Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has come out denouncing comments made by GOP Chairman Michael Steele to GQ Magazine.
Governor Huckabee's Statement:
"Comments attributed to Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele are very troubling and despite his clarification today the party stands to lose many of its members and a great deal of its support in the trenches of grassroots politics.
"Since 1980, our party has been steadfast and principled in believing in the dignity and worth of every human life. We have supported a Constitutional amendment to protect life and the party has taken the position that no one individual has the supreme right to own another person in totality including the right to take that life. For Chairman Steele to even infer that taking a life is totally left up to the individual is not only a reversal of Republican policy and principle, but it's a violation of the most basic of human rights--the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
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Are you saying you think women have the right to choose abortion?
Yeah. I mean, again, I think that’s an individual choice.
You do?
Yeah. Absolutely.
Are you saying you don’t want to overturn Roe v. Wade?
I think Roe v. Wade—as a legal matter, Roe v. Wade was a wrongly decided matter.
Okay, but if you overturn Roe v. Wade, how do women have the choice you just said they should have?
The states should make that choice. That’s what the choice is. The individual choice rests in the states. Let them decide.
Do pro-choicers have a place in the Republican Party?
Absolutely!
Huckabee joins Ken Blackwell in being critical of the comments as well. For full disclosure, I know both Gov. Huckabee and Gov. Steele personally and consider them both friends. That being said, I simply cannot understand how someone who is pro-life can make these kind of statements...especially a national figure and the face of the Republican Party. There really is no excuse for an answer to be so simplistic. Hindsight is 20/20, true, but Michael Steele is media savy and understands he has a much brighter spotlight on everything he says. Yes, by law, it is an individual choice because of the Roe v. Wade case. Chairman Steele had have framed the debate by changing that up just a bit to say "the Supreme Court deemed it an individual right" and added "but we believe it's a moral wrong," this wouldnt' be a controversy. But without a full explanation from the start, he has created something that he's stepped in. And it was so avoidable.
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