McCain as pro-choice

You'd like to think this particular myth ended last night with the following emphatic declaration:

"I have a 25-year pro-life record in the Congress, in the Senate," McCain said. "This presidency will have pro-life policies."

And then maybe not. Check out this TNR piece about how successfully McCain has masked his pro-life zealotry. I have to say, even I was shocked by the reporting. I always thought of McCain as a guy who merely tolerated hard-right social conservatives. I was mistaken.

UPDATE: Also, check out this bit of reporting, also from TNR, on the changes made to the Democratic platform regarding abortion. I found this encouraging:

An interesting aspect of the platform decision is that pro-choice leaders, I'm told, were genuinely interested in making the party more palatable to evangelical leaders. That this compromise would get public support from religious Democrats almost certainly factored into the pro-choicers' willingness to bargain. The language is not officially final until it is ratified at the national convention, and pro-lifers will probably make some nominal efforts to address their lingering doubts, especially in regard to the "conscience" language. But for the most part, this has been a success for the platform committee and the Obama campaign. "It's a big difference from 2004," Kristen Day, Executive Director of Democrats for Life, told me. "And it's a big difference that the committee reached out to us. It shows that we're accepted into the party."