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Saturday night’s debate wasn’t short on fireworks. Whether it was Trump and Bush exchanging fire on bankruptcy, Cruz and Rubio on immigration, or Cruz and Trump on the Supreme Court, there were a number of heated exchanges.
You are absolutely right, and Trump’s supporters, on Ricochet and elsewhere, don’t care. They used to care. Not anymore.
MWTA, I have good reason to believe that, at least in South Carolina, they do care about this.
I hope you are right. Wouldn’t that be great?
In fact, I think it’s really, really important to get the facts of what Trump said in front of the South Carolina voters.
Edited to say, I’m really glad to see it on the Main Feed. I personally trust that the voters of South Carolina do care about Planned Parenthood. They should know, also, that this is the kind of attitude that will influence the judges a President Trump would appoint, not just at the Supreme Court, but at all the lower levels, and those are the judges that got us where we are with gay marriage, and will oppose any state legislation designed to limit abortion.
“I don’t care if @realDonaldTrump wants to perform abortions in White House after this immigration policy paper,” – Ann Coulter
Such is the commitment to principle of the average Trump supporter.
Yes, but Ann Coulter is not a South Carolinian. And right now we don’t care about the average Trump voter as much as we care about the average South Carolinian Trump voter.
You’re right.
Once upon a time I would care, but I’ve since noticed that the gop has done essentially nothing to actually end planned parenthood money, make a case to end it, etc.
They have, as usual, commenced the typical failure theater intended to make the people concerned about planned parenthood think the party will actually do something about it.
You know- if they could win the presidency, a super majority in the Senate and the House, and could convince NPR to stop saying mean things about them.
Which won’t happen. So if president Trump won’t defund planned parenthood, neither would anyone else.
Null issue.
That’s pretty much the way I see things too. The GOP has taught me that saying the right thing doesn’t mean doing the right thing and I’m not going to let myself get burned again. I liked your use of the phrase “null issue”. I’m currently reading Robert Heinlein’s “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress” and one of the main characters, “Mannie” (a computer specialist), is fond of the phrase “null program” to indicate that something was irrelevant, useless or futile—a pertinent example being that “…oratory is a null program”.
It’s not so much about defunding Planned Parenthood. It’s about the dozens and dozens of appellate court judges a President Trump would appoint, judges who have an impact on what state laws are allowed to stand and which ones are knocked down. President Trump has said he thinks his sister, the rabid pro-abortion judge, is a great judge. He may have been joking about putting her on the Supreme Court, but it does not change that he thinks she’s great. Clearly, she would be a model for all his lower level judicial appointments.
The majority of the country is numb to this genocide for a variety of reasons. The location of 35% of these “clinics” is quite telling in itself. All this is allowed by law and the sheepole tolerate it. Nuff said.
Assuming facts not in evidence.
Quite frankly, I don’t think they care. The Mexican menace trumps all in their mind, and Mr. “I was for amnesty until talking about a wall made me a viable candidate” is their chosen one.
Trump may have cratered his campaign on Saturday. If he doesn’t, it means a ton of people who never vote in Republican primaries are now voting in Republican primaries. Whether this increased turnout is desirable and sustainable remains to be seen.
Yes. I think the best way of putting this is that Planned Parenthood holds its women health services hostage to its abortion practice. The remedy seems to be to call their bluff: tell them to spin the abortion services off into a completely separate entity from the contraceptives and pap smears. How to do that legally, I’m not sure, but I’m open to suggestions.
I cannot think of any more conservative issue than the defense of life. It is the cornerstone of the “unalienable rights” enumerated in the Declaration of Independence.
This organization not only takes the life of these defenseless children, it then SELLS their body parts for PROFIT. And it also covers up for sex traffickers. This evil enterprise truly has the dark soul of Margaret Sanger.
This should end the campaign of Donald Trump. I welcome any Trump supporter to counter the argument.
Thinking like this from otherwise sensible, engaged citizens is what scares me the most. This is cynicism and surrender. “What does it matter anyway?” is the prelude to all kinds of self-destructive activities.
I used to work with alcoholics and drug addicts. I noticed that they liked to grab onto the feeling that some situation couldn’t get any worse. This enabled them to drink or use because, “what does it matter anyway?” The problem is that it can always get worse. If conservative, pro-life voters are following this line of thinking about Planned Parenthood itself, then we are in deeper trouble than I thought.
Charles Cooke offers a partial answer regarding how we go about this:
Especially given that the Senate was elected more recently than the president. Moreover, Obama himself set a precedent for rejecting nominees on ideological grounds with Roberts.
It is the temptation to despair— and always, if I may say so, a little self-indulgent.
I’m not so sure some Trump supporters want him to be president. They seem to desire a dictator.
More and more people – especially millennials – are being won over to the pro-life view. This may be driven, at least in part, by science. Sonograms allow people to see fetuses as they develop and see that they are, in fact, human beings. Moreover, babies are becoming “viable” outside the womb earlier in the pregnancy than ever before. This seems to me to be an odd time to raise the white flag.
In fairness to them, I think they’re tired of feeling “dictated to.” They think Trump will be their dictator and do some dictating back on their behalf. That’s why it’s important that they see that Trump may tend toward the dictatorial, but he’s not necessarily going to dictate their values, because he fundamentally does not share any of their values.
T.,
I personally think that his blanket support for Planned Parenthood plus his endorsement of his sister for a Supreme Court nomination with her abortion absolutism on partial birth abortion is a deal breaker. No one who holds these views should be considered conservative. If Trump wants to recant like Rubio was forced to do over Immigration then one could consider it. Without that there is no guarantee he wouldn’t appoint people to the left of the middle completely sinking an already compromised Supreme Court.
One problem, Donald Trump is never wrong and never admits it when he is wrong. So don’t hold your breath.
Regards,
Jim
This is a quibble, but I don’t think that’s quite right; rather, it seems to me that millennials have much less tolerance for the Democrats’ pro-abortion absolutism.
I count that as a very good thing, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that it’s equally wrong to abort a 24-week old fetus as taking Plan B.
This is something I am very curious about. Republican but pro-choice friends just had a VERY premature baby about two months ago. The child is doing well so far. I hope to ask them at some point in the future (when the child is much more stable) if their opinions on abortion have changed. My guess is that they will not only be pro-life, but will probably deny, to some extent, their previous pro-choice position.
I see no harm in hammering the point home. These are the moments in life where minds can be changed.
This is correct. And as Millennials continue to eschew religion, it will be harder and harder to convince them that an embryo merits any consideration as a human being worthy of protection. The innate sanctity of life is a foreign concept to them.
Bob,
Life is the matter of morality and the subject of all rights, whether you are talking from a religious or secular point of view. The kiddies better wake up. The junk that clogs their brain is worth nothing.
Regards,
Jim
I just don’t understand where Donald Trump’s support is coming from inside the Republican Party. On issue after issue he’s either a johnny-come-lately where he once held the categorically opposite view or he’s shown to be a complete phony. Why is this man still leading the Republican nomination?
I don’t think I’ve ever linked to a Daily Beast article before, but I think it’s this: “We Now Join the U.S. Class War Already in Progress.” Also, see Charles Murray’s article in the WSJ, making much the same point.
All I want to say is that you cannot unring the Truther Bell.
Pretty much all of the “defense” of Trump’s amazing performance at the debate, which appears in various threads, has taken the form of “the other guys are just as bad or worse, and even Reagan wasn’t perfect…”
I have not heard much to justify his support of Planned Parenthood, because it would require admitting he’s not smart enough to know about the fungibility of taxpayer’s money ostensibly used to support their other activities.