It’s Doug Kmiec, previously co-chair of Mitt’s committee on the courts, currently an Obama shill of such mystifying obtuseness that one suspects a head injury’s behind his support. You can’t appreciate this post until you’ve read this one, in which a man of obvious brilliance — professor of constitutional law, scholar of sufficient renown to earn a prominent advisory role to a presidential campaign — somehow ends up affiliated with Team Romney despite the fact that he’s, er, passionately anti-war. Rather than take David Frum’s advice and simply cite that issue as justification for his lurch left, he’s gone the Andrew Sullivan route of arguing that his new candidate is somehow better on all the issues that concern him, not merely the one that concerns him most. Which brings us to this brainteaser, in which appointing judges who’ll roll back Roe v. Wade is somehow less heavy a blow to abortion than listening real hard and feigning empathy, or something:

As I see it, the “self-evident truths” of the Declaration [of Independence] have interpretative significance for the meaning of “life” and “person” in the constitutional text — and that meaning makes life unalienable, which means each life from conception is unique and worthy of constitutional protection…

Thus, as I see it, [the election] is a choice between two less than sufficient courses:

(a) the continuation of an effort to appoint men and women to the Court who are thought willing to overturn Roe through divisive confirmation proceedings that undermine respect for law and understate the significance of non-abortion issues in a judicial candidate’s evaluation; or

(b) working with a new president who honestly concedes the abortion decision poses serious moral issues which he argues can only be fully and successfully resolved by the mother facing it with the primary obligation of the community seeing to it that she is as well informed as possible in the making of it…

If it’s a choice between giving a boost to the work of my fellow parishioners who week after week in thinly-funded, crisis pregnancy centers, open their minds and their hearts and often their homes to pregnant women (and Obama has spoken approvingly of faith-based efforts) and a Supreme Court Justice to be named later who may or may not toss the issue back to the states, I think I know which course is more effectively choosing life.

Let me rephrase. Kmiec’s actually to the right of Scalia in believing that Roe should not only be overturned (which would leave it to the states to decide whether to ban abortion) but that the Court should find an affirmative right to life in the Due Process Clause that would prohibit abortion nationwide. His master plan for accomplishing this? Electing Barack Obama president and letting him appoint all the pro-choice justices he can get away with, because Obama “honestly concedes the abortion decision poses serious moral issues” and is super-keen about informing women of their choices. Mind you, this is a guy who admits in the article that his faith is of such devotion that he opposes contraception — yet he’s willing to nod at untold millions of abortions so long as the Messiah pats him on the shoulder and assures him that he’s given his opinion serious consideration (an Obama specialty, as luck would have it). The whole idea of having to “choose” between a Scalia-esque federalist abortion regime, where some states ban it and some states don’t, and private faith-based endeavors to dissuade women from abortion in jurisdictions where it’s legal is itself beyond moronic. Does Kmiec think McCain supports the former but opposes the latter? This reads like a sly parody of the stereotype of an “Obamican,” so enamored of His Holiness’s sincerity that the fact that his musings on abortion are “free of guile or political calculation,” as Kmiec gushes, makes it irrelevant what those musings actually are in substance.

Serious non-rhetorical exit question: How does anyone as committed to the issue of life as Kmiec end up voting Democrat? It’s not an issue the way earmarks or health care is an issue. By his moral calculus, we’re talking about state-sanctioned murder. I understand weighing the cost of the war against that, but by what computation does he decide that trying to stabilize Iraq is a grimmer prospect than a million dead children?