kth's journal

Steve Benen, writing at Talking Points Memo, points to an item in the conservative blog Powerline defending Fred Thompson's lobbying for a family planning group. For people who don't read blogs, Powerline is famous for its exposé of the uncertain provenance of documents used in CBS News' report on Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard.

The post is curious on a couple of counts. First, Hindrocket (the handle of the post's author) asserts:

The fact that a pro-abortion group would do this tells us something about how seriously we should take the story as an indication that Thompson has pro-abortion sympathies.

But surely no one is arguing that Thompson is a crypto-pro-choicer. Rather, the argument would be that Thompson is an opportunist who lacks real conviction on the issue. That may actually be OK from the standpoint of a voter whose first priority is to make abortion illegal; more below.

Hindrocket further defends the honorable profession of lobbying by way of comparison: A lawyer needs to be able to represent, for example, a man accused of homicide without being labeled pro-murder.

First of all, I humbly submit that a defender of murderers would in fact have quite a difficult time securing the nomination of the Republican Party for President, especially if he routinely defended murderers whose innocence he was uncertain of. But that's not even the worst flaw in Hindrocket's argument. A lawyer defending a murderer is never arguing that murder is OK or should be legalized, only that his client didn't commit murder (either that he didn't do the deed, or the deed wasn't murder). So there would only be a conflict between the lawyer's heart and his professional duties, analagous to Thompson's situation, if he in fact knew (not just believed) that his client was guilty. No doubt this is occasionally true, though probably far less often than people imagine, but again, for any candidate, especially a Republican, to confess to such a conflict would almost certainly be fatal to his campaign, and legitimately so.

No doubt someone who is against abortion can vote for Thompson secure in the belief that he will do whatever he can to curtail the legality of abortion: nominate anti-abortion judges, champion anti-abortion legislation, etc. But surely they would have more enthusiasm for someone who had genuine convictions on the issue (several other examples of Thompson's apostasy on abortion are cited in the LA Times story reporting his pro-choice lobbying). Moreover, voters in general may wonder whether Thompson actually has beliefs at all, rather than a pressing need to be President and a set of positions with no other rationale than to give him the best odds of that happening.