Here is Blake Masters, the nominally conservative and allegedly pro-life Republican candidate for Senate in Arizona, basically jettisoning any pretense of being actually pro-life:
In case it's not clear, Masters is coming out opposed to "very late-term and partial-birth abortion." Well, okay: So he's opposed to probably less than 1% of all abortions in the U.S. Big whoop.
Those abortions should most assuredly be illegal, and their grisly, graphic nature underscores the horror of abortion more effectively than do the earlier procedures. But you can't possibly consider yourself "pro-life" if you're against a mere vanishing fraction of all abortions that take place in the country.
What happened? Up until seemingly this week, Blake Masters was ostensibly a staunch pro-lifer. Indeed, he supported adding a "human life amendment" to the Constitution, which would presumably make abortion illegal nationwide. And yet now:
Just after it released the ad, Masters' campaign published an overhaul of his website and softened his rhetoric, rewriting or erasing five of his six positions. NBC News took screenshots of the website before and after it was changed. Masters' website appeared to have been refreshed after NBC News reached out for clarification about his abortion stances.
"I am 100% pro-life," Masters' website read as of Thursday morning.
That language is now gone.
Also gone is the call for a personhood amendment, as well as a promise to ban funding for research that incorporates aborted fetal remains. Overnight, then, Masters has gone from "100% pro-life" to, quite literally, just 1% pro-life.
What Masters is doing here is obvious: He is attempting to walk the line between satisfying a pro-life base and placating enough of the muddled pro-choice middle to drag him over the finish line in November. In doing so, he has crippled himself electorally: He is still despised by pro-choicers, obviously, but he has also lost the confidence of pro-lifers, and understandably so.
The lesson here is obvious: Pick one side and stick with it. Do you believe all human lives are intrinsically valuable and deserve the full protection of the law from the moment of conception? Then stake your position there and do not move from it. Do you believe unborn human lives are expendable and not worthy of full legal protection? Then argue that too, if you can live with yourself.
But don't be like Blake Masters; don't walk the awful middle line where your only true ambition is to win a popularity contest. You will fail, and you will degrade yourself immeasurably while you do.
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