To put it another way, I'm not voting on some ethereal, hyper-principled grounds. I think my vote is a pragmatic one. This is also why I think the American situation differs from the Hungary example. Hungary's abortion politics are, from what you say, fixed. America's, and the Republican Party's, are currently in shift. I don't like the …
To put it another way, I'm not voting on some ethereal, hyper-principled grounds. I think my vote is a pragmatic one. This is also why I think the American situation differs from the Hungary example. Hungary's abortion politics are, from what you say, fixed. America's, and the Republican Party's, are currently in shift. I don't like the way they're shifting, and insofar as I can vote against it, I will do so. To my mind, four years of Kamala, as awful as that sounds, is not as bad as having both parties committed to abortion.
You can call your vote "pragmatic" because you live in a Deep Blue State and your vote doesn't matter. You're free to throw it away as you wish. There's nothing wrong with that. I live in a Deep Red State that Trump will win by double digits and will still be throwing my vote away on RFK, mostly for the lulz at this point, as the kids say.
But if I lived in a swing state or even a light Blue state, I'd be sucking it up and voting for Trump. I'd tell myself that I was mostly voting for Vance, but that's just a mental cope I'd be soothing myself with. Cheeto Jesus is at the top of the ticket and will be the one charged with setting the agenda for the next four years, not Vance.
And, frankly, Trump's right to be doing what he can to blunt the only real issue that Cackles and Fat Ted Lasso have to hit him on. The economy is a wreck. The world is in shambles as we face conflicts on multiple fronts. The illegal immigration issue is absolutely out of control to the point that Venezuelan gangs are creating "No go Zones" in the suburbs of Denver.
The only issue they have to try and fire up their base (which is mostly women anyway and has been for awhile) is abortion. Which means that Trump and Vance have to totally reject the more extreme ends of the pro- life position, such as opposition to IVF, birth control, and Plan B while playing coy on any state referendums that might be on any ballots this fall.
I'd prefer that they stick to something bland like "Whether such initiatives pass or fail is up to the people in those states. The important thing is that the people are getting to decide what's best for their communities because justices that Trump appointed overturned Roe." But in this specific case, as Trump is a Florida voter, it was fair game to ask him the question and, credit where due, he at least gave what is certainly his honest answer, even if it hurts him on the margins with pro- life ideologues.
At any rate, the campaign season is only now really kicking off for the majority of the country that aren't political news junkies as most of us are. I imagine there are still a lot of twists and turns to come between now and November. Nobody outside of the zealots on either side of the abortion question will remember or care what Trump's position on the Florida constitutional amendment was come election day.
Trump is "personally pro choice" but he governed as the most pro life president in history.
Biden is "personally pro life" but he has governed as the most pro abortion president in history.
Trump is like the first son in Jesus' parable who says he will not work in the vineyard but goes anyway. Biden is like the second son who says he will work, but doesn't go.
Kamala is like a wicked sister who grabs a torch and cackles that she's going to burn the vineyard down.
Simply, Trump did not appoint Supreme Court justices as bad as Sandra Day O'Connor or Anthony Kennedy like Ronald Reagan did, or as bad as David Souter like George HW Bush did or as bad as John Roberts as George W. Bush did.
I have a friend at church who was great pals with Scalia. Scalia's best friend on the Court was Justice Ginsberg. But Scalia despised Roberts as intellectually dishonest. Roberts and Kavanaugh joined with the Court libs on redistricting this year. They did it to cover for the vote against quotas.
Re: Roberts and Kavanaugh joined with the Court libs on redistricting this year. They did it to cover for the vote against quotas.
If getting striking down quotas required also reversing some state level gerrymandering,. IMO that's a two-fer and I approve of both even if it would be nice for such results to flow from lofty principles not backdoor wheeling and dealing.
Roberts wanted to limit states to 15 week bans at most. 95% of abortions occur before 15 weeks, so no state would have been able to ban abortion under Roberts' rule.
David Souter is my ideal Supreme Court justice, although I'd like to add a slice of Antonin Scalia and Hugo Black, particularly the points they agree on.
