Debra Medina and the “Great Partisan Divide.”

 

The Great Partisan Divide in the politics of this country manifests even in the Super Bowl.  Check out this AP article in The Oregonian.

Fancy that!  How often I have likened partisan political bickering or attack to an ongoing Super Bowl Game in which onlookers choose sides and sit together calling out insults across the field to their counterparts.

Today, in perusing recent postings on the Internet regarding Debra Medina’s gubernatorial campaign, I came across an article in My SA News to which I responded and also engaged other readers, offering a number of commentaries.  One was to an individual with the username, “bnuckols,” who wrote referring to Debra Medina:

She's a *convenient* pro-life Republican, not a principled one. If she's about principle, why won't she vote for the Republican, prolife candidate over the certainly (since they've said so) pro-abortion Democrat? Where is her history as a prolife activist? Where has she lobbied or testified for a pro-life law? Where has she ever marched with pro-life rallies, without her own political campaign sign?

I wrote in response:

Your comment is reflective of the myopia induced by the "Great Partisan Divide" in this country. Like many other people, you stand on one side of this chasm and you hear voices, which appear to come from the other side, but because of your myopic perspective, you cannot see who is talking and from where the voice really issues. Part of this results from the fact that your eyes are so closely focused on the pet issues that are so "near" and dear to your heart, (e.g., supporting the pro-life movement) that you cannot see the big picture in 360 degree, living-color Panavision. Many of the voices, including that of Debra Medina and mine, come from behind you, as well as from those who stand behind your clear adversaries on the other side of the chasm (e.g., those who support the pro-choice movement). All of these voices which you misinterpret come from people who are looking at the root causes of problems in the State and in the Nation. But, because of your myopia, you believe that they come from those immediately across the divide, i.e. the Left.

Debra Medina stands back from the divide (or perhaps above it), not aligning herself with the mobs, which sheepishly congregate at the edge of the precipice, but this in no way means that she is not pro-life. Her many statements have shown that she has an abiding respect for the unborn and acts to protect them.

You ask why she would not vote for "the Republican, prolife candidate over the certainly (since they've said so) pro-abortion Democrat?" This begs the question. Medina has said that she will not support a statist, big government, liberty-suppressing candidate, be that person Democrat or Republican. She has said that she will vote for the candidate who supports the Constitutional mandate for a limited, federal government and who acts in the interest of the personal liberties of the citizens of Texas by not stealing them blind for personal benefit or to support special interest lobbies. 

Medina's view sees respect for individual liberty as paramount.  This would mean that the federal government has no business telling the people of Texas what they can and cannot do with regard to the abortion issue.  Her position, like that of any Constitutionalist, is that the federal government has no Constitutional power to make laws regarding issues not specifically delegated to it by the Constitution.  And, this position is mindful of the fact that the federal government has given itself powers, never intended by the Founders, by stretching the interpretation of the General Welfare, Commerce, and Supremacy clauses in the Constitution to fit its quest for increasing control over the states and the people.  And, people in their myopic concern for their personal pet issues, and their battles with others across the partisan divide, have allowed this shredding of the Constitution to proceed unabated.

The states have the last say on the issue of abortion according to the Tenth Amendment.  Debra Medina is, first and foremost, a Constitutionalist.  I suggest that if people would study the Constitution and not simply remain mired in their nearsighted, pet beliefs and attitudes, they would understand why she has had the courage to throw herself into the lions' pit and to stand up to governments, both State and Federal, which are devouring our freedom, bit by bit, at an ever-increasing and voracious rate. This is the fundamental perception that will result from seeing the forest instead of individual trees.

Needless to say, my response provoked a spirited exchange.  Those interested can follow this debate here.

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