This is how a powerful interest group gains influence in a contested presidential primary:
Last
night, four GOP candidates—Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Michele
Bachmann and Rick Perry—took part in a “tele-town hall” sponsored by
Personhood USA, which was broadcast on the radio program of Steve Deace,
an influential Iowa evangelical. The event demonstrated that a
commitment to banning all abortion, even in cases of rape, incest, and
threats to a woman’s health, is now the normative position among the
party’s presidential contenders.
Indeed, the big
news to come out of the forum was the rightward shift in Rick Perry’s
already very conservative position. In the past, Perry has been
committed to banning abortion with very narrow exceptions. But last
night, he said he’d changed his mind, and now doesn’t support any
exceptions at all. “This is something that is relatively new,” he said,
citing a meeting with Rebecca Kiessling, a spokeswoman for Personhood
USA who was adopted after her mother, a rape victim, tried and failed to
abort her. “Looking in her eyes, I couldn’t come up with an answer to
defend the exemptions for rape and incest,” he said. “And over the
course of the last few weeks, the Christmas holidays and reflecting on
that…all I can say is that God was working on my heart.”
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