I was really feeling bad for Herman Cain over the weekend.  I love that guy.  I truly do.  And it was dismaying to see him step smack into a steaming, stinking pile of abortopolitics squeeze over the past few days.  You really never can get that stuff off your shoes, and you end up tracking it throughout your entire campaign. 

 I’ve been begging, though I knew it would do absolutely no good, for the anti-abortion zealots to just shut the hell up for once --- just for this critical election --- so that independent voters, especially women, wouldn’t run screaming from the GOP candidates in 2012. 

 So now Cain has been dragged into the arena of abortion politics.  And just where does he stand?  Well, on the one hand he thinks that abortion should be illegal.  (Same for gay marriage).  But he believes that ultimately it is the family’s choice; but if they chose to have an abortion they’ve committed a crime.  But on the other hand he would like to see a Constitutional Amendment banning abortion and same-sex marriage.

 I put a few Tweets on the subject out there (@Talkmaster) Saturday night, and then spent the next 24 hours blocking every follower who responded with those “abortion is murder” comments and rantings about “the unborn.”  I don’t want to deal with those zealots on the air, and I’m not going to deal with them on Twitter either.  When it comes to Twitter followers, quality over quantity is the rule.  I did notice, though, some comments suggesting that I was “pro-abortion.” 

 Ok … so we’re going to set the record straight here .. the record as it applies to my attitudes on abortion (not that it really maters to anyone but me).  We’ll just use bullet points.

• I am not pro-abortion.  I am pro-choice.  I do not want a government that is strong enough to pull out a gun, put that gun to the head of a pregnant woman, and then use that gun to force that woman to continue with a pregnancy she doesn’t want.

• I believe that a viable life begins at the point that the fetus is able to survive outside of the womb without artificial life support.  If you don’t agree --- that’s fine. If you don’t ever want to listen to me again, that’s fine also.  You will have no problem at all finding a talk show host who will preach that “abortion is murder” nonsense throughout their entire show.   

• Years of experience dealing with this issue have demonstrated that the vast majority of loudest, rudest and most adamant abortocentrists are MEN.  Could this be due to some control issues suffered by these men?  I have no desire whatsoever to listen to a man address a decision he will never have to make. 

• Abortion will always be legal in this country.  Deal with it.  The zealots will never succeed in making it illegal.  If they don’t like abortions my best advice to them is to not have one.

• The ObamaMedia will do everything it can to drag GOP candidates into this morass. 

• People who are adamantly opposed to abortion are not going to vote for Democrats just because the Republican candidate is pro-choice.  True; they may decide not to vote at all --- but they aren’t going to go vote for the Democrat candidate.  They may have issues, but they haven’t slipped that far over the edge.

• Independent voters – especially women – will run screaming like banshees from the Republican candidate if that candidate makes an issue of his anti-abortion feelings and even hints that abortion should be illegal.  Independent female voters have this odd felling that their womb is theirs, and theirs alone, to control. 

The best answer a candidate can give on this issue is something like “I’m running for president, not governor.  This is a state issue.”