At First They Replaced The 'A' Word With 'Choice'. Now They're Even Afraid Of 'Choice'!

Good, it sounds like progress. That's why they call themselves 'progressives', I guess.

excerpt in full:

Pro-Choice? Who's Pro-Choice?

Chris Matthews had Howard Dean on "Hardball" tonight, and the DNC chairman could not bring himself to say that the Democrats are the pro-choice party. But Matthews would not give up, and what followed was like some kind of weird improv game from the Drew Carey show. Matthews' goal was to get Dean to say "pro-choice." Dean's goal was to defend the pro-choice position without actually saying the words, "pro-choice":

MATTHEWS: So the Democrats are the pro-choice party, period?

DEAN: The government…

MATTHEWS: The Democrats, your party, is the pro-choice party.

DEAN: No, my party respects everybody’s views, but my party firmly believes that the government should stay out of people’s personal lives.

MATTHEWS: But you’re a pro-choice party, are you not? You sound like you’re against them for being pro-life. Are you pro-choice?

DEAN: I’m not against people for being pro-life. I actually was the first chairman who met for a long, for a long time, who met with the pro-life Democrats…

MATTHEWS: This is a complicated thing for people. The people believe the Republican party because of its record supports the pro-life position. Does your party support the pro-choice position?

DEAN: The position we support is, a woman has a right to make, and a family has a right to make up their own mind about their health care without government interference.

MATTHEWS: That’s pro-choice.

DEAN: , A woman and a family have a right to make up their own minds about their health care without government interference. That’s our position.

MATTHEWS: Why do you hesitate to use the phrase “pro-choice”?

DEAN: Because I think it’s often misused. If you’re pro-choice it implies you’re not pro-life — that’s not true. There are a lot of pro-life Democrats. We respect them, but we believe the government should…

MATTHEWS: Do you believe in abortion rights?

DEAN: I believe the government should stay out of personal, of the personal lives of families and women. They should stay out of our lives. That’s what I believe.

MATTHEWS: I find it interesting that you have hesitated to say what the party has always stood for, which is the pro-choice position…

DEAN: The party believes the government does not belong in making personal decisions.

MATTHEWS: Okay, I’m learning things here about a hesitancy I didn’t know about before.

Of course, what made me the maddest was that Matthews never bothered to pounce on the most obvious flaw in Dean's position: All the while he's employing this rhetoric about keeping the government out of our lives, he represents the party that stands for higher taxes, more regulation and fewer economic liberties for average Americans. Talk about a grotesque perversion of libertarian ideals. But I understand. Matthews was just having so much fun tormenting Dean over the "pro-choice" issue, he didn't think about the bigger contradiction.