By Peter J. Smith
WASHINGTON, D.C., July 16, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Barack Obama has now slipped from a five point lead into a dead heat with Republican presidential rival John McCain according to the latest national polls.
One contributing factor is likely that the Democratic presidential nominee’s recent attempts to put a more conservative spin on his extreme pro-abortion views have backfired among his core supporters; at the same time Obama has also come under attack from pro-life organizations who are calling him “the abortion president.”
NEWSWEEK reports that in just under a month Obama has plummeted to a mere 3 percentage point lead over Republican rival John McCain, 44 percent to 41 percent. NEWSWEEK’s older June 20 poll showed Obama leading McCain by a strong 15 points, 51 percent to 36 percent.
Rasmussen polls for the past five weeks show for the most part that Obama has led McCain 49% to 44%, but for the seven days ending July 13 – the very week Obama’s abortion remarks caused a stir among his Democratic supporters – those numbers tightened to Obama 46%, McCain 46%. Rasmussen’s daily polls sample 7,000 potential voters and now indicate Obama holds just a slight lead over McCain by 47% to 45%.
One of the drawbacks of slogging the primary fight through June with Sen. Hillary Clinton is that Obama has had very little time to get Clinton’s supporters comfortable with his candidacy – especially radical feminist voters devoted to the protection of legal abortion – before making public overtures to the political center.
Obama’s recent interview in Relevant magazine, a Christian publication, was meant to do just that by indicating he could support a state’s decision to ban late-term and partial birth abortions so long as there was a “strict, well-defined exception for the health of the mother.” Obama has faced damaging exposure from ads run by the Christian Defense Coalition and Family Research Council over the Democratic presidential candidate’s radical commitment to abortion – a commitment that included voting against numerous bills in the Illinois Senate which would have protected aborted babies born alive from infanticide.
However, Obama then made the comment in the interview, “I don’t think that ‘mental distress’ qualifies as health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term.”
The statement enraged abortion advocates, especially Clinton voters, who immediately raised an outcry questioning Obama’s devotion to abortion, Roe v. Wade, and other “women’s issues.”
The National Organization for Women (NOW) and other radical feminist organizations which had endorsed Clinton instead, pounced on Obama, while NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood Federation (PPF) moved in to do damage control for their candidate and reassure the abortion movement that Obama was solidly in their camp.
A NEWSWEEK poll indicates Obama’s shifting positions on faith-based initiatives, the FISA wiretapping bill, and the political storm over abortion has convinced 53 percent of voters (including 50 percent of former Clinton supporters) that the candidate of “change” has changed his positions on them.
Abortion, however, is one position that even Obama’s key endorsers will not permit him to “change.” Although Obama stressed later he meant women should not have abortions because they “feel blue,” key feminist abortion advocates Frances Kissling and Kate Michelman warned him against wavering on abortion as they reiterated their endorsement of him. The pair stated in a Salon.com article that he should not advocate a position that would indicate “given the choice, having a baby is a more moral choice than abortion.”
See previous coverage by LifeSiteNews.com:
Obama’s Rightward Drift Sparks Outcry from Democrat Abortion Extremists
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jul/08070713.html