Republicans' new litmus test for 2010 candidates: only conservatives need apply

In an attempt to reclaim the Grand Old Party for conservatives, a group of Republican National Committee members is circulating a 10-point platform for the 2010 elections. The platform opposes gun control, abortion, gay marriage and President Obama's healthcare reform, among other issues. The catch: Only candidates who agree with at least eight of the principles would get funding from the Republican Party.

"The goal of the resolution is to take a position ... towards reclaiming the Republican Party’s conservative bona fides,” said Committeeman James Bopp, who authored the resolution. “We are open to diverse views. But you have to agree with us most of the time.”

Conservatives like former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin clashed with party officials last month by backing a conservative over the party's nominee in 23rd Congressional District in New York. The effort to further purify the party ideologically could pose new problems for Chairman Michael Steele as he tries to recruit centrist Republicans to run in congressional districts that lean Democratic.

But conservatives within the party are adamant. They want candidates to abide by a litmus test they are calling Reagan’s Unity Principle. Here's the full list.

(1) Smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;
(2) Market-based healthcare reform and oppose Obama-style government-run healthcare;
(3) Market-based energy reforms by opposing cap-and-trade legislation;
(4) Workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing "card check";
(5) Legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;
(6) Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;
(7) Containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;
(8) Retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;
(9) Protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing healthcare rationing and denial of healthcare and government funding of abortion; and
(10) The right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo Credit: Getty Images

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A Kennedy battles a bishop: church, state and abortion

Rhode Island Democrat Patrick Kennedy, son of the late Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, has, like his father, long been a public supporter of abortion rights.

Because of his stance on abortion, Bishop Thomas Tobin, the archbishop of the Providence diocese, three years ago banned Kennedy from receiving Holy Communion but promised to keep the decision confidential.

Now, the 42-year-old Kennedy is going public. And the bishop is fighting back.

On Friday, Kennedy told the Providence Journal that Bishop told him he was "not a good practicing Catholic because of the positions that I’ve taken as a public official,” particularly on abortion.

Bishop Tobin replied that even though “I have no desire to continue the discussion of Congressman Kennedy’s spiritual life in public," he will defend the church or his pastoral ministry from "inaccurate statements." The truth, said the bishop, is that he never discussed their conversation with anyone else, and that he prays that Kennedy will “enter into a sincere process of discernment, conversion and repentance,”

Kennedy first attacked the church in October during the House debate on abortion protections in the healthcare bill. At the time, the Rhode Island congressman told Catholic News Service, “I thought they were pro-life. If the Church is pro-life, then they ought to be for health-care reform because it’s going to provide health care that (is) going to keep people alive."

Despite the war of words in the public arena, the church has been winning in the halls of Congress. A few weeks ago, lobbying by Catholics helped preserve limits on government funding for abortions in the healthcare bill, protections they are again seeking in the Senate.

As Politico's Jeanne Cummings reported this morning, the U.S. Conference of Bishops hit on a winning lobbying strategy: deploy paid staff to Capitol Hill, tap influential bishops to lobby key congressional leaders and distribute bulletin inserts to 19,000 parishes with easy instructions — and sample wording — for sending a message to local representatives.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Associated Press

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Stung by restrictions in healthcare bill, abortion rights supporters fight back

As the fight over a healthcare bill moves from the House to the Senate, abortion rights groups are rallying to make sure the Senate's version does not contain antiabortion language approved by the House.

After a pitched, months-long battle and a successful lobbying effort by the country's Catholic bishops, the House's narrowly passed version would make it impossible for many women to purchase health insurance that covers abortion. 

The Stupak-Pitts amendment says health plans purchased with the help of government money cannot include abortion coverage. Low-income women using federal subsidies, even small ones, to buy heath insurance would not be able to buy plans that cover abortion. Abortion foes contend that this is simply an extension of existing law, which for 30 years has prohibited the use of federal money for most abortions.

But supporters of abortion rights say Stupak-Pitts is more restrictive than current federal law. If the country ends up with a public option, Stupak-Pitts would prevent any of those plans from offering abortion coverage, which means a woman using her own money to purchase a plan through the (presumably less expensive) public option would not be able to buy a plan that covers abortion. Also, they claim, insurers would have less incentive to offer abortion coverage.

