IN PHYSICS, the law of entropy states that all systems tend toward increasing disorder. Which means, roughly, that the universe is always getting messier. In politics, the Law of Interest Group Entropy states that all advocacy groups tend toward ridiculousness. Which means, roughly, that no matter how high-minded and noble a political group is, over time, it tends toward self-parody.
It happens to everyone, left, right and center. One day, a group is fighting to end racial segregation; a few decades later, it’s counting the number of minority characters on prime-time television. An organization is created to reinject Judeo-Christian values into the American political debate; after a few years, it’s fussing about gay Teletubbies.
Bob Casey is pushing America’s abortion-rights lobby one step closer to the abyss of Interest Group Entropy.
NARAL Pro-Choice America is the foremost abortion-rights lobby. But if you go to NARAL’s Web site, you’ll find not a word about Bob Casey. Not one blessed word. I called NARAL a couple of times to ask what the group thinks of Casey’s candidacy. No one called back.
NARAL never tires of warning about the dangers of crazed antiabortion radicals such as Sam Alito, John Roberts and Rick Santorum. So maybe they’re only bothered by pro-life Republicans. If so, then they don’t understand the existential threat Casey poses to their position.
The National Organization for Women, on the other hand, has been jolted into hysterics by Casey. Last March, when Sen. Charles Schumer and Gov. Rendell were making room for Casey in the Senate race by shunting Barbara Hafer aside, NOW posted a petition condemning the Democrats for selling out their abortion-rights supporters. In the space of a few paragraphs, NOW claimed both that running an antiabortion candidate against Santorum “will result in sure defeat” and that “if we don’t stop this losing strategy now, [Democrats will] use it again and again.”
Ignore the ironies. What worries the people at NOW isn’t that running a pro-life Democrat “will result in sure defeat.” They’re scared it might be a winning strategy. Because if pro-life candidates are the path to electoral success, Democrats will follow it as far as it leads.
So what do you do if you’re an abortion-rights activist? You have three choices: Endorse Casey, oppose Casey, or keep quiet and hope he loses.
Kim Gandy, the president of NOW, says the first option is off the table: “No chance whatsoever that we would ever endorse [Casey] – under any circumstances.”
As for active opposition, Gandy says NOW’s political action wing will meet later this month to decide whether to go to the barricades, but she explains that the decision will be a question of where the organization’s resources can best be used. Translation: Maybe it will make a perfunctory demonstration against Casey, but don’t count on it.
This would leave abortion-rights supporters sitting on the sidelines and hoping for a Santorum comeback. Which is the worst thing they could do to help their cause.
Interest Group Entropy is a strange thing: As groups become culturally irrelevant, they don’t lose the ability to raise money or call attention to themselves. But as they become caricatures of their former selves, they lose the power to influence undecided voters and engage in the battlefield of ideas. This might not matter to, say, the NAACP or the Christian Coalition, because they’ve already successfully imposed their agendas.
But the question of what to do with abortion is still very much open in America. Science is constantly changing our understanding of life in the womb. The number of couples looking to adopt is ever increasing. Some liberal intellectuals, such as Benjamin Wittes, have begun to admit that Roe v. Wade was a poorly wrought decision. At some point in the medium-term future, the question of abortion might well be sent back to the states, and the two sides of the abortion debate may have to wage a serious intellectual fight in front of voters.
If that time eventually comes, and if abortion-rights activists have given Bob Casey a pass, they will have mortgaged their credibility to partisan politics. In the long run, they’ll be unhappy with the trade.
Jonathan V. Last is online editor of The Weekly Standard and a weekly op-ed contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer. This essay originally appeared in the January 22, 2006 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
