A number of people seem to have missed an important exchange in the Presidential debate.
Not the exchange where we finally discovered that the way to reduce the Racist-in-Chief to silence is to ask him to denounce white supremacy:
Nor was it the exchange immediately following where, instead of denouncing white supremacy he pivoted to throwing love to white supremacists (as he so often does), by calling on the Proud Boys to stand back and stand by, just as he told us that people marching under the banner of the swastika at Charlottesville were “very fine people”, just as he urged “second amendment people” to deal with Hillary, just as he urges his legion of freelance MAGA terrorists to “beat the hell out of ’em” and “carry ’em out on a stretcher” while promising to pay their legal bills for their violent acts of terror against political opponents, just as he urged whack jobs in Michigan to ‘LIBERATE MICHIGAN”, resulting in a plot of said whack jobs to kidnap the governor of Michigan and in Trump condemning, not the whack jobs but the victim of the kidnapping conspiracy.
(The term for what Trump does is “stochastic terrorism”. It is when a demagogue calls for violence into a national megaphone and then refuses to take any responsibility when his violent, crazy cult answer the call by massacring brown people in an El Paso mall, or massacring Jews in a synagogue, or massacring Muslims in Canada, or massacring kids in Parkland. or committing the other 50 acts of Trump-inspired terror for which the Most Prolife President in History takes no responsibility.
No. It is not these outrages against human decency, the Constitutional order or the laws of God and man I want to discuss here. Rather, it is this exchange:
Vice President Joe Biden: (10:11)
Let me finish. The point is that the President also is opposed to Roe V. Wade. That’s on the ballot as well and the court, in the court, and so that’s also at stake right now. And so the election is all-President Donald J. Trump: (10:25)
You don’t know what’s on the ballot. Why is it on the ballot? Why is it on the ballot? It’s not on the ballot.Vice President Joe Biden: (10:31)
It’s on the ballot in the court.President Donald J. Trump: (10:32)
I don’t think so.Vice President Joe Biden: (10:33)
In the court.President Donald J. Trump: (10:34)
There’s nothing happening there.Vice President Joe Biden: (10:35)
Donald would you just be quiet for a minute.President Donald J. Trump: (10:36)
You don’t know her view on Roe V. Wade? You don’t know here view.
Very few people seem to have noticed it in the food fight that was Trump’s embarrassing performance. Certainly not this paladin of Truly True Catholic Faith in the Prolife Folk Hero Pantheon:
Perhaps this champion of Human Life was too mesmerized with her passion for abandoning the weak to Trump’s eugenic plans for Herd Immunity, which in the mind of Cult mean “Do nothing and let the weak die so that the Master Specimens will survive”:
And yet, even an extremely unobservant reader of that debate exchange should not be able to escape noting that what Trump is doing there, at the very least, is completely throwing the prolife movement under the bus. He is answering Biden’s accusation that Trump means to destroy Roe vs. Wade with an emphatic assurance that neither he nor Amy Coney Barrett pose the slightest threat to Roe.
Now, the response of the Cult to all this is, of course, to say, “Oh, he has to say that. But don’t worry. He’s a liar just like us and when she gets appointed, then she will stop lying about her supposed devotion to stare decisis and the whole Court will finally magic abortion away!”
There is no actual evidence for this magical thinking on the part of the Cult. But they have lived by this lie for decades nonetheless.
Their resistance to reality on this point is an astonishing thing. We have literally had a GOP-dominated SCOTUS for fifty years, since 1970. It was that court that gave us Roe. All the Dem justices could have been in the bathroom when Roe was handed down and the outcome would have been the same. And in 1992, the GOP domination of the Court was overwhelming: 8-1 with the 1 being a prolife Democrat. That Court gave us the Casey decision and its famous Mystery Clause that entrenched abortion more deeply as a right.