Well as a "white" evangelical nondenominational pastor said in a sermon yesterday, "When he turn to the powers of this world for a spiritual victory, we never win. We always lose."
According to this logic, pro lifers should have actively campaigned against blue state senator Susan Collins because she's pro choice. Never mind that she was the deciding vote to confirm Kavanaugh, who was the deciding judge to overturn Roe.
Anyway, I consider overturning Roe a case in point. Aside from being played by Republicans for decades and then double-played by Trump, what did it really get you?
It's not that complicated. It's better to have pro choice senators who support pro life judges than pro choice senators who opposed pro life judges. Obviously I'd prefer pro life senators, but that's not possible in states like Maine.
Trump promised he'd appoint judges who'd overturn Roe. Trump delivered. The result is hundreds of thousands of babies saved. I'm thrilled with that result, and I'm looking for ways to save millions more lives.
The result is an increase in the number of abortions by some reports made by pro-life sources. I think Rod may have referenced one of them a while back. The result is also a wave of citizen referenda to enshrine abortion rights in state constitutions. You would have been better off with a modest restraint on the police powers of the state, and asserting your First Amendment rights. Trump is an opportunist who will dump you anytime he sees it as advantageous to do so.
The abortion rate was already rising before Roe was overturned. This was due to decisions by the FDA to loosen restrictions around the abortion pill under the Obama and Biden administrations.
The increase in abortions since Dobbs is due to blue state residents having more abortions on in-state residents. Something similar is happening in the UK where they had record abortion rates in 2022.
Understand your points, but a) the economy is not "a wreck." (I suspect that people much younger than I don't really understand what a wrecked economy looks like.-- it's certainly not what we have now.) And b) while the world may not be "in shambles," we have not faced an international situation so fraught since 1948. And, unfortunately, the Trump foreign policy team was just about the most incompetent in living history -- and some of those in his camp coming to the fore now make the last group look like Dean Acheson. For my part, a retired diplomat and pro-life ex-Republican, the only reason to consider a Harris vote is the f.p. question.
Trump's foreign policy team came so close to peace in the Middle East with the Abraham Accords it directly triggered Oct 7 as a desperate attempt to derail them. Then there's Ukraine, NK, central Africa, Venezuela, Taiwan, etc. for places that were more or less under control during Trump and are either flash points now or straight up engulfed by war in the case of Ukraine.
If anything the Trump administration's foreign policy efforts were among its biggest successes and in fact I am willing to bet that ten years from now with the benefit of hindsight even the mainstream will come to regret having cut them short.
Exactly. Did you see the comment from some guy named Henry, who claims to be a retired diplomat and a prolife ex Republican who says he's voting for Harris because the incompetence of Trump's foreign policy team appalls him? I have to think this is disinformation.
Please read more carefully. I didn't say I was going to vote for Harris. I shall probably vote for neither, but write in the name of some qualified Republican -- not that it will make a difference in the state in which I live.
Also, (thanks to Eric Mader below) there is the issue of judges.
Did you know this almost did not come to a vote in Florida? Antiabortion groups who argued against the amendment said it was overly broad and vague, and its title misleading. By 4-3 the Florida Supreme Court let it go to the ballot.
Trump appointed pro-life judges and there is no reason to think that would stop. He also appoints judges that oppose minors taken for parents for transgender surgeries, men in women's sports, and many other things. But we can't have those judges if we stay home in order to have a pure Republican party.
Yes. Conservatives should be pragmatic in their voting. I no longer live in Maryland but if I did, I would vote for Larry Hogan for senate. He's pro-choice and supports codifying Roe v- Wade. Yet if Hogan is elected senator, he will vote for the vast majority of Trump's judicial picks. His opponent, Angela Alsobrooks, will vote against every Trump judicial nominee.
So you want a totally manipulated court system, where judges check "How is our party on this one, who will it benefit?" rather than following the law. Got it.
Want? No, absolutely not. But it’s already happening (not that anybody asked me for consent), and if it must happen I’d rather it be my guys on the bench.
