The Republican primary race for attorney general is a sight, with each candidate endeavoring to step to the extreme right of the other. The U.S. Constitution gets trampled regularly in campaign pronouncements. And now one candidate has the American Bar Association in her crosshairs.

I’d thought David Sterling, the Family Council favorite, had won the race to the right, but Leslie Rutledge indicates she’s not to be denied. She’s now blasting Sterling for membership in the American Bar Association, a solidly establishment voluntary organization if there ever was one.

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It’s a liberal menace, Rutledge declares, because of policy positions adopted by its House of Delegates. Such as support for same-sex marriage (equal rights under the law, in other words); support for limiting gun ownership by people convicted of misdemeanor crimes (public safety), and support for other gun measures, such as giving police tools to trace ammunition used in crimes (public safety again). Then there’s abortion. Sterling is as far-right on this as you can get, but the ABA continues to support the position of the U.S. Supreme Court that it would be unconstitutional to deprive women of the right to an abortion during the time before a fetus is viable. Rutledge is appalled.

Rutledge is further aghast that Sterling would tout publicly  his membership in the ABA’s House of Delegates, with its well-known liberal tilt.

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“While my opponent financially supports the ABA and spent his career working his way through the ranks of the liberal legal organization, I have spent my entire legal career defending our way of life and protecting our conservative values as a prosecutor putting criminals behind bars, as Counsel to Governor Mike Huckabee advising state agencies and as Counsel at the Republican National Committee fighting Obama’s overreaching federal government,”

Patricia Nation is also running as a Republican from the same end of the spectrum.

Democrat Nate Steel is looking better and better.

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