Susan G. Komen, the left's latest Wisconsin

One of the best ways to judge what is dear to some­one is to see what dri­ves them. If you look at Meme­o­ran­dum today you will see link after link con­cern­ing Susan G. Komen’s deci­sion to stop fund­ing Planned Par­ent­hood. As of this writ­ing no less that 11 head­lines deal with this deci­sion with 9 of them hit­ting the story from the left and the descrip­tion within the pieces are full of outrage.

And God for­bid you put a piece sup­port­ing Komen’s deci­sion on a “Woman’s” site. My friend Jenny Erick­son is being pum­meled in com­ments for this piece on the Komen deci­sion.

If you think about this for a moment this should have been a one day story. Susan G. Komen is a breast can­cer char­ity, it’s not a gov­ern­ment agency, it’s not a state agency, it’s a pri­vate char­ity whose mis­sion to to fight breast can­cer. Noth­ing in this deci­sion is going to change the good that Komen does.

Nor would the idea that as such a char­ity would direct it’s funds and it’s time in the most effi­cient way be odd. Every dol­lar Komen gets comes from some­one else. That they would direct such money directly to places that pro­vide mam­mo­grams in quan­tity (unlike almost all Planned par­ent­hood sites)

So it raises the ques­tion, why is the left in such an uproar? Why is a group like the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of Uni­ver­sity women no longer count­ing Komen as “com­mu­nity ser­vice” Why is Howard Dean call­ing on cor­po­ra­tions to boy­cott Komen? Is Komen no longer going to be work­ing for a cure for Breast Can­cer? Will the young women in the group be less sup­port­able to Breast Can­cer than they were last week?

The fact is like Wis­con­sin this is a defin­ing moment:

When Gov­er­nor Scott Walker passed his reforms which included the removal of auto­matic dues deduc­tions for unions it threat­ened the money flow to the left. They were will­ing to make any deal to keep it. With­out com­pul­sion thou­sands of Union mem­bers voted with their pock­et­books in though times. And when the dis­tricts where no longer locked into con­tracts that forced them into non-​competitive con­tracts with Union heath insur­ance plans it cost them even more.

The fear and the dan­ger for the left is that it would spread to other states and cut off cir­cu­lar use of tax­payer fund­ing that is the life’s blood of demo­c­ra­tic cam­paigns. An exam­ple had to be made and the left, even as they appear to fail in Wis­con­sin, the left intends to make it a bloody cost.

And that brings us to Susan G. Komen.

The same cir­cu­lar fund­ing scheme that exists for the Unions exists with Planned Par­net­hood, funds go to Planned Par­ent­hood to sup­port abor­tion, become polit­i­cal dona­tions to Demo­c­ra­tic can­di­dates that push pub­lic funds back to Planned Par­ent­hood. That is why they fought so hard to save fund­ing at the Fed­eral Level and are fight­ing so hard to per­verse it on the state level.

But for com­pa­nies such sup­port of the nation’s #1 abor­tion provider has not been with­out cost: As Komen dis­cov­ered a lot of peo­ple who would oth­er­wise have been sup­port­ing them had cut ties:

The biggest rea­son SGK stopped fund­ing Planned Par­ent­hood? “Nancy Brinker [SGK chair­woman, pic­tured right] said she was spend­ing nearly half her time deal­ing with the Planned Par­ent­hood issue,” said my source. “She decided she just couldn’t do it any longer.”

Quite sim­ply, Planned Par­ent­hood is poison.

Many other busi­ness and orga­ni­za­tions know this same thing but have been too timid to act. The left knows and under­stands this. (That’s why Planned Par­ent­hood NOT KOMEN broke the story) If Komen is allowed to sur­vive and thrive with­out the impri­matur of the left, then how many will fol­low suit? That’s why, no mat­ter how many women’s lives are saved by their actions, they must be destroyed.

The Hill is report­ing that Rep. Jackie Spier is lead­ing the charge for lib­er­als to aban­don the Susan G Komen For The Cure char­ity because it has stopped fund­ing Planned Parenthood.

Rod Dreher puts it well:

the more I think about it, the more I real­ize this is a clar­i­fy­ing moment. Think of it! Three decades of ser­vice to women fight­ing breast can­cer, and hav­ing raised and dis­trib­uted hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars nearly $2 bil­lion towards that goal, means absolutely noth­ing to these peo­ple now try­ing to destroy Komen. They could have denounced Komen’s deci­sion, but in light of all Komen has done, and still does for women, turned their ire on the Repub­li­cans, the Reli­gious Right, and so forth. But no, Komen broke ranks, and it must be dealt with harshly. And the sym­pa­thetic main­stream media is help­ing them do the job.

It is for that rea­son why the left will make this a one year story rather than a one day story. They will not relent they will try to make it Komen’s Water­loo. But as the Komen fundrais­ing num­bers already show it is Water­loo and Komen like Scott Walker before them, is play­ing the role of Welling­ton.

Exit ques­tion: Komen KNEW this was com­ing and still did it. What does that say about the power of the left?

Update: A lot of peo­ple a pan­ick­ing about the Komen “cave” but not only is there a lot less than meets the eye the Amer­i­can Papist (no squish on life) gets it.

I mean, just pause for a moment: if Planned Par­ent­hood is so seri­ous about pro­tect­ing women’s health how does it jus­tify lead­ing a cru­sade to destroy the world’s lead­ing breast can­cer research foun­da­tion over these past days?? It’s sim­ply incred­i­ble, and we need to make sure it’s never forgotten.

One last thing: we need to remem­ber the big pic­ture. Over the past 48 hours, not only did Planned Par­ent­hood reveal itself as will­ing to seri­ously dam­age and attempt to destroy the pro-​woman Komen foun­da­tion, but also, thou­sands and mil­lions of peo­ple poten­tially learned for the first time that Komen doesn’t believe Planned Par­ent­hood is an ideal provider of health care for women. So even if Planned Par­ent­hood wins this bat­tle (an out­come very much in doubt), I would argue they have seri­ously weak­ened them­selves for the bat­tles ahead. This will be a long fight, take the long view.

Update 2: To those who still think Komen has caved I sug­gest you read this.

Update 3: I’m a lit­tle late acknowl­edg­ing this Insta­lanche due to show stuff but thanks much Glenn.