Sen. Lindsey Graham didn't like Donald Trump's abortion punt this morning and issued a statement saying so. Trump hit back with half a dozen vicious posts on Truth Social:
“Many Good Republicans lost Elections because of this Issue, and people like Lindsey Graham, that are unrelenting, are handing Democrats their dream of the House, Senate, and perhaps even the Presidency," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, shortly after Graham issued his statement.
It's hardly a big secret that politicians often abandon their principles in order to win votes. But it's unusual to be quite so open about it. Trump has made it crystal clear that he wants Republicans to shut up about abortion because it's turned out to be a losing issue for them, and he went after Graham hard as a warning to everyone else to toe the line on this. He doesn't want abortion to be a campaign issue and he doesn't want Republicans to be feuding over it for the next seven months.
Aside from Graham, it seems to have worked so far. But for how long?
Poor Lindsey, bless his heart. He's learning that, no matter how obsequiously you kiss Trump's ass, he has no compunctions about turning on you as soon as it's momentarily convenient.
"he has no compunctions about turning on you as soon as it's momentarily convenient"
Of course - that is a perfect description of Lindsey, too. OR - you can just call them RepubliQans. Same thing.
Graham has always been an asskisser. It's just that most people didn't notice while he was playing Chester to John McCain's Spike.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVNHcob3oJg
Once again….
Trump proves that without bad faith……
Republicans would have no arguments at all
Con man Trump thinks he can talk his way through the thicket of abortion policies, but it won't work. Too many obdurate people with irreconcilable policy preferences - made more difficult because a lot of them believe their stance is god's will. Good luck finding compromise in that arena.
Trump's only goal is to get elected and I suspect he'll try to get people to sit down, be quiet, and wait until after the election, when he won't care about their interests, much to their dismay.
Abortion is a huge political problem for the Republicans, but if there is a viable strategy, Trump has found it.
Yes, he says he won't push a national abortion ban, but he also directly asserts that his only real commitment in this context is to get elected. He stands to gain votes from centrist suckers, and lose no votes from the evangelicals, who understand him better than anyone.
It's about time that the rest of us wise up to the thing the evangelicals have always understood: Trump can be trusted to lie when doing so serves his interests.
Trump is betting that evangelical voters will stick with him regardless, and that evangelical organizations and activists will grumble but go along because their own supporters will turn on them otherwise.
And I have to say that both of those seem like pretty safe bets. His current stance *might* have hurt him in the primary, though I think he'd have won handily no matter what. But now even the most zealous anti-abortion voters are faced with a choice between Trump's professed neutrality on the issue and Biden's active support for abortion rights. Almost all will pick the first option.
This of course will not stop the Biden campaign from picking out the most horrific examples of anti-abortion legislation (there's no shortage of options) and trying to hang them around Trump's neck. Those attacks will still hurt Trump. But they won't cut as deep now.
It's a smart play, much as I hate to admit it.
Yup. The True Believers will vote for him with exactly the same fervor as before. This key question will be how many low-info voters will be taken in by this BS.
I don't think it is a smart play at all. I think it is no play, in fact. Largely because no one, including Trump followers, believe that he wouldn't sign a national abortion ban if one got to his desk.
But, it won't help him with any voters to whom medical care for women (that is really what this is about) is an important issue for the same reason that they know Trump is a lying sack of shit and he'd sign a national ban in a second.
Finally, nothing he says about a national ban will alter the draconian and medieval shit going on in states, which will ensure this will be a very important issue come November.
For how long will trump keep a lid on any talk of a national abortion ban? Let's check in with Cornyn in the same article. First he says there won't be 60 votes in the senate for a national ban, then courageously winds up with “Everybody's entitled to their opinion, but I think I agree with President Trump.” This guy wants to be majority leader.
Outside of the Confederacy, pols like him are going to want to keep their heads down and waffle when they have to say anything. Even in the CSA most will; I have no idea what got into Graham, except a) it was his proposal that he insisted on putting out when everybody was trying to shut him up, and b) he'll figure out a way to waffle and still talk about his precious "compromise" because he's good at being slimy. (He's never stopped thinking he should be president, either, and maybe he thinks this is somehow his ticket, who knows.)
But pressure groups might want public commitments and they're serious about outlawing abortion and birth control too, most of them. They never really trusted trump and this won't soothe them. Last time around they kept their doubts to themselves and worked hard for the guy because they had so many other assurances. It could get really interesting if they decide to act like the NRA of the glory days and Grover Norquist and keep public scorecards.
It could be trump who folds, you know. This is about the first time I can remember him making a traditional politician's move, and as Kevin says, he wasn't trying to hide it. But his reptilian instincts are right that the public just hates what the pressure groups want us all to swallow.
"Let them fight" is the meme that fits. Let them go to the mattresses against each other.
I think Trump is scared of being convicted of a crime that could put him behind bars. He and his lawyers have turned the volume up on everything to 11.
Tat's not fair. Nigel Tufnel, David St Hubbins, and Derek Smalls are utterly clueless, but they are fundamentally decent people.
"It's hardly a big secret that politicians often abandon their principles in order to win votes. But it's unusual to be quite so open about it. Trump has made it crystal clear that he wants Republicans to shut up about abortion because it's turned out to be a losing issue for them, ..."
Trump isn't abandoning his principles, he has never been hard line anti-abortion.
This is no different than a moderate Democrat wanting Democrats to shut up about defunding the police.
Tell me when you heard a Democrat higher than dog catcher say we should “defund the police.” The only people who advocate defunding the police are Republicans who want to punish the FBI for searching Maralago.
thank you. this has been a favorite Republican and media trope for a long time, and it's utterly false.
