Good article, Ebbie. Thanks for linking to it. And to Kat for linking to the Jim Leach address.

One of my wife's cousins runs a day care center, taking care of infants of working mothers. Pammy adores babies, and she's one of the sweetest, most caring, and most generally benevolent people I know.

She is very pro-life, anti-abortion. And therein lies the problem. She voted for Bush, not because she liked his policies all that much, but because he said he was pro-life, anti-abortion. I tried to point out to her that despite what he says, and even if he is anti-abortion, he is not pro-life—and I'm sure you can reconstruct all the reasons I gave her:   his willingness—eagerness to start an illegal war in which tens or hundreds of thousands of people would be killed and maimed, and his cutting of social programs that fail to acknowledge that there is life after birth! This, along with his opposition to sex education in schools, which could go a long way toward preventing unwanted pregnancies.

She acknowledged that all this was true. Nevertheless, she voted for Bush anyway. He was anti-abortion.

Sweet woman. But she is a one-issue voter and she voted with her emotional responses to that issue without any interference whatsoever from her brain.

I heave a weary sigh when I think of the number of people who vote that way; one issue, oblivious to everything else.

Don Firth