There has been quite a bit of focus -- rightly so -- on Sarah Palin's apparent inability to name a Supreme Court case outside of Roe v. Wade with which she disagreed, but I'm with Marc Ambinder: To me, even more stunning than Palin's lack of clarity on judicial decisions was her seeming embrace of the right to privacy.
In her interview with Katie Couric, Gov. Sarah Palin endorsed a constitutional right to privacy, although, she said, "individual states can handle what the people within the different constituencies in the 50 states would like to see their will ushered in in an issue like that."
Ambinder asks, "Did she just endorse the constitutional underpinning that supports a myriad of precedents that conservatives have spent decades fighting?" Indeed. Precedents including Roe. Here's the key paragraph out of Roe:
We, therefore, conclude that the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified and must be considered against important state interests in regulation.
Look, this isn't the type of statement, gaffe, whatever you want to call it, that will doom Palin among voters. Nevertheless, at a time when the conservative cognoscenti is beginning to abandon the GOP Vice Presidential nominee in the wake of serious misstatements and a glaring inability to engage on even the simplest issues of policy -- which does have the potential of trickling down to the electorate (if the Republican base, which is still less enthused than the Democratic base, becomes dejected over Palin's weaknesses, a real rout could be a possibility) -- it's not particularly great news to have Palin flippantly saying such a potentially controversial comment.
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