You are not the author of the comment that inspired my observation about a manipulated court system. It is happening to some extent, but not so much that I can't explain to liberals that the decision on presidential immunity was a prudent and tentative one, which made sense given what the court did say and did not say. I'm not willing to settle for "my guys on the bench." I want a constitution, and that requires a court that examines the language of the constitution and the law, not "my guys for the win." I am equally willing to criticize the "liberal" majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the Trumpian majority on the Georgia election board.
Four years of Kamal will mean abortion is cemented as policy and law at the federal level. You think you can hide and wait this out. They are on the verge of a radical revolution that is just starting not ending. Kamala will be lubricant to this radical change and no state or party in the future will be able to claw back to what we have now, state controlled abortion. The likelihood of of new states restricting abortion in the future is higher than reversing federal abortion law once Kamal wins.
As Rod has acknowledged, with deep and sincere regret, the pro-life movement has lost the battle. After years of demanding that a federal constitutional restraint on the police powers of the state be breached to "return it to the states" and subject the peoples' liberties to the whims of state level politicians, they got their wish. It turns out that the people of "the states" are not going to allow their somewhat disconnected legislative elites impose draconian criminal penalties on abortion. Pro-life doesn't have the popular majority at its back to implement its dearly wished for program. Four years of Kamala will make rather little difference one way or the other. In saying that, I anticipate that the Supreme Court will shoot down any federal bill either providing national criminal penalties for abortion or "codifying Roe v. Wade." Congress lacks the constitutional authority to do either. Even if most justices are motivated more by the preferred result than by the constitutional principles at issue (likely), I expect a different majority will strike down either type of legislation. Furthermore, statutes can be repealed every time there is a new majority leaning the other way, unlike constitutional clauses. Pick anything but abortion as your basis for voting, no matter who you vote for.
To put it another way, I'm not voting on some ethereal, hyper-principled grounds. I think my vote is a pragmatic one. This is also why I think the American situation differs from the Hungary example. Hungary's abortion politics are, from what you say, fixed. America's, and the Republican Party's, are currently in shift. I don't like the way they're shifting, and insofar as I can vote against it, I will do so. To my mind, four years of Kamala, as awful as that sounds, is not as bad as having both parties committed to abortion.
You can call your vote "pragmatic" because you live in a Deep Blue State and your vote doesn't matter. You're free to throw it away as you wish. There's nothing wrong with that. I live in a Deep Red State that Trump will win by double digits and will still be throwing my vote away on RFK, mostly for the lulz at this point, as the kids say.
But if I lived in a swing state or even a light Blue state, I'd be sucking it up and voting for Trump. I'd tell myself that I was mostly voting for Vance, but that's just a mental cope I'd be soothing myself with. Cheeto Jesus is at the top of the ticket and will be the one charged with setting the agenda for the next four years, not Vance.
And, frankly, Trump's right to be doing what he can to blunt the only real issue that Cackles and Fat Ted Lasso have to hit him on. The economy is a wreck. The world is in shambles as we face conflicts on multiple fronts. The illegal immigration issue is absolutely out of control to the point that Venezuelan gangs are creating "No go Zones" in the suburbs of Denver.
The only issue they have to try and fire up their base (which is mostly women anyway and has been for awhile) is abortion. Which means that Trump and Vance have to totally reject the more extreme ends of the pro- life position, such as opposition to IVF, birth control, and Plan B while playing coy on any state referendums that might be on any ballots this fall.
I'd prefer that they stick to something bland like "Whether such initiatives pass or fail is up to the people in those states. The important thing is that the people are getting to decide what's best for their communities because justices that Trump appointed overturned Roe." But in this specific case, as Trump is a Florida voter, it was fair game to ask him the question and, credit where due, he at least gave what is certainly his honest answer, even if it hurts him on the margins with pro- life ideologues.
At any rate, the campaign season is only now really kicking off for the majority of the country that aren't political news junkies as most of us are. I imagine there are still a lot of twists and turns to come between now and November. Nobody outside of the zealots on either side of the abortion question will remember or care what Trump's position on the Florida constitutional amendment was come election day.
