GOP's shifting abortion play

Fred Thompson, the actor and former senator who is positioning himself to run as the true conservative in the presidential race, lobbied the first Bush administration in 1991 on behalf of an abortion-rights group, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Thompson, whose stance on abortion during his first Senate race in 1994 was hazy, at first denied the report and then suggested in interviews that people should distinguish his own views from those of his clients. Whatever his views were in 1991 or 1994, he now is strongly opposed to abortion rights.

If Thompson did indeed change his views on abortion, he's in strong company within the GOP: Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush all shifted their views on abortion rights from supportive to firmly opposed -- and became president. This year, Thompson, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, and Sen. Sam Brownback, of Kansas, are all touting their own antiabortion beliefs -- though they shunned the label earlier in their careers.

The sheer number of Republican leaders who've morphed from abortion-rights defenders to strict moral opponents invites both skepticism and credulity: There has to be some element of political expediency in all these shifts, but the leading lights of the GOP can't all be craven opportunists. To some degree, at least, they must be mirroring the journey of their constituents.

More than even a few years ago, opposition to abortion rights is now the cornerstone of the conservative ideology. Other conservative positions grow out of its foundations.

Opposing abortion has become a shorthand way of siding with the simple values of the American heartland against the permissive attitudes of the two coasts. By defining themselves against coastal elites, Republicans play into a rich trove of resentment stemming from the notion that people on the East Coast and West Coast don't respect ''flyover country.''

Like most hurts, the feelings of disrespect and abandonment in the heartland transcend any one issue. But at the same time, issues are necessary to draw sharp lines between coastal values and heartland values. And opposition to abortion -- defined as the defense of unborn children -- carries a unique force.

In the Bush era, abortion also has become synonymous with other great divides between the heartland and the coasts, including the use of embryonic stem cells in medical research. In 2004, Bush framed the Iraq war as a test of America's will in the post-9/11 world, turning it, too, into a values issue.

Once again, it was simple heartland values -- in this case, the visceral need to fight back -- juxtaposed against coastal equivocations. It suggests that one's first impulse is the most important one, and that awareness of details and complexities can diminish one's clarity of vision.

This argument, so flattering to the heartland, so condemning of coastal elites, is now the core of the conservative ideology. It even connects with the tax-cut wing of the GOP in celebrating the wisdom of individual decision makers over professional-policymakers.

So, it is almost inconceivable that any claimant to the conservative mantle could support abortion rights. And yet one of the leading GOP presidential candidates, in many polls the leading candidate, is trying just that.

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, has not abandoned his support of abortion rights to run for president, though he doesn't talk about it very much. Instead, Giuliani is trying to offer conservatives a double dose of fervor for the war on terrorism to compensate for his deviation on social issues.

The strong betting in Washington is he won't succeed: Abortion-rights supporters can't prevail in the Republican primaries.

That's why rivals like Romney and Thompson are risking their credibility to explain their shifting positions. Romney said that two years ago, at age 58 and after more than a decade in politics, he came to a realization about the need to end abortion rights while he was researching the stem cell issue.

Thompson has tried to aw-shucks his way past any challenges to his antiabortion bona fides. An answer to a questionnaire dating from his 1994 Senate race stating he would defend abortion rights? A staffer may have filled that out. Lobbying for an abortion-rights group? ''You need to separate a lawyer who is advocating a position from the position itself,'' Thompson told Sean Hannity.

Never mind that Thompson wasn't acting as a lawyer when he allegedly lobbied the Bush administration. For most of today's GOP contenders, there can be no ambiguity when it comes to abortion.

Peter Canellos writes for The Boston Globe.