Every year, year after year, Republican as well as Democrat administration have made sure that our abortion regime stays in place. Every year, Planned Parenthood gets funded again, with Trump raising that funding to the greatest level in history. When the GOP dominates both houses as well as the Presidency, they somehow always find a way to be too busy to do anything about abortion. Sometimes it’s because they need to plunge into a stupid war that meets no criterion of Just War Teaching. Sometimes it’s because they are too busy trying to destroy health care, or because they are shutting down the government, not over THE GREATEST MORAL ISSUE OF OUR TIME, but over Trump’s moronic wall. They know that the MAGA prolife cult will drop their fake interest in the unborn and devote their time and energy to the War or the Wall or killing the ACA, because they are the cheapest dates in town and never stop believing that if they fight for every lie and cruelty and stupidity, the GOP will finally reward them by magicking abortion away.
And yet still the proud, unteachable, arrogant larval MAGA “prolife” cult learned nothing at all and has now reached the point where they believe that to disagree with their massively failed “Vote GOP or the Baby Gets It” strategy makes you not only a babykilling fiend but an apostate (as I was informed I was by some proud Pharisees the other day). They are incapable of learning, except in one sense: They have become incredibly skilled at changing their story and lying to defend their true #1 priority: not the unborn, but the raw nihilist predatory power of Donald J. Trump, to whom there is no principle–and no person, not even the unborn–they will not sacrifice.
Of which more tomorrow.
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16 Responses
Mark, you might eat these words, and it might not be very long before you do. Justices Barret, Thomas, Alito, and “I Like Beer” are guaranteed to vote to overturn Roe, while Roberts and Asterisk are coin flips on it. So there’s probably a 75% chance that Roe falls.
Remember, the Federalist Society didn’t exist yet in the 1970’s, but since the 00’s their policy of rigorously screening R judicial nominees for signs of non-partisanship has begun to pay off at the highest level. The game has changed, and many mainstream commentators have acknowledged this by ceasing the fiction of calling judges “conservative” or “liberal” and are now just calling them R or D.
There is still Casey. And even then abortion just goes back to the states. The fantasy of magicking abortion away by force of law when 80% of Americans have no intention of doing so, nor does either party, will remain a fantasy.
I agree, it will go back to the states. Blue states will still have legal abortion. Many red states won’t. Someone in MS, for example, will not only have to leave their state, but will also likely have to travel beyond AL, AR, or LA to find a legal abortion. Legislators in deep red states have made their intentions utterly clear for many years now – see link for just one example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Mississippi#Legislative_history
I’ll believe they will strike down their abortion regime when I see it.
@ joel
As I have often said, if abortion is made unavailable, rich women will have abortions, and poor women will have babies. Democrats will say “feed those children, educate them, and take care of them“, and Republicans will say, “sorry, you’re on your own“. Straight people will be able to complain about the attacks of the Qhristian Reich on their rights to run their lives, and gay people will keep saying “we’ve been telling you this for 50 years”.
Because the antiabortion movement has been so thoroughly co-opted by the Republican party, and viceversa, with both co-opted by their own highly misplaced sense of morality— by which I mean, A complete lack of morality except for telling other people how to live their lives and making sure that those lives are difficult, expensive, dangerous, unpleasant, and hopefully, impossible – One can only hope that Mr. Biden will take the opportunity, as the first act of his presidency, with a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, to stack the court with an additional six justices. Then, maybe, we can get away from a court that abrogated the constitutional responsibility of the House in the election George Bush, decided that corporations are people, money is speech, A well regulated militia means that anybody that afford it can have as many guns as they can afford, and voting rights are really not so important after all.
And that stacking of the court, which hopefully will be the first of many steps necessary to put this country back on track, will be the crowning achievement of the anti-abortion industry. Because they will be able to continue on their decades long grift of conservative Christians.
@ ben wrote “stack the court with an additional six justices.”
I also hope Biden does that, but I know R’s can do that too, and it will eventually lead to a SCOTUS with 435 (or more) Justices, basically a parallel Congress. It will be quite different from Congress in its powers and responsibilities, but also quite similar in having a crystal clear partisan divide among the Justices. This will not be a good thing.
I’m pretty sure McConnel and his bosses at the Federalist Society weren’t thinking ahead when they started their project. They wanted a partisan Court, and that’s what we’re going to have from now on.
