Tea and Toast

Tea Party Target Stupak Won't Seek Re-Election

Rep. Stupak makes no apologies to his former supporters:

"I've fought my whole career for health care and thanks to Barack Obama and my colleagues, we've gotten it done."

Yes, you've done it, but not what you think. Apparently lobotomies are covered under the government health plan. What else explains Stupak's betrayal of his dedicated pro-life base? I imagine on his departure from office, someone will suddenly snap fingers, then the former representative will shake his head, blink his eyes, and say, "No! You can't make me do it!"

But there was no post-hypnotic trance to excuse Stupak's actions. For whatever reason, he made this choice. Why he made a stand seemingly on principle for so long only to join the enemy at the last minute remains a mystery. He claims now that his career was about health care, distancing himself from his own pro-life record. He knew like the rest of us that Obama's promised executive order prohibiting abortion funding was worthless, but he chose this symbolic gesture over effective action (a no vote), and so opened the floodgates for massive expansion of the abortion industry.

I want to believe Stupak sincerely believed abortion was wrong and that he was merely overwhelmed by the cloud of deceit that surrounded Washington during the debate which in the end only Republicans could see through. I want to believe children's lives are truly important to him and that he betrayed himself when he betrayed his supporters. I want to believe this because it's unthinkable to me that someone who takes an unpopular stand for life could deny it without any immediate or eventual remorse.

Why did he vote for the bill? I don't know. Why he is leaving office may be easier to explain. Yes, he knows the anti-incumbent axe will fall in November, and bowing out now gives his party time to groom a potential Democrat successor, but I think there may be additional motivation. I will go out on a merciful limb and suggest it is shame.

Does anyone believe that a politician voluntarily leaves office to "spend more time with family?" I do believe Stupak when he says it was not pressure from the Tea Party movement that prompted him to leave. He's not a Tea Partier - he doesn't believe in smaller government and free markets.

I think he is leaving because he has lost the favor of his loyal pro-life supporters and he has no excuse to offer them. He burned the bridge that we all thought he was defending. Who would fight with a man who turned on his allies? On one side there is broken trust, on the other there will always be doubt. Stupak has broken confidence with both sides and is no longer viable in any party. Perhaps now that he has nothing to lose, his "time with family" can be spent finding what his real convictions are.

For the sake of his soul, I pray Bart Stupak repents of his fateful pro-abortion vote and once out of office denounces the imminent taxpayer-funded abortion machine. Once free of the trappings of Washington and his overbearing party leaders, I pray he joins in the work of the pro-life groups he abandoned and chooses to atone for the lives of the unborn children whose death warrants he and his 218 colleagues co-signed.