Such restrictions, say abortion rights groups, are unacceptable since abortion is a legal medical procedure.

This week, the Center for Reproductive Rights unveiled a new campaign, "Abortion Coverage is No Joke." At a press conference in Washington, Nancy Northup, the group's president, introduced a woman whose insurance company would not pay for an abortion even though her fetus was diagnosed with a fatal abnormality. Not exactly stand-up material, but check out this video, which will play for a week on cable in the DC area:

Meanwhile, 20 House Democrats who voted for Stupak-Pitts are the subject of a new Internet petition. All 20 are identified by both Planned Parenthood and National Right to Life rankings as either solidly in favor of abortion rights, or nominally so, and some are believed by abortion supporters to have "buyer's remorse" over the restrictive amendment they voted for. 

For every signature, Credo (a division of  Working Assets, the telecommunications company that donates a portion of its profits to progressive causes), will send a coat-hanger, that hoary symbol of the back-alley abortion, to the 20. So far, according to the petition's website, more than 113,000 hangers have been sent.

-- Robin Abcarian

Video: Center for Reproductive Rights

Embarrassed Republican Party opts out of abortion coverage for employees

Since 1991, the National Republican Committee has offered its employees a health care policy from Cigna that includes coverage for elective abortions. Given the GOP's major push to keep abortion coverage out of President Obama's health care reform bill, the news of the party's own insurance policy  -- which Politico broke yesterday -- came as something of an embarrassment.

“We were not aware of this, obviously, and this will, of course, be fixed,” said James Bopp Jr., a Republican National Committee member from Indiana and an attorney who serves as counsel to the National Right to Life organization. “I think Chairman Steele will see to it that that’s the case.”

That would be Michael Steele (pictured above), chairman of the RNC and a longtime abortion foe, who said in a statement today, "Money from our loyal donors should not be used for this purpose. I don't know why this policy existed in the past, but it will not exist under my administration. Consider this issue settled."

Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak rallied anti-abortion forces in the House this week to enact an amendment that would ensure no government funds go to abortion coverage. The bill is now in the Senate, where pro-abortion forces are galvanizing their supporters to reverse the vote.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: RNC Chairman Michael Steele. Credit: Win McNamee / Getty Images North America

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Does House healthcare bill end abortion coverage?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is a great vote counter. 

As the healthcare vote on Saturday night demonstrated, she knew just how many votes she had to turn to win the bill. And she did it by allowing lawmakers from swing-state districts -- many with strong Catholic constituencies -- to first vote against insurance funding for abortion. 

Abortion foes hailed the move as what was called "a nail in the eventual coffin of Roe v. Wade."

Now, as the bill moves to the Senate, pro-abortion groups are mobilizing for a fight.

"It is unconscionable that anti-choice lawmakers would use health reform to attack women's health and privacy, but that's exactly what happened on the House floor," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. "The fight is not over. ... We will continue to mobilize our activists and work with our allies in Congress to remove this dangerous provision from the healthcare bill and stop additional attacks as the process moves to the Senate."

Added Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, "Women do not plan to have unintended pregnancies. ... Proposing a separate abortion rider or single-service plan is tantamount to banning abortion coverage since no insurance company would offer such a policy."

New York Democrat Anthony Weiner said this morning that the House bill, in effect, leaves women without protection. Even if someone wants to purchase her own policy that covers abortion, he said, she might have trouble finding an insurance company to offer it. Take a listen.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer leave a Democratic caucus where President Obama spoke in advance of the House vote on healthcare reform. Credit: Getty Images

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Social conservatives sense a change in the political weather, say shift bodes ill for Obama

Tuesday was a good day for social and religious conservatives, who haven’t had many of those in the year since Barack Obama was elected president.

But with Republican victories in the governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey, and the passing of Maine’s ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage, they are feeling -- to paraphrase President George W. Bush after his 2004 reelection -- the wind of the American people at their back.

“We are a nation moving in a conservative direction,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, which supports anti-abortion candidates.

“Last November when Barack Obama won, there was a sense that there had been a dramatic shift to the left,” said Gary Bauer, the Christian conservative who is president of the political action committee Campaign for Working Families. “I think we saw yesterday, it’s not 2008 anymore. There wasn’t a big ideological shift; this is still a center-right country.”

