PRESTOPUNDIT -- "It's a team sport, baby!"

In my estimation, the effort by some conservatives to read Arnold Schwarzenegger out of the Republican party comes down to one thing, and really one thing only -- it's really all about the cutthroat power politics of abortion.

The most significant fact about this political guillotine is that abortion policy has nothing to do with it -- because the issue of abortion has nothing to do with anything in the real world. Not nationally, and especially not in California. A governor of California's position on who will win "American Idol" would have more effect on the world than a California Governor's position on abortion. In other words, it has none. Zip. Zero. So what is this national effort all about? It's about cold, calculating back-alley, knife fighing power politics -- i.e who gets control of the Republican party machinary and who is allowed on the Republican ballot. Simply put, the anti-abortion powerbrokers want exclusive control of the Republican party and the Republican ballot -- even if this means effectively killing the Republican party as a state-wide entity in many states, as has been attempted in Oregon, Washington and California. You can be a fifth or sixth generation Republican, more conservative than Ronald Reagan, but if you don't pass the abortion litmus test, your chair at the Republican table will be kicked out from under you. And in my judgment, kicking the chair out from under good folks you haven't been able to persuade is nothing but political and moral stupidity -- especially when the Republican party would go down in flames nationally if it came to be widely perceived that the Party stands really for nothing -- except a non-majoritarian position on abortion, widely rejected in many regions of the country.

Take a look at what the Republican Congress and the Republican President have and haven't done and ask yourself, are these people "conservatives"? Consider. Does this Republican Party stand for a government that protects the citizen from bigger government? -- simple answer, no. Does this Republican Party stand for a government that takes less out of the national pie? -- simple answer, no. And has this Republican party done what will be needed to protect the citizens of the country from foreign nationals? -- simple answer, no.

So why do the national "conservatives" stay on board with this party -- why do they want to call this party "conservative"? One word answer: abortion. "Conservatives" and many Republicans have sold their souls for a crack-pipe dream in which abortion politics brings them both national political power -- and a world in which abortion if constitutionally outlawed. But note well -- these are mutally exclusive ends. National political success for the Republican party will continue only in a world were the hope of an anti-abortion constitutional amendment continues to be dead-on-arrival. Democracy requires persuasion, and persuasion of the kind required is nowhere -- nowhere -- on the horizon.

But consider for a moment just how bogus the abortion litmus test is for deciding "who is a Republican", or more commonly, "who is a conservative". If you are going to have an abortion litmus test for "who's" a conservative, then you will need to say that Barry Goldwater was not a conservative, and if you are honest, you'd have to say that that Governor of California who made abortion availability the law of California -- Ronald Reagan -- is not a conservative. And ditto the idea that an abortion litmus test can tell you who is a "real" Republican, and who is not. Barry Goldwater not a "real" Republican? Gerald Ford not a "real" Republican? George Bush I in the 1970s not a "real" Republican? California governor Ronald Reagan not a "real" Republican? Give me a break.

Barry Goldwater was "Mr. Conservative" -- the very paradigm of a conservative -- and the issue of abortion had nothing to do with that title. So don't be fooled. The abortion litmus test that the national "conservatives" wish to impose upon Californians isn't intellectually substantive -- it's about politics, cold, brass-knucked politics, and nothing more.

Posted by Greg Ransom