And defund the AFT and the IRS.
This is silly. Trump picked 3 Supreme Court justices because he wanted Roe overturned. That's pretty hard line anti-abortion. And anyone who thinks that Trump won't sign a nationwide abortion ban is dreaming.
Furthermore of course, he need not do that to ban abortions nationwide. His FDA can ban mifepristone. His DoJ can prosecute people under the Comstock act. Any chance of restoring abortion rights in the south by Federal law would be out, of course.
" Trump picked 3 Supreme Court justices because he wanted Roe overturned. "
That is just false.
Trump picked these judges because he wanted to get support from anti-abortionists. He never cared (and doesn't care now) about abortions.
He never cared (and doesn't care now) about any issues other than keeping the spotlight on himself, exacting revenge on anybody who slighted him and staying out of jail.
FIFY. Trump cares about nothing but himself. He is literally the most narcissistic person who has ever lived.
He is extreme narcissistic, but not absolute.
If he cared only about himself he wouldn't, for example, exchange love letters with Kim (and various other interactions with various dictators). He does it because he admires Kim (and the other dictators) for suppressing the population of North-Korea (and other countries), and he wants to do the same in the US.
"Trump picked 3 Supreme Court justices because he wanted Roe overturned."
Nonsense. Trump, as President, just rubber-stamped the judicial lists that the Federalist Society kept giving him, because that's what the billionaires wanted.
Exactly. Those judges were handed to Trump, who didn't want to think about it at all, and he signed off it to get back to tweeting angry messages.
Of course TFG is not abandoning his principles — he’s never had any.
Trump wants us to talk about something and else and JamesB, as always, is eager and willing to help out.
But Trump cant shift the attention off his past actions on abortion and womens healthcare, no matter how much he and his willing followers want it to be so.
Yet another hit-and-run by someone who wouldn't stick around 'twer his own mother he'd struck down.
I can’t believe that Trump is being the smart one here. Of course he’s going to give the Christofascists what they want once he is installed as “President”. They just have to play “disappointed” (but still willing to support him based on the alternative). That’s what I saw from statements from anti-abortion groups this morning. So now Lindsey Graham has to muck things up and make Trump say the quiet part out loud. Graham isn’t even good at being a toadie
If Trump wins this year he'll be a lame-duck from day one-- and he won't owe SoCons or anyone else anything. He'll be busy pursuing his own agenda, not anyone else's.
Correct.
And his agenda is population suppression, like his heroes (Putin, Xi, Kim etc.).
Right, his agenda will be staying about of prison and stealing everything that isn’t nailed down.
Since he’s also lazy he’ll simply give the federalist society all the judicial nominations
Don't be so sure about the lame duckitude. He will very likely start seeking loopholes in the 22nd Amendment or ignore it entirely. Like his heroes (Putin, Xi, etc.) he will find a way to stay in power as long as he likes. And who is going to kick him off the ballot now that SCOTUS has found that States can't do it?
Trump is unlikely to be alive and mentally functional by 2028.
I dunno how much of this is Smart Politics and how much is just Trump lashing out at being contradicted. I guess for now I'll still give him credit for SOME of the former, but for sure that ain't all of it. He is a tyrant at heart, and the more his brain decays, the more tyrannical he becomes.
Hey Calpundit: yesterday when all decent Americans were busy chasing the eclipse, that fowl limey publication, The Economist, published an op-ed by Donohue and Levitt on the abortion-crime nexus. The nut graph:
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Though there is not complete acceptance of our hypothesis among academics, all agree that if our paper is not correct, then there is no viable explanation for the enormous drop in crime in America that started in the early 1990s. Indeed, there is not even an arguable theory to supplant the abortion-crime link. Exposure to lead in the environment might, perhaps, be the next best hypothesis. But as we showed in our 2020 paper, when one controls for both environmental lead and abortion, the coefficient on abortion remains large while the coefficient on environmental lead is greatly reduced and loses statistical significance.
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Seems to me they've thrown down the gage in your presence. Your faithful readers expect, yea demand, a response. Are you a fighting liberal in the grand tradition of George W Norris? Or are you instead a lily-livered, liver-lipped yellow livered liberal?
For one thing, Donahue and Levitt use data only from the US. Kevin has shown lead-crime data from many nations. Prof. Theodore Joyce notes that sharp discontinuities are preferred in econometrics: https://journalistsresource.org/economics/abortion-crime-research-donohue-levitt/
These occur multiple times across countries for lead abatement, but Roe v. Wade is a singular event.
Yeah! In the face!
Trump has already established a record, a history, of........ DELIVERING (for the pro-life cause.)
That's cannot be disputed, wink wink.
PRO-LIFERS will stick with Trump.
What are the odds that the Trump-Graham beef is some pre-arranged Kabuki to make Trump look moderate?
Bingo.
The dupes aren’t the anti choicers, they are in on the Kubuki, it’s the “Centrists” who fall for it then are shocked, shocked when Republicans do exactly what they have been saying they would do for decades.
Yes, Republican voters are famously ignorant about their party’s policies: https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2020/12/30/republicans-dont-know-anything-about-their-party
Or it could just be that Graham likes the spotlight and this was a chance to get more of the attention he thirsts for.
Years ago Howard Stern asked Trump how many abortions he has paid for, and Trump just gave a smile.
Yeah, Trump probably thinks after his divorce from Melania he still has a chance to f**k some chicks and -- virile stud that he imagines himself to be -- he might need some abortion services, and he'd like it to be local, to save money. Hard to say if he can be pressured as president to sign a complete ban, but he certainly won't do it willingly.
I have trouble believing that Graham can be firm about anything.