This week, the Republican National Committee has been meeting to hammer out all of the policy provisions of its platform to be unveiled at the GOP convention in Milwaukee beginning on July 15. Generally speaking, that isn’t a process that trails in a whole lot of public attention.
Let’s face it, nobody really even reads the party platforms much anymore. (READ MORE: Six States Put Abortion on the Ballot, With More to Follow)
But this year is a little different. Delegates to the Republican National Convention can be assured that they’re going to be under a special sort of microscope as they assemble the 2024 platform.
Why? Because with the burgeoning implosion of Joe Biden’s presidency and re-election effort, and the increasing collapse of the media/political gaslighting regime aimed at deceiving the American people as to his cognitive fitness, the other side is desperate for something to grab onto.
With or without Biden, the Democrats have nothing at all to run on. When more than 70 percent of the public is telling pollsters the country is on the wrong track, and with giant issues like inflation, immigration, and multiple wars across the globe (two of which are directly related to stupid American policy that enabled bad guys to make trouble), crime and a host of other social ills getting worse at a rapid pace, they’ve put themselves in a worse position than at any time since 1980. (READ MORE: Abortion Isn’t Funny)
At least at that point, Jimmy Carter was still somewhat sentient. Carter ran a pretty vigorous campaign that year. He even held off a primary challenge from Ted Kennedy without denying him Secret Service protection or essentially kicking him out of the Democrat Party.
Interestingly enough, though, Carter’s entire campaign in 1980 was a litany of warnings and threats about how awful Ronald Reagan was. The public didn’t buy it, mostly because Reagan’s record as governor of California was a whole lot shinier than Carter’s record as president.
This election looks like 1980 on steroids, at least from the perspective of the middle of July.
Of course, the 2022 election looked like 1994 on steroids at this point. Why didn’t it come down that way?
One of the most common answers you’ll get is abortion.
If you’ll recall, it was in June 2022 that the Dobbs decision leaked. It was a great victory for the pro-life movement that because of that monumental Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade went into the trash. Pro-lifers got what we were looking for — namely, that there is no God-given right enshrined in the Constitution to kill an unborn child, and that abortion should be handled as a public policy debate to be had at the state level.
That’s quite possibly the biggest win the conservative movement has had this century. To be fair, that doesn’t say much; conservatism hasn’t been on a particular hot streak since we stopped partying like it’s 1999.
And in perfect Stupid Party form, no sooner did Dobbs pass but Lindsey Graham found a bank of microphones and announced he was bringing a bill to institute a federal 15-week ban on abortions in the U.S. Senate.
That bill was never, ever going to become law. It was pure performance art for Graham to bring it. And when he brought it, every pro-abortion group in America saw their fundraising supercharged and their dreams of beating Republicans in House and Senate races across the country got a special topping-off of rhetorical jet fuel.
You will never, ever convince me that Graham bringing that bill was not a bit of sabotage by his pal Mitch McConnell, the most treacherous caucus leader any party has ever had, to kill the hopes of multiple conservative candidates in Senate races who would oppose him for another term in his perch.
McConnell has been finding creative ways to shank conservative Senate candidates since he got the job leading the Senate GOP caucus in 2007. In 2022 he painted his masterpiece.
And the effect was breathtaking. You’ve heard me note that the four most dispositive numbers in American life are the party preferences of married and single men and women (married men are R+20, married women are R+14, single men are R+7 and single women are D+37), and nowhere near enough attention is paid to what that means for culture and economics, not just politics, but let’s understand that those numbers come from exit polling in the 2022 election cycle.
The Democrats are doing everything they can to solidify their hold on single women. Single women are becoming the new black vote in terms of a monolithic bloc of Dem voters, especially given that black men are fleeing the Democrats’ plantation in droves right now.
And that means that if Biden holds on as the Dems’ nominee, he’ll run on abortion. If Biden goes and it’s Kamala Harris, she’ll run on abortion. If it’s Gretchen Whitmer, she’ll run on abortion — especially since that was her main message point when she beat Tudor Dixon in 2022 to be re-elected as governor of Michigan.
No matter who they end up with, they’ll run on abortion. And they’re going to run on abortion down-ballot, too.
Pro-lifers shouldn’t be scared of that. The Democrats’ position on abortion is, essentially, that everything up to infanticide is not only fair game but a political sacrament never to be questioned.
Polling indicates that only one in six voters is behind such a disgusting, radical, evil position. And yet you will struggle to find a Democrat who will ever admit that there are times when abortion ought to be banned.
In one of the few clarifying points during Donald Trump’s debate with Biden, you could see that come out fairly clearly:
Forget about the question of legal scholars and Roe v. Wade. Trump did a good job selling the fact that the states are now in charge of abortion policy.
What was so idiotic about Graham’s 15-week ban bill in 2022 was that it directly broke the promise inherent in the pro-life community’s argument about getting rid of Roe. Namely, we’d bring the issue back to the states and let Louisiana and Florida make different policies than Massachusetts and Oregon, and ultimately we’d see who’s right.