Well said!
Trump is "personally pro choice" but he governed as the most pro life president in history.
Biden is "personally pro life" but he has governed as the most pro abortion president in history.
Trump is like the first son in Jesus' parable who says he will not work in the vineyard but goes anyway. Biden is like the second son who says he will work, but doesn't go.
Kamala is like a wicked sister who grabs a torch and cackles that she's going to burn the vineyard down.
Simply, Trump did not appoint Supreme Court justices as bad as Sandra Day O'Connor or Anthony Kennedy like Ronald Reagan did, or as bad as David Souter like George HW Bush did or as bad as John Roberts as George W. Bush did.
Roberts also voted to overturn Roe. Though I'll gladly bash him for Citizens United.
I have a friend at church who was great pals with Scalia. Scalia's best friend on the Court was Justice Ginsberg. But Scalia despised Roberts as intellectually dishonest. Roberts and Kavanaugh joined with the Court libs on redistricting this year. They did it to cover for the vote against quotas.
Re: Roberts and Kavanaugh joined with the Court libs on redistricting this year. They did it to cover for the vote against quotas.
If getting striking down quotas required also reversing some state level gerrymandering,. IMO that's a two-fer and I approve of both even if it would be nice for such results to flow from lofty principles not backdoor wheeling and dealing.
Generally the Supreme Court has denied federal courts any jurisdiction over redistricting. What did they give to the libs this year?
Roberts wanted to limit states to 15 week bans at most. 95% of abortions occur before 15 weeks, so no state would have been able to ban abortion under Roberts' rule.
David Souter is my ideal Supreme Court justice, although I'd like to add a slice of Antonin Scalia and Hugo Black, particularly the points they agree on.
Well as a "white" evangelical nondenominational pastor said in a sermon yesterday, "When he turn to the powers of this world for a spiritual victory, we never win. We always lose."
According to this logic, pro lifers should have actively campaigned against blue state senator Susan Collins because she's pro choice. Never mind that she was the deciding vote to confirm Kavanaugh, who was the deciding judge to overturn Roe.
It does get complicated, doesn't it?
Anyway, I consider overturning Roe a case in point. Aside from being played by Republicans for decades and then double-played by Trump, what did it really get you?
It's not that complicated. It's better to have pro choice senators who support pro life judges than pro choice senators who opposed pro life judges. Obviously I'd prefer pro life senators, but that's not possible in states like Maine.
Trump promised he'd appoint judges who'd overturn Roe. Trump delivered. The result is hundreds of thousands of babies saved. I'm thrilled with that result, and I'm looking for ways to save millions more lives.
The result is an increase in the number of abortions by some reports made by pro-life sources. I think Rod may have referenced one of them a while back. The result is also a wave of citizen referenda to enshrine abortion rights in state constitutions. You would have been better off with a modest restraint on the police powers of the state, and asserting your First Amendment rights. Trump is an opportunist who will dump you anytime he sees it as advantageous to do so.
The abortion rate was already rising before Roe was overturned. This was due to decisions by the FDA to loosen restrictions around the abortion pill under the Obama and Biden administrations.
The increase in abortions since Dobbs is due to blue state residents having more abortions on in-state residents. Something similar is happening in the UK where they had record abortion rates in 2022.
No matter how you slice and dice the statistics, reliance on criminal penalties to reduce abortions turns out to be a real loser.
None of the pro life laws criminalize the woman getting the abortion.
Understand your points, but a) the economy is not "a wreck." (I suspect that people much younger than I don't really understand what a wrecked economy looks like.-- it's certainly not what we have now.) And b) while the world may not be "in shambles," we have not faced an international situation so fraught since 1948. And, unfortunately, the Trump foreign policy team was just about the most incompetent in living history -- and some of those in his camp coming to the fore now make the last group look like Dean Acheson. For my part, a retired diplomat and pro-life ex-Republican, the only reason to consider a Harris vote is the f.p. question.
This must be disinformation.
