Gone: the American political center

Ross Douthat, "Sympathy for Bart Stupak" (New York Times, March 24, 2010):

Yes, the executive order that Stupak accepted as cover for his pivotal health care vote is probably meaningless. And yes, the health care bill, as passed, effectively tilts public policy in a more pro-choice direction: The fact that women are required to write a separate check for abortion coverage means that public money isn’t literally paying for abortion, but it doesn’t change the fact that federal dollars are being spent in ways that make it much easier to obtain abortion-covering insurance. (And that’s without getting into the tangled issue of community health centers.) But what struck me most, at the end, wasn’t the folly of Stupak’s decision to compromise his pro-life principles by voting “yes,” but the extraordinary loneliness of his position before he folded.

Here was a politician who embodies what a half-century ago would have been considered the sensible center in American politics — economically liberal, socially conservative — and whose politics represent a good faith effort to live out the social teaching of America’s largest religious body, the Roman Catholic Church.

[Hat tip to E.E.]