Bauer and Dannenfelser were joined on a conference call by Brian Brown, director of the National Organization for Marriage, who was celebrating in Portland, Maine, after an effort to legalize same-sex marriage there went down to an unexpectedly lopsided defeat.

After California voters outlawed gay marriage last year, Maine was viewed as an important, and potentially game-changing, battleground for the same-sex marriage movement. After all, Mainers are considered independent, tolerant of differences and eager to keep government out of their bedrooms. A win there would have gone far to support the contention by gay rights advocates that it’s just a matter of time before the country accepts the notion that gays should be allowed to marry.

But voters have now defeated gay marriage in 31 states -- gay activists' only victories have been in the courts and legislatures -- and social conservatives believe they can snuff out what had started to become conventional wisdom about the inevitability of same-sex marriage.

“It’s a crushing blow to those who think same-sex marriage is inevitable,” Brown said. “They were 100% wrong…In a deep blue state, when voters had the chance, they voted to protect marriage for a man and a woman.”

The conservative leaders said from this point on, they are expecting the Republican Party establishment to shape up and get with their program.

They will not tolerate any more races like the closely watched contest in New York’s 23rd Congressional District, where Republican Party officials chose a pro-gay-marriage, pro-abortion-rights candidate, Dede Scozzafava, to run against Democrat Bill Owens, who opposes gay marriage. When it became clear that grass-roots Republicans who were turned off by their own candidate would support a third-party candidate -- Doug Hoffman of the Conservative Party -- Scozzafava dropped out and endorsed the Democrat, who won. (If Tuesday’s contests were a harbinger of bad things to come for Democrats in 2010, then perhaps the New York race could be interpreted as a slap at former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who campaigned for Hoffman with the not-so-catchy slogan, “Hoffman, baby, Hoffman.")

“If we had had a candidate who was principled in terms of embracing Republican platform, we would see a Republican being sworn in,” Dannenfelser said. “The real power of the Republican Party is in a burgeoning, grass-roots movement that is very conservative, and the more out of touch they are with their natural base, the more they will lose. If we have to have that conversation in a high-profile way, so be it.”

Though the White House has downplayed the notions that Tuesday’s races were any sort of referendum on the president’s policies, Bauer is convinced that trouble looms:

“I think the results yesterday are going to make it harder for all the initiatives that are unpassed -- whether healthcare or cap-and-trade and soon-to-come tax increases. Those will be more dicey for the White House and congressional leadership. If you are a red state senator or congressman, there is a lot of second-guessing going on about whether they want to go further out on the limb of voting for these incredible bills. …That’s why people who voted for Barack Obama last year voted Republican yesterday.”

-- Robin Abcarian

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It's conservatives vs. Republicans in New York congressional race. Could infighting help Democrats?

NY-23 has everything a political junkie could want in an election -- drama, fireworks, an uncertain outcome.

It all started when President Obama tapped Republican John McHugh to be secretary of the Army. McHugh was one of only three Republicans in the New York congressional delegation, from the 23rd Congressional District, a district so far north it abuts Canada, a traditionally Republican stronghold that went for Obama in 2008. The White House no doubt hoped this could be a Democratic pickup in the House.

Early on, the GOP establishment tapped a moderate Republican who might appeal across party lines -- state legislator Dede Scozzafava, who supports abortion rights and same-sex marriage. In the early polling, she was leading. And she is still the choice of the party, winning recent support from Chairman Michael Steele and 2012 aspirant Newt Gingrich.

Like Republicans, Democrats thought the race would be decided in the middle. Their choice: Bill Owens, a Plattsburgh attorney and a registered Independent.

But when the Conservative Party tapped Doug Hoffman, a certified public accountant and a conservative, he attracted support from the Washington-based Club for Growth. Ever since, with money and message, Hoffman has been gaining ground and winning support from a bevy of conservatives, most prominently former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

Here's Dick Armey's two cents.

With the election a few days away, the latest polling, ala RealClearPolitics.com, shows Hoffman gaining ground. Scozzafava led in late September, with 35% to 28% for Owens and 16% for Hoffman. As Hoffman took support away from Scozzafava, Owens took the lead over her by four to five points in mid-October. Now, with star endorsements from Palin et al, one poll has Hoffman leading with 31%, Owens at 27% and Scozzafava at 20%.

