The goal here—the only goal—is to stop health-care socialism.  Period.  Giving the pro-life Democrats a reason to vote for it—passage of the Stupak amendment—seems to me to be madness.  And suppose that it passes and the Senate passes its own version of health care "reform," after which Waxman and Pelosi et. al. will attempt to strip it out in conference.  Will Stupak and the others then vote against the final bill, thus exposing themselves to a "voted for it before I voted against it" charge?  Why not keep the pro-life Dems off the socialism bandwagon?  Would Stupak, and his allies, really vote for a bill without his amendment merely because they were given an up-or-down vote?  I rather doubt it.

Benjamin Zycher is a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute.

11/07 06:58 PM

This blog post originally appeared on National Review's Critical Condition.