A Republican candidate, abortion and his hypocrisy on the issue...
The Oregonian today is reporting about how "pro-life" congressional candidate Mike Erickson paid for an abortion for an ex-girlfriend back in January of 2001.
This is the kind of hypocrisy that we've seen before... think Mark Foley, Larry Craig, David Vitter, etc... politicians campaigning and presenting themselves one way while not following through with those views behind closed doors. Abortion was always a tough issue for me while working as a Republican strategist since personally I was for a woman's right to choose but I knew that I wasn't going to agree with every issue any single politician I worked for took... It helped me to look at working as a strategist more as a sport where you had to bend some personal beliefs to play the game. Abortion was that issue for me. I was under no illusion as to my role and how I had to play it. But since getting out of that game, I have come to realize how "purple" many of my beliefs truly are... when you're not in charge of and responsible for putting words or thoughts into someone else's mouth, you really get an understanding of where you personally stand on the issues. This blog has helped me shape and evolve my beliefs surrounding all of the various issues through no other lense than my own. So when I read stories like the above, there is a part of me that is sympathetic to Erickson and what his ex-girlfriend went through. Now, if I was advising him, I would have told him back in the primary to fess up and use the incident as a profound personal epiphany for him on the issue of abortion. Instead, he tries to tell a different story that really doesn't sound true in the article and he'll have to be dealing with this story through the election.
This is the kind of hypocrisy that we've seen before... think Mark Foley, Larry Craig, David Vitter, etc... politicians campaigning and presenting themselves one way while not following through with those views behind closed doors. Abortion was always a tough issue for me while working as a Republican strategist since personally I was for a woman's right to choose but I knew that I wasn't going to agree with every issue any single politician I worked for took... It helped me to look at working as a strategist more as a sport where you had to bend some personal beliefs to play the game. Abortion was that issue for me. I was under no illusion as to my role and how I had to play it. But since getting out of that game, I have come to realize how "purple" many of my beliefs truly are... when you're not in charge of and responsible for putting words or thoughts into someone else's mouth, you really get an understanding of where you personally stand on the issues. This blog has helped me shape and evolve my beliefs surrounding all of the various issues through no other lense than my own. So when I read stories like the above, there is a part of me that is sympathetic to Erickson and what his ex-girlfriend went through. Now, if I was advising him, I would have told him back in the primary to fess up and use the incident as a profound personal epiphany for him on the issue of abortion. Instead, he tries to tell a different story that really doesn't sound true in the article and he'll have to be dealing with this story through the election.
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