The imaginary middle ground disappeared this week. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern kicked for touch faster than Keith Wood when his abortion referendum plans lost the chance of reaching broad consensus in the Dβil. The bitter and divisive debate Mary Harney swore she'd avoid became a real prospect: PD fingernails were crushed by the weight of collective sitting on hands.
Democracy was now the keynote issue as Ahern gave fresh purpose to the Opposition. Fine Gael was lit by a fire for the first time in years, with TDs Noonan, Fitzgerald, Owen and Shatter sounding notes about justice straight from the heydays of Garret FitzGerald's election-winning crusade.
Labour's internal debate transformed into a sustained critique of the Government's political judgement when Liz McManus of Labour voiced the views of an alternative middle ground. New political alliances became possible. Ahern went on the run.
The independents did as independents do, underlining the gap between the spin and the real goal of maintaining Fianna Fβil in power. Ahern's selective listening campaign had clearly not listened carefully enough to rumblings within the opposition parties, who themselves were unique in having listened to a broader range of opinion in the lead-up to the referendum launch. Ahern, by contrast, had only listened to anti-abortionists, Catholic clergy and the pro-life campaign.
Micheal Martin and Seamus Brennan reneged on their promises. Brennan had assured opposition whips the abortion debate would be taken in full in the House. A long three weeks ago, Martin sent each deputy a letter drafted by Michael McDowell, promising the same freedom of speech. Hoist on the Government's petard, their commitment was not to be honoured.
The theatre of parliamentary democracy, with its ringing bells and rituals, would be downsized in favour of a basement room characterised by harsh lighting and proportions so slim they could not fit the number of visitors to the public gallery, let alone the number of journalists becoming increasingly interested in the politics of the debate.
Abortion was to be reduced to the procedural status of a Finance Bill no matter what the costs.
Ahern's promise of a calm, reasoned debate would be managed instead by the Committee on Health and Children, whose votes were already fixed. His decision to bury debate there was presented as a rerun of the divorce referendum process in 1995. But the difference was stark, however much the spin still talked about consensus.
The divorce proposals happened with cross-party agreement, save for a PD statement that "being of the opinion that it would be inappropriate to insert in the Constitution detailed and specific conditions for the granting of divorce, [the PD party] declines to give it a second reading". Such were the ravages of political time.
At least the committee might spare the PDs further embarrassment on the issue since they lacked a vote there.
Yet few believed that previous very public comments by Harney, McDowell and O'Donnell during the 1992 debate could be rescued with integrity. O'Donnell's south Dublin voters in particular were likely to spot the missing ball bouncing round the question of trusting women. Some PD stalwarts were uncomfortable with the penalty shoot-out they stood to lose.
The stage was set for deadlock. Fianna Fβil plus Beverley Cooper-Flynn: seven votes. Fine Gael: five votes. Labour and the Green Party: one vote each. Somewhere in the bowels of Leinster House Batt O'Keeffe, chairman of the Health and Children Committee, might have wondered how destiny took him from Cork South Central to a neverland where his casting vote may be the key move on abortion when debate is wrapped up this Thursday.
Consensus shuddered further. A number of Fianna Fβil TDs voiced privately the dilemma posed by an increasingly familiar middle ground on the issue: "I don't like abortion, but..." Failure to heed the "but" factor might take an electoral toll.
Some Fianna Fβil workers remembered the Irish Times/MRBI poll held before the 1992 referendum showing that only 50 per cent of Fianna Fβil supporters were in favour of the Government's wording on the substantive issue. The Bill's casual attitude to issues of mental health, rape and incest were not what people wanted to spend time debating on a doorstep with the parents of a suicidal teenager, male or female. Criminalising women and threatening them with 12 years' imprisonment was unlikely to win support.
The "but" factor haunts Mary Harney's insistence on finding a "sufficiently broad middle round support" for the issue. In Boston or Berlin, broad, middle ground consensus includes mental as well as physical health, and benchmarks strict time limits. Might the Government's middle ground be found in her first-world economy when its orbit belonged to severest third-world states?
After all the parliamentary intrigue, the Bill will be the Government's Christmas present to President McAleese. A constitutional lawyer will be faced with the challenge of signing the most unusual constitutional amendment an Irish President has ever faced. Then the campaign they promised would not be bitter or divisive will loose itself on a tired Irish electorate which refused its like before. All in the name of a long-defunct middle ground, and against an emerging political alliance intent on mining the votes for "but".
mruane@irish-times.ie