If an elected official misses a vote, is that a big deal?
That depends.
Did he/she have good reason to not be in attendance?
A family or personal situation?
There are circumstances where an absence is understandable.
Now suppose an elected official attends meetings, but when it comes time to make a decision, doesn’t vote yay or nay, but instead abstains. Let’s say this individual abstains from voting again, and again, and again, and again, and again.
When Barack Obama was in the Illinois Legislature, he abstained an astounding 136 times!
I agree with Obama’s critics who say that’s just like being absent.
Some very liberal friends of mine (Yes, I have them) are defending Obama’s abysmal voting record in the strangest way.
My leftie friends say Obama was merely doing a service for his legislative colleagues. By refusing to take a stand, any stand on certain tough issues, he was bailing out colleagues from both sides of the aisle who were in tough spots on some bills.
I kid you not, that’s their argument in support of not voting up or down 136 times. In their minds, essentially not voting makes Obama a statesmanlike hero.
Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor of National Review Online lasers in on one of those times that Obama voted, “present,” in the Illinois Legislature. This particular vote was on a “Born-Alive Infants Bill.”
The issue was clear. Obama was faced with taking a position on babies who survive abortions and are left to die. He took none, refusing to even offer these babies protection.
Lopez writes in a column for the Newspaper Enterprise Association:
His reason: He didn't want to cede ground to crazy pro-lifers. He warned: "Whenever we define a pre-viable fetus as a person that is protected by the Equal Protection Clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we're really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a -- a child, a 9-month-old -- child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place."
Obama wouldn’t even support the requirement that when a baby survives an abortion, at times for hours, that a second doctor be on hand to care for the child.
No wonder Obama received a 100 percent rating from the Illinois Planned Parenthood Council.
Obama might be the candidate of hope for many, but that certainly doesn’t include the unborn or any young infant who somehow survives an abortion.
And the more we learn about his left of Ted Kennedy record, the more dangerous he looks.
