The Stupak Conundrum
Volokh | On a mf-ing roll...

If this conjecture is correct, the Stupak reversal may be another example of the political exploitation of voter ignorance. I hasten to add, however, that I don’t have any direct evidence that this was their motive. I can’t definitively rule out the possibility that Stupak and his allies were ignorant themselves. And there may also be other explanations for their last-minute conversion that don’t occur to me.

---

Ultimately, I tend to think that Stupak isn’t stupid. So the explanation for his reversal must lie elsewhere. As I have explained in the past, ignorance isn’t necessarily a sign of stupidity. In this case, however, a non-stupid Stupak who cared about abortion funding as much as he claimed and genuinely believed that the preexisting bill would lead to abortion funding probably wouldn’t have remained ignorant for long. He would have had every incentive and opportunity to consult experts who could have filled him on the likely impact or lack thereof of the executive order. On the other hand, there is the old saying that cautions us to “never attribute to malice what can be adequately ascribed to stupidity.”