Describing the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate as "a candidate whom many pro-lifers want to support, her actual abortion record and rhetoric is shocking to the conscience." ARTL proceeds to whack Palin over 17 bullet pointed, heavily footnoted and repetitive complaints about her lack of anti-choice street cred.
And a veritable cornucopia of personhood movement slights it is with references to all the standard abolitionist, Holocaust, creationist and God-given rights imagery they can summon.
The critique basically boils down to not opposing contraception or abortion in absolute terms with no exceptions, appointing an Alaska Supreme Court justice who once served on Planned Parenthood's board and palling around with Sen. John McCain.
Though it seems like Palin's biggest failing was not bringing her right wing star power to the state or national personhood amendments publicity campaign while she stumped with McCain to become leader of the free world in waiting.
So confident in its sourcing, the Web site offers a cool $100 and a public acknowledgement to anyone who can refute their research. Typos, errant links and errors of omission don't count, however.
This isn't the first time ARTL has picked a fight with a conservative standard bearer for not drawing an absolute line in the sand.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney got a big dose of ARTL stink eye in 2008. The group claims to have derailed Romney's presidential primary campaign with a series of ads and an email crusade denouncing him for lying about his commitment to the cause and urging Christian conservatives to support other candidates.
But as Right Wing Watch astutely notes, "claiming credit for Romney’s losses is somewhat analogous to the American Family Association’s constant boasting that its anti-gay boycott is the cause of the Ford Motor Company’s rust-belt woes."
The group promises more exposés on anti-choice weaklings Libertarian-esque 2008 presidential candidate U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, controversial pundit Ann Coulter, Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and conservative justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito.
But the granddaddy of ARTL actions that launched the group into the national spotlight was spurred by national anti-choice groups praising the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding restrictions on late-term abortion.
And with it the group published its first salvo in the war between the absolutist faction and the more establishment incrementalists who favor stacking Congress and the courts with a reproductive choice foes.
The "Open Letter to James Dobson" published as full page newspaper ads in the Washington Times and the Colorado Springs Gazette attacked the Focus on the Family founder for embracing "moral relativism" — serious fightin' words in fundamentalist evangelical circles.
Radio talk show host and Denver Bible Church pastor Bob Enyart signed the letter along with Colorado Right to Life president Brian Rohrbough, Operation Save America director Flip Benham, Human Life International president Rev. Tom Euteneuer and Judie Brown, the president of American Life League.
Coincidentally, the anti-Dobson letter signatories are the only ones listed as top tier defenders of personhood on ARTL's self-produced ProLife Profiles. Circular back scratch, anyone?
