Several readers have pointed out that Milbank was probably referring to newly elected Senator Tom Coburn when he suggested Republicans would seek the imposition of the death penalty for abortion providers on the Diane Rehm show today. As I noted in my initial post, some pro-lifers do advocate this extreme position, and Coburn is among them. Nonetheless, I still believe Milbank’s statement was inaccurate and quite misleading. (In fairness to Milbank, however, I should note that his statement was slightly different than what I quoted from memory in my prior post.)
Here is Milbank’s comment in full, which I have transcribed from the streaming audio of the program (at 29:25 on the Realaudio stream):
In a way I think the Roe v Wade question is a bit of a red herring in that it’s a long term issue. We have a whole lot of legislative issues on abortion, parental consent, fetal pain legislation, some favor the death penalty for abortion providers, efforts to stamp out all abortions in the second trimester. These are legislative issues that are much more near term than the eventual Roe v. Wade decision.
Some might argue that Milbank made an accurate statement, as Coburn does favor the death penalty for abortionists, and said so during the campaign. But this ignores the context. Milbank listed “the death penalty for abortion providers” as “much more near term” than the potential reversal of Roe . This is patently false – as Milbank almost certainly knows. It would be possible to impose any criminal punishment, capital or otherwise, on abortion providers until such time as Roe is overturned (if it ever is).
More broadly, it is highly misleading to suggest that every fringe position held by every member of a party’s congressional delegation is an active “legislative issue.” Would it be fair for Republicans to run ads claiming that a Democratic takeover of Congress would place every crazy idea embraced by Rep. Maxine Waters on the agenda? Could the GOP claim that reelecting Rep. Dennis Kucinich would mean there would be “near term” debate over creating a “Department of Peace”? Of course not. Milbank is a highly educated and quite experienced political reporter, and he should have known better than to make such a comment.
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