Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com
Arizona Congressional District 5 is currently represented by Matt Salmon (who, when he ran for Governor in 2002, was considered to be firmly in the GOP establishment but is now a member of the Tea Party Caucus in Congress) and is viewed as an unwinnable district for Democrats. Nonetheless, James Woods has mounted a serious challenge and I don’t think I’ve ever found myself in more agreement with a candidate before.
I have a vision for an America in which we approach governance with the best evidence we have available–not ideology, revelation or religion. Public policy decisions should be made rationally through an unbiased examination of facts, efficacy and outcomes. This gives us the best possible chance of steering the country toward the advancement of prosperity for all. We must thoughtfully avoid the unverified opinions and irrational prejudices in our lawmaking process that thwart our common pursuit of happiness.
All that should just be a given but, sadly, we all know it’s not. And nowhere does ideology and wishful thinking trump reality and sense as it does in the anti-choice movement, where the adherents believe that legalized abortion has led to the slaughter of millions of babies but, at the same time, fervently oppose anything (such as sex ed and birth control access) that has been proven to actually reduce the abortion rate. The great thing about Woods running in such a terrible district for Dems is that he’s freer to push the envelope on the issue, as he did here:
In response to a letter-writing campaign promoted by an anti-abortion organization, Democratic congressional candidate James Woods is mailing back condoms — campaign condoms.
The form-letters sent to Woods, who’s running for the Congressional District 5 seat currently occupied by Republican Congressman Matt Salmon, asked him to sign a pledge to fully support the “sanctity of life” in a candidate survey from the National Pro-Life Alliance.
“Woods did return the survey, but stood in opposition to the entire platform of the Alliance,” Woods’ spokeswoman Seráh Blain tells New Times.
The people who mailed this letter to Woods will also be getting some protection in the mail from the Woods campaign headquarters. Woods’ campaign also included a letter explaining why he’s not going to support the platform of the National Pro-Life Alliance.
Brilliant! Really, anti-choicers should be handed condoms every time they open their mouths to spout errant nonsense but, sadly, Democrats running in competitive races cannot do that. The great thing about Woods’ move is that it’s cheeky while also making a serious point about unplanned pregnancy prevention, which he reinforces in the letter he sent to the National Pro-Life Alliance (along with condoms):
In addition to his forthright pro-choice stance, Woods is openly atheist. He’s basically my favorite candidate in the world right now and I applaud him for running.
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James Woods. What a terrific guy. I hope he continues the truth telling. And to FL, please stop judging other people, especially when your facts are, well, not fact based.
How amusingly juvenile – your article could have been written by a 13 year-old (maybe it was). I mean really, “anti-choicers?” That’s cute, your are creating your own little liberal words for your own little liberal delusional world. And yes, I know that your fellow liberals understand your make-believer vocabulary.
Well Americans that oppose the butchering of babies in the womb, often viable babies who are in the 7th – 9th months, are not “anti -choice” they are anti-murder, they are – wait for it – “pro-life.”
And being pro-life has nothing to do with condemns or birth control as you assert in your imaginary liberal world. The vast majority of those that are pro-life support the use of birth control. But unlike you, they don’t support the use of abortion as birth control. You should know in the real world, a lot of pro-life groups strongly support safe methods of contraception BECAUSE they don’t want abortions. Even a majority of Catholics support the use of contraception.
And guess what, polls show that a strong majority of WOMEN are strongly pro-life. So there goes your “war on women myth.” Many polls are now showing as much as 60% of women are pro-life.
As an American, you have the right to make up your own imaginary world of faerie tales and pixies. But don’t go on a blog and print it and expect adults to agree with it.
And BTW, you your “hero” said,
“We must thoughtfully avoid the unverified opinions and irrational prejudices in our lawmaking process that thwart our common pursuit of happiness.”
It’s really quite hypocritical of you to write nothing but “unverified opinions and irrational prejudices,” in your article. You really are embarrassingly childish.
Can you please provide a link to one “pro-life” group that strongly supports contraception? I have yet to see any. What has happened is a lot of “pro-lifers” flipping their shit over the ACA contraception coverage and busily peddling lies about how the most effective forms of female-controlled birth control are really “abortifacients”.
I mean, really, if you are so convinced that scads of women are wantonly aborting healthy 7 to 9 month pregnancies as a form of birth control, wouldn’t you rather said women get IUDs to prevent pregnancy in the first place? Why are your “pro-life” activist friends so hellbent on limiting access to, if not outright banning (via Personhood-at-conception bills/initiatives) the best forms of birth control available?
Why did the most prominent conservative mouthpiece in America, Rush Limbaugh, spend an entire week on the air screaming how a law student was a slut simply because she asked to testify about the need for the private insurance that she was required to have by Georgetown University to cover contraception?
I don’t expect an honest response to any of the above but please know that I, and most of the readers of Blog for AZ, are the least bit impressed by your dishonest harangue. Begone, anti-choicer.
Thanks for posting this, Donna. I’d not been following James’ race. I love the first paragraph of his you quoted.
Obviously, I’m the counter-example. There’s little vapor between my worldview and James’, but mine was a much more traditional campaign. It was not so much that the message was different, but more muted.
Of course, the common view is that you have to run more the way I did to have a chance of winning. Thus, as you say, one only is free to run like James in seeminlgy impossible districts.
In hindsight, I think that view is short-sighted, and regret havng bought into it. It may be that for a cycle or two it could be detrimental to run like James in a more winnable district. Ultimately, however, if enough Dems adopted the approach, it would become acceptable and the needle would move leftward.
Wonder if those anti choicers even care?
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/08/21/3473959/historic-drop-teen-births/
I’m guessing, no.
Bravo!!! Can we clone this guy? What a breath of fresh air and common sense. Hope that he keeps “pushing the envelope” even more. Maybe people will finally begin to realize how utterly ridiculous they are.