought abortion was a surefire winner of a debate for Obama? If you listen to the moderates in our own party, if you listen to the Colin Powells, if you listen to half of the GOP consultants, if you listen to the enlightened GOP media, why, abortion is something the Republicans have gotta get rid of it. It’s killing the Republican Party. And yet, the New York Times, ‘On Abortion, Obama Is Drawn Into Debate He Hoped to Avoid.’ I think he would love a debate on abortion, he could win it; it’s so popular an issue. Can we now say with the Gallup poll, 51% of the American people say they oppose abortion, that they’re pro-life? Could we now say that the debate on abortion is over, that the science is settled? Just like Algore does on global warming, there is no more discussion, the debate’s over. There’s consensus and the science is settled. There’s a big difference, however, between Algore and me. I’m not afraid to debate what I believe about this issue. Algore will not debate global warming.