By any standards in the blogosphere, late Sunday night is far too late to be weighing in on a Friday night debate, but here’s my take: President Bush won this one handily. He was lively, coherent, and he doesn’t own a timber company. Kerry seemed repetive, saying, “George Bush rushed to war without a plan to win the peace,” (said in one monosyllabic breath). He also made it abundantly clear that for whatever the issue was, he “had a plan.” Details on that plan are sketchy, but you can find it on his website (doesn’t this disenfranchise voters who don’t have internet access?).
Although Glenn Reynolds thought it was a good answer, I think Kerry’s answer to the abortion question was a fallacy-filled fog of uncertainty. The question, about taxpayer-funded abortions, was answered by Kerry in these terms: if a poor person needs an abortion, how can I let my beliefs deny their constitutional rights? This argument breaks down like this:
1. A person has a constitutional right to have an abortion.
2. If a person is poor, the government should provide a person money needed to exercise that right.
I answer the Senator from Massachusetts with this analogy:
1. A person has a constitutional right to own a truck.
2. If a person is poor, the government should provide a person money needed to exercise that right.
Does Sen. Kerry really follow this line of reasoning? We really cannot elect this man.
Kerry defined a fetus as a person when he said that life begins at conception. Does this mean that we should be able to kill anyone we desire for our own convenience?