WASHINGTON — Just as Mitt Romney and other Republicans had cut into the Democrats’ advantage with female voters, a Tea Party-backed Senate candidate’s awkward remark — that if rape leads to pregnancy it’s ‘‘something God intended’’ — has propelled the emotional issue of abortion back to the political forefront. It has put GOP candidates in tight races, from the presidential candidate on down, on the defensive.

Divisive social issues are hardly what most GOP candidates want to be discussing in the few days remaining until elections largely hinging on jobs and the economy. Almost immediately after Richard Mourdock’s comment, Republican candidates distanced themselves from the Indiana state treasurer — though by varying degrees.

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nahantjim

10/25/2012 07:40 AM

If you believe that you god intended that life be created as a result of rape, then must you also not believe that your god intended the rape in the first place? Was your god behind the fall of the twin towers, the holocaust, the civil war? To some these are interesting questions. To others they are absurd. But the point that JFK made to the Houston ministers more than fifty years ago is really the pertinent one here. It is simply wrong to make public policy based on your personal, unquestionable religious beliefs without taking into serious consideration the diverse beliefs of others living in your community that, in a political sense, may be just as valid as yours. A bishop's flock or a minister's congregation are his (or hers) perhaps, but their right to impose policies end at the church's or temple's door. At least that should be the case in our country. Ours is not a religious state. It is a state that contains religions. Karl Rove, of course, saw opportunity in this situation. If you can carve us up so that the final slice falls on the Republican side of the plate...George W. Bush wins. Mourdock and Akins are simply pumping chambers in Karl Rove's Republican heart.