She has been credited with boosting health care assistance for the poor during her tenure. A number of leading social conservatives have criticized Sebelius for her record on abortion, citing, among other things, her veto as governor of legislation that would have tightened abortion regulations in Kansas.
In vetoing the measure last April, Sebelius wrote that the bill was problematic because it included no exceptions for pregnancies that endanger a woman's life and it allowed individuals to seek court orders preventing a woman from obtaining an abortion, even if the procedure was necessary to save her life.
Remember back in Bush's early days, when Republicans were crying and whining over supposed "litmus tests" for judicial nominees? Democrats were skeptical about several extreme right-wing nominees to various courts (with potential worries about the Supreme Court), since there has been an active right-wing campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade. Republicans even considered employing a maneuver to eliminate the filibuster option for judicial nominees, all because they feared they could not get anti-abortion judges confirmed in the face of Democratic opposition.
Now, the "litmus test" switches...and the blatant hypocrisy of the Republican Party comes out. Now, when it's a pro-choice nominee (granted, not a judge), they stall and attempt to block the nomination. Who has the litmus test here?
Maybe this sort of outright hypocrisy is why Arlen Specter is now a Democrat. Maybe some others, Republicans who actually have some sense of ethics and are disgusted with the GOP, will follow suit.
Kathleen Sebelius is pro-choice. She's also supremely qualified to be HHS secretary, and holding up her nomination (and those of several lower level HHS nominees) is a hypocritical political ploy by the far right of the GOP. It's time it ended. Let's get Franken sworn in, and with the 60 votes he'll bring the Democrats can just move forward and stop catering to a party that they have been more than gracious to (considering they are a minority party, one that just a few short years ago was the majority and ran roughshod over the Democrats). We've tried bipartisanship...tried very hard to reach across the aisle despite the fact that the Republicans have been shown in two straight elections that their ideas FAILED. And what do they do? Vote party-line "NO" on everything, just out of partisan spite. Time to just stop bothering with them, until such time as they grow up and start actually acting like they want to work with Democrats instead of just be a "NO" vote on anything that comes from the other side of the aisle.
Technorati Tags: Politics, Republicans, Failures
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