There's no runoff here so Tuesday's election will tell the tale.

- Johanna Neuman

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Anti-abortion Democrat Bart Stupak has a problem with Obama's health reforms

As far as northern Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak is concerned, no federal funding for abortions has been the law of the land since 1976.

And as far as Stupak is concerned, his fellow Democrat Barack Obama agreed that the president's idea of healthcare reform does not include federal funding of abortion.

But that seems about to change.

Stupak is a nine-term representative, a Catholic and a former police officer, who's destroyed recent Republican opponents with up to 69% of the vote.

Stupak says he's run up against a stonewall with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other fellow Democrats in seeking to protect that 33-year-old ban in the evolving healthcare reform legislation.

He says he's got 40 fellow House members who stand with him, most of them who'll vote against any reform bill without the antiabortion protection. And Stupak asserts he's prepared to lose his job over this stand.

Actually, he puts it pretty clearly and succinctly himself on this C-SPAN video. See what he says: right here

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Video courtesy of C-SPAN.

Judge bars restrictive Oklahoma abortion law requiring online posting of patient data

While Californians mull whether a fetus is a person, a state judge has temporarily blocked enforcement of a new Oklahoma law that would require doctors to report detailed information about abortion patients, which would then be posted online.

The law, passed by a solid majority of the Oklahoma Legislature, would require physicians to report such information as age, marital status, race, number of children, education level and the mother’s relationship to the father. It would also require the reason for the abortion, the cost and the type of payment used. Names of patients would not be included in information that would be posted online by the state’s health department, but abortion rights advocates say because Oklahoma is such a small state it would not be difficult to identify some patients. Abortion rights advocates say the law would violate the privacy of patients and is an attempt to dissuade women from seeking abortions.

Republican Oklahoma state Sen. Todd Lamb, who sponsored the legislation, told CNN today that because abortion was “very polarizing,” the law was necessary “to add hard-core evidence to this debate.” The law would also outlaw sex-selective abortions, though Oklahoma abortion foes did not cite any evidence of such behavior in the state.

Dionne Scott of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing two women who are challenging the law, called it “a profound intrusion.” A hearing in the case is scheduled for Dec. 4.

Oklahoma has been at the forefront of states that have passed restrictive abortion measures. Last month, a judge struck down a 2008 law that imposed what abortion rights supporters say was “the most extreme” ultrasound law in the country. It would have required doctors to perform ultrasounds with screens positioned in mothers’ lines of sight and to describe the developing fetus. Rape victims were not exempt from the law, and if a pregnancy were in the early stages, a vaginal ultrasound would have to be performed to secure a clear image. Seventeen states have ultrasound laws, which require that a woman be offered the opportunity to see the image, but do not require she be positioned in front of the screen.

-- Robin Abcarian

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What if Obama really wants a fight over gay pajamas?

A little something to think about:

Have you too noticed that very few accidents seem to happen around Barack Obama?

Sure, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright association blew up in his face; that was just a matter of time and came not from Republicans but from fellow Democrats. One day the Harvard-educated, freshman senator from Illinois thought there were 57 states. He didn't know Canada had a prime minister, not a president. And it took some doing for the man to grudgingly give in to that stupid lapel flag pin thing.

The Geithner-Daschle-Solis back-tax deals were also messy.

But those gaffes happened early in the presidential campaign or the administration. He and his team have been touching every conceivable base at every opportunity, from tonight's Latin music fiesta at the White House to marking Leif Erikson Day to earn the Viking vote.

In fact, Obama's devoted so much time cultivating and nurturing these political niches that critics credibly suggest he might profitably invest less effort in the perpetual campaign mode -- flying off to Copenhagen to take an embarrassingly blunt public hit for the Chicago machine and chatting up that serial philanderer on the CBS late show -- and put in a lot more shirt-sleeve time in the Oval Office being the new president at the old desk.

On Saturday night before he was asked about "don't ask-don't tell" Obama told the banqueting but impatient Human Rights Campaign crowd (full text right here) all the Democratically correct things it wanted to hear before the big march for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) equality the next day.

So it was very surprising -- even jarring -- when on Sunday CNBC's John Harwood, long a respected political journalist, reported a conversation with an anonymous White....