Abortion has come up plenty of times in the debates. But right now it's being disguised as "the Planned Parenthood scandal" and as calls to defund that NGO.

Reason has repeatedly documented that the anti-PP videos are doctored to deceive, and that PP has done nothing wrong in its disposal of waste from its operations. But the pro-life side persists in screaming about those things in order to distract the (mostly pro-choice) media from covering "progress" the pro-life side has made -- including both the Federal ban on abortions after 20 weeks (now pending in Congress) and requirements for hospital admission arrangements that have successfully shut down most clinics in places like Texas and Mississippi.

But Eudaimonia is partly right here -- the Religious Right are losing on most issues, mostly because they are old people and are not recruiting as fast as they are dying of old age.

What makes me ROFL is the assertion that the Religious Right are RINOs. This depends on what beliefs you think make someone a "real Republican", but for many years, religious conservatism was the correct answer to that question. It's primarily the influence of big spenders like Huckabee and Romney, and the big money donors who back them, that has made the GOP move away from religious (and small-government) conservatism to the point that the Tea Party movement was needed to save the GOP. At which point, a lot of libertarians like myself, who had earlier written off the GOP as hopeless, felt we now had hope because there aren't enough religious conservatives to keep control, either of the Tea Party movement or of the GOP if and when the movement takes over the GOP.

Now, like ewv, I would prefer that the Tea Party movement's main focus be on liberty (or at least cutting spending) rather than the Bible. But I'm not afraid of the Bible thumpers because there is no way the Tea Party will ever get a chance to implement their agenda (in the ways it differs from the libertarians' agenda). Demographics are winning this battle for us, so it need not be fought.

For the record, abortion came up a lot during the first debate.

It is a fact and many of the religious conservatives are defensive about the controversy over their actions. They know what they are doing, but of course deny they are "discrediting" the tea party. They think they are supposed to be dominating it despite its origins as a secular revolt against statism and over fiscal matters.

Whether or not you understand that, this has nothing to do with "ad hominem arguments". A simple assertion presented as a statement of fact is not argument at all, let alone an ad hominem. Eudaimonia's accusations are false. Those who understand what the meaning of the principle of the fallacy of the ad hominem argument will ironically find it in his own rationalizations for his overtly tyrannical, punitive behavior. It's not even an ordinary, clean ad hominem, it fabricates the irrelevant premise as well.