Over at WashingtonMonthly.com, Amy Sullivan is making a point I've made here before. She's discussing how when it comes to abortion, Republicans demand (in the name of the Lord!) and expect absolute compliance from some, and yet grant a free pass on this issue to others.

She writes:

Look at the line-up for next week's Republican Convention. On three out of the four evenings, the primetime programming stars a high-profile Republican Catholic who also happens to be pro-choice. Between Arnold Schwarzenegger and George Pataki, their states are responsible for 35 percent of the abortions performed in the U.S. And yet you'll hear nary a peep of protest about this from the conservative Catholic League, a supposedly "non-partisan" organization that has been frothing in continuous outrage over John Kerry's pro-choice leanings.
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What they do care about is defeating Democrats. Some of them don't even try to gloss over that fact. Deal Hudson (the now-disgraced and resigned former head of Catholic outreach for the Bush/Cheney campaign) told the Washington Post last spring that "he believes the denial of Communion should begin, and end, with Kerry."
So they're hypocrites, you say. Thanks for the newsflash, brainiac.
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How many reporters do you think are going to ask Rudy Giuliani or George Pataki or Arnold Schwarzenegger if they should refrain from taking communion? Or will call up the bishops of these men and ask whether these PCRCs should be denied communion? Shouldn't it be a story that Republicans get a pass for the sole reason that they are Republicans? And that certain conservative Catholic organizations only care about abortion when they can use the issue to knock around Democrats?
The silence coming out of the Catholic League regarding the prominence of a bunch of heretical babykillers at the GOP Convention is simply deafening.


I wrote about this same observation on July 22nd:

Finally, it's no surprise that Santorum is very much pro-life, a real zealot when it comes to the abortion issue. However, note that like Bush, when it came to the closely contested race in PA between the pro-choice Specter and pro-life Toomey, guess who Santorum endorsed? Yup, like Bush, he endorsed pro-choice Specter. Again, as I wrote at the time about Bush, politics will be politics and anyone that believes these guys truly care about the issues over their political skins is a fool, plain & simple. As I understand it, the abortion issue is supposed to override all politics, and yet when GW and Rick buckle under political pressures, the pro-life folks are silent.

So these guys will stoop so low as to use religion for political purposes. Surprise! How righteous! Is it any wonder several credible voices have come out saying if Jesus were alive today, he certainly would NOT be a Republican? But beyond that, if one is a devout pro-life Catholic (or Christian) where is the strongly-voiced outrage? I've come across more than one practicing Republican Catholic who has vented venom towards a pro-choice candidate (100% of the time a Democrat) and yet has never said a peep about this blatant hypocrisy within their party.

I could be wrong, but I believe there is more than one passage about hypocrisy in the Bible (most of them in the New Testament!).