Trump's foreign policy team came so close to peace in the Middle East with the Abraham Accords it directly triggered Oct 7 as a desperate attempt to derail them. Then there's Ukraine, NK, central Africa, Venezuela, Taiwan, etc. for places that were more or less under control during Trump and are either flash points now or straight up engulfed by war in the case of Ukraine.
If anything the Trump administration's foreign policy efforts were among its biggest successes and in fact I am willing to bet that ten years from now with the benefit of hindsight even the mainstream will come to regret having cut them short.
Exactly. Did you see the comment from some guy named Henry, who claims to be a retired diplomat and a prolife ex Republican who says he's voting for Harris because the incompetence of Trump's foreign policy team appalls him? I have to think this is disinformation.
Were I American, I'd vote for Trump if only because I'm not keen on nuclear war.
Please read more carefully. I didn't say I was going to vote for Harris. I shall probably vote for neither, but write in the name of some qualified Republican -- not that it will make a difference in the state in which I live.
Foreign policy? When Harris says, "We must protect of eastern flank," she's really thinking about the menu du jour at French Laundry
It's not a wreck yet, but wait for next year's tax changes before you conclude we're out of the woods.
Also, (thanks to Eric Mader below) there is the issue of judges.
Did you know this almost did not come to a vote in Florida? Antiabortion groups who argued against the amendment said it was overly broad and vague, and its title misleading. By 4-3 the Florida Supreme Court let it go to the ballot.
Trump appointed pro-life judges and there is no reason to think that would stop. He also appoints judges that oppose minors taken for parents for transgender surgeries, men in women's sports, and many other things. But we can't have those judges if we stay home in order to have a pure Republican party.
Yes. Conservatives should be pragmatic in their voting. I no longer live in Maryland but if I did, I would vote for Larry Hogan for senate. He's pro-choice and supports codifying Roe v- Wade. Yet if Hogan is elected senator, he will vote for the vast majority of Trump's judicial picks. His opponent, Angela Alsobrooks, will vote against every Trump judicial nominee.
Just now I would like any president to face a majority of the opposition party in the senate. Not a large one, but enough to put the brakes on.
So you want a totally manipulated court system, where judges check "How is our party on this one, who will it benefit?" rather than following the law. Got it.
Want? No, absolutely not. But it’s already happening (not that anybody asked me for consent), and if it must happen I’d rather it be my guys on the bench.
You are not the author of the comment that inspired my observation about a manipulated court system. It is happening to some extent, but not so much that I can't explain to liberals that the decision on presidential immunity was a prudent and tentative one, which made sense given what the court did say and did not say. I'm not willing to settle for "my guys on the bench." I want a constitution, and that requires a court that examines the language of the constitution and the law, not "my guys for the win." I am equally willing to criticize the "liberal" majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the Trumpian majority on the Georgia election board.
1000 times yes.
Four years of Kamal will mean abortion is cemented as policy and law at the federal level. You think you can hide and wait this out. They are on the verge of a radical revolution that is just starting not ending. Kamala will be lubricant to this radical change and no state or party in the future will be able to claw back to what we have now, state controlled abortion. The likelihood of of new states restricting abortion in the future is higher than reversing federal abortion law once Kamal wins.
As Rod has acknowledged, with deep and sincere regret, the pro-life movement has lost the battle. After years of demanding that a federal constitutional restraint on the police powers of the state be breached to "return it to the states" and subject the peoples' liberties to the whims of state level politicians, they got their wish. It turns out that the people of "the states" are not going to allow their somewhat disconnected legislative elites impose draconian criminal penalties on abortion. Pro-life doesn't have the popular majority at its back to implement its dearly wished for program. Four years of Kamala will make rather little difference one way or the other. In saying that, I anticipate that the Supreme Court will shoot down any federal bill either providing national criminal penalties for abortion or "codifying Roe v. Wade." Congress lacks the constitutional authority to do either. Even if most justices are motivated more by the preferred result than by the constitutional principles at issue (likely), I expect a different majority will strike down either type of legislation. Furthermore, statutes can be repealed every time there is a new majority leaning the other way, unlike constitutional clauses. Pick anything but abortion as your basis for voting, no matter who you vote for.