@ joel
I see stacking the court as, at best, a temporary measure. What really needs to be done is to end Senate rules thatgive i dividual senStors extraordinary powers.. Follow that with constitutional amendments that reduce the court back to nine, remove life time terms, impose 10 year limits on their terms, with one renewal, and require all judicial appointments to be confirmed within, say, three months of nomination.
As far as I can tell, that would be the only way to restore integrity to the court.
@Ben You say “Rich women will have abortions, and poor women will have babies.” What we actually know from history (and present reality in countries where there is no legal abortion but also no real culture of life & safety net for families), is that rich women will have abortions in other jurisdictions or with “”discreet”” doctors, and poor women will have very dangerous back alley abortions and die. This is why a blanket ban without meaningful change in social supports and culture is such a dangerous proposition – a political show that would do very little to help the unborn and would end in grievous harm to many women.
@ dove
And that is also 100% true. Thank you for bringing it up.
If they do away with Roe, abortion will only go back to the states for the tine it takes a Democratic-controlled Congress and a White House to pass a federal law protecting abortion rights in every state. Which is to say about a month. Then you will have more abortions in the red states than you do now because conservative legislators will lose their power to regulate abortion clinics away, impose waiting limits and ultrasound laws and all the other shenanigans they’ve been up to these last 40 years. I’m pro choice and almost hoping they do away with Roe.
In your scenario Republicans get two big wins – they get to finally make good on their promise to overturn Roe v. Wade (but without really suffering the possible long-term backlash that could come from pro-choice conservatives) and also get the gift of a new carrot to dangle in front of the pro-life crowd for the next half-century.
And for the record, I’m not pro-choice.
@lucky
As I said above, it will enable the anti-abortion industry to continue their grift of conservative Christians for another 50 years.
I have the unhappy impression that many conservatives in your country, while they claim to see abortion as bad, would not see anything wrong with political assassination… It seems obvious from US interference in a number of central and south American countries, with such things as supporting some rather violent groups of political dissidents in Latin America, making sure to “free” Chile from a left-leaning president by arranging for his assassination, training offered through the CIA to Argentinian right-wing groups in such matters as torture and assassination in preparation for the Dirty War in that country (look up Operation Condor), to multiple (I once heard it was hundreds of) unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Castro…
In other words, for some anti-abortion people, killing is only wrong if the victim is a pre-born human being, but it is perfectly justifiable for grown up political opponents…
jj
There is absolutely no way these Republicans want more brown babies. They will do everything in their power to bar them from access to resources that require taxes/funding. Amy C.B. has already stated that she believes refugees should be screened and turned away if they will potentially need any form of charity or assistance.
I wonder what Jesus would say about *that*. (“Lord! Lord! when did we see you hungry and naked??”). How Catholic of her.
I could see them funding abortion vans to travel to red states should it ever come to that–but it will not. Really at the end of the day ALL of this is a bunch of grandstanding. Ru-486 is as easy to get your hands on as aspirin, and it’s regularly handed out for incomplete miscarriage. I tossed mine in the trash.
Both sides are approaching this in the wrong way. Dems pay lip service to women’s rights and Republicans are stingy. They would lose . their. sh*t. on both sides If people set up plush, spa-like resorts with catered food for poor pregnant women, EVEN if it was privately funded. Their eugenic souls wouldn’t be able to handle it.
The abortion/ gay marriage shtick is to whip up the masses. Despite all the talks, the pro-life “Roberts five pro-life” real agenda is in the 80 5-4 decisions they rendered.
The real power deals are being made in these decisions with little public awareness. It is abetted by religious bigwigs: Bishops, Cardinals, Megachurch pastors and other megalomaniacs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6wAbOxUJF0
All of these decisions have been to support one of these things
(1) dark money in politics
(2) weakening civil juries ( to have conservative judges decide the outcome instead of juries)
(3) support polluters, weaken regulators
(4) suppression of minority political power (voter suppression)
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a34362944/sheldon-whitehouse-federalist-society-amy-coney-barrett/
And pro-life Christians join these psychopathic plutocrats in this plunder, so that they can leech off the benevolence of their masters. These Christians have no qualms in selling of their souls, to crucify the brown, the black and poor, in return for scraps.