Would Green sign SD abortion law?

Rep. Mark Green, now the only Republican candidate for governor, has been quite successful at avoiding issues he doesn't want to talk about. For months, senior groups and Democrats tried to smoke him out and get him to talk about his position on President Bush's unpopular plan to privatize Social Security, which went nowhere. Green simply ducked, time after time, even claiming he hadn't had a chance to read it and wasn't familiar enough to take a stand.

That came to mind when reading this Philadelphia Inquirer story:

On S.D. abortion law, loud silence

By Dick Polman
Inquirer Political Analyst

Republicans in Washington are always willing to weigh in on the issues that are important to their conservative base - Iraq, immigration, taxes, federal spending, the Medicare drug plan, the Dubai ports deal, you name it.

But, lately, hardly anybody in the GOP camp seems anxious to address the historic event that transpired this month out on the high plains and now threatens to roll eastward, to the U.S. Supreme Court.

It is, of course, abortion. For the party of the elephant, the new South Dakota law -which prohibits the procedure for every woman in the state, unless she is dying - is truly the elephant in the room.

It puts Republican politicians, especially those seeking the 2008 presidential nomination, squarely on the spot. If they side with conservatives - who tend to vote heavily in the primaries, and who generally hope that the South Dakota law will be a weapon to overturn Roe v. Wade - they risk alienating the independent voters who often swing November elections. The swing people generally desire that the right to legal abortion, as codified by Roe, be sustained.

That explains why not a single Republican with White House aspirations has declared that the South Dakota law - passed by a Republican legislature, and signed on March 6 by a Republican governor - should be the model for an ultimate ban on abortions nationwide. None bring up the law at all; they have to be asked first.

So here's my question:

Will any Wisconsin reporter ever ask Mark Green whether he would sign that South Dakota bill, and press him to give a real answer?

We know Gov. Jim Doyle would veto it in a heartbeat.

And Mark Green?