Trump’s position is the one the RNC’s head honchos are trying to cement in the party platform. This emerged on Monday:
The 2016 RNC platform mentioned the word “abortion” 35 times and backed a constitutional amendment to ban abortion: “[W]e assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed,” the RNC’s 2016 platform said. “We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth.”
The Republican Party did not release a platform in 2020. And the 2024 platform only mentions the word once.
“We proudly stand for families and life,” the 2024 platform says. “We believe that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied life or liberty without due process,” but it goes on to say, “the states are, therefore, free to pass laws protecting those rights.”
The platform has been initially approved by the RNC committee, but is expected to go to a full vote Tuesday and be officially approved the first day of the Republican National Convention next week.
It also goes on to express opposition to late-term abortion and support for “policies that advance prenatal care, access to birth control, and IVF (fertility treatments).”
This actually looks like a rare smart play by the Republican Party.
What have they done here?
Well, they’ve affirmed that the GOP is the pro-life party. They’ve also affirmed that it’s a party for decentralized power, rather than having everything dictated by Washington. Essentially, this platform plank says that California and New York shouldn’t dictate the terms of life in Mississippi and Kansas.
But what it doesn’t do is offer much of anything the Democrats can latch onto.
There is no Lindsey Graham poison-pill abortion bill. At least, not until Graham shows back up at a bank of microphones to reprise his role as an own-goal spoiler on McConnell’s behalf. Hopefully, with McConnell having said he’s giving up his role as caucus leader there won’t be any such sabotage.
Don’t give them anything to run on where abortion is concerned. At least not in federal races.
And I wouldn’t add this to the party platform, because it’s unwise to make any more news on the abortion issue than is necessary, but the GOP and the pro-life movement ought to be thinking about two action items on this subject going forward after the election.
First, it needs to be an area of renewed and hardened focus that no organization sponsoring or facilitating abortions gets one red cent of federal funding. Take Planned Parenthood, for example, which receives some $60 million per year in Title IX funding and turned around almost $25 million during the 2022 cycle just through one of its PACs, Planned Parenthood Votes, almost every dime of which went to Democrats.
Don’t make a big deal out of it during this election cycle, but if you’re able to hold the House and gain the Senate and the White House, zero out all funding for the Planned Parenthoods of the world and move that money to care pregnancy centers. It doesn’t even have anything to do with abortion – it has to do with basic political competence. You give your constituents’ tax dollars to your people. You don’t give it to the enemy. Period.
Especially when the enemy is leading the league in giving puberty blockers to kids.
And second, it’s time to begin moving past the status quo on this issue. The basic problem is you have an anti-life culture being spread through all of these institutions the Left controls. Describing all of the facets of that would turn this column into a book, or at least a book chapter (one which you might very well see if you pick up a copy of The Revivalist Agenda when it hits Amazon and other outlets this fall), but the upshot is that allowing the Democrats to proselytize abortion as a birth-control option given the current status quo is a recipe for weaponized dysfunction.
I’ve never seen a poll on this, but I’ll bet none of our readers would disagree with me when I say that at least 75 percent of the women who’ve had an abortion, or at least who’ve had an abortion in the past decade, vote Democrat. That’s why we’ve gone from “safe, legal, and rare” to “shout your abortion.”
And you aren’t going to get these women to change their minds by attacking them as baby killers. Not without changing the game.
Here’s how you do that, though it might take some time. Currently, medical science has advanced to the point where at 22 weeks or so, it’s within the competence of our health-care system to incubate a fetus to term and deliver it to the world a happy, healthy baby. If that 22 weeks can be ratcheted down to 15 weeks, you can then effectively eliminate abortion in practically every case.
I’m leaving aside the question of mifepristone, and I’m doing so purposefully because that is a longer and more complicated issue. I’m talking about surgical abortions here, and the prospect of driving research dollars into successfully incubating fetuses at 15 weeks and taking them to term outside the womb. (READ MORE: Chemical Abortion Enables Democrat Anti-Life Agenda)
Because taking the pharmaceutical abortion issue off the table, if you’re a woman with an unwanted pregnancy and medical science can, for essentially the same “user experience” (they knock you out and when you wake up, the baby is gone), save the baby for one of the oodles and scads of families begging to adopt a child and send you on your way, how can you turn that down?
Who would choose an abortion over that? You really are a baby killer if that remains your position.
Does it cost a lot more to do it this way? Yes. Will all of those adoptive families be willing and able to foot that bill? No. Can charitable and religious organizations take care of that cost? Probably not. Is there something of a Pandora’s Box that normalizing incubation over pregnancy would threaten? Absolutely — though we are going to soon come to that bridge regardless.
On the other hand, we’re well below replacement when it comes to our national birth rate. Converting abortions into live births is probably the only way, barring a massive societal shift, to make a dent in that problem. And no, President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas, reeling in tens of millions of illegals from the Third World is not the answer. Holding your population while losing your culture is the opposite of winning as a civilization.
But for now, the key is to give Democrats zero oxygen on abortion. Accomplishing that is tantamount to giving them zero oxygen at all. And maybe, just maybe, we might be seeing a GOP with enough smarts to be worthy of that wave election we didn’t get in 2022.
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