Title: National Review on Trump and abortion [by popular request] Source:
National Review URL Source:http://nationalreview.com Published:Mar 31, 2016 Author:Ian Tuttle, David French, Quinn Hilyer, Post Date:2016-03-31 10:09:58 by Tooconservative Keywords:None Views:7173 Comments:45
Its Time for Conservatives to Blackball Donald Trump
Ian Tuttle
And just like that, the Republican presidential contest has veered into Todd Akin territory.
In a taped Wisconsin townhall with MSNBC voters, set to air Wednesday evening, Donald Trump says that, if abortion becomes illegal in the United States, the mother involved should be subject some form of punishment.
Heres the video:
Let me start here, for forms sake: There is a valid philosophical question here. If you carry out the logic of the pro-life position, what should it entail, legally? As it happens, several leading abortion opponents addressed this question here at National Review in a 2007 symposium. If youre looking for substantive considerations of this question, give it a read.
But while people are sure to spill gallons of ink on that question, thanks to Trump, its irrelevant because Trump doesnt mean what he said. Donald Trump has no considered opinion about what should happen in the hypothetical situation in which abortion is completely outlawed. Hes never given it a moments thought. Read the transcript of his exchange with Matthews. Hes not substantively right or wrong. Hes utterly and completely incoherent.
And its utterly and completely infuriating. In one minute and thirty-two seconds, Donald Trump has managed to apparently validate every far-flung accusation of retributive, bloodthirsty woman-hating that abortion opponents have tried to fend off for 40-plus years. In ninety seconds, Trump gave Democrats a political millstone that they will cinch around the neck of every pro-life politician for the rest of this election season. Planned Parenthood, NARAL, NOW, Emilys List have all already issued breathless statements. Hillary Clinton has sent out a tweet with her personal H signature. It doesnt matter that, one hour later, Trump out-and-out reversed himself. They got their soundbite, and it will be played on loop, to the ululations and I-told-you-sos of Cecile Richards and Sally Kohn and the rest, for years.
But is anyone surprised? This is what Trump does and its the reason conservatives, real, genuine, sincere, life- and liberty-loving conservatives, should not simply be exasperated with Trump; they should be furious with him. They should be enraged with every single one of the endorsers who has facilitated this mans rise. They should be incensed with every pundit and talking-head who has aided and abetted and excused him.
Because this has been the pattern for months now. Donald Trump makes some idiotic comment about a subject hes never considered torture, Islam, the First Amendment, health care, women, &c. and then real conservatives, who have actually rubbed two brain cells together thinking about these subjects, have to spend the next day, or week, or month, putting out the fire, assuring everyone that, no, conservatives dont actually think like this.
Its exhausting, its absurd, and it should end. Donald Trumps statements are not intended to be true or false; theyre not intended to represent what he actually believes, because he doesnt believe anything. He doesnt intend his proposals as serious ideas, to be debated and refined and maybe even executed. His utterances are placeholders. Theyre strictly intended to fill space in this interview, or at that rally. Self-contradiction doesnt matter. If one argument is blown up, hell switch to another. This is how a cult of personality works. The statements are irrelevant; the only thing that matters is the speaker. If Trump says the sky is orange, theres no point trying to convince him its blue.
So we should stop trying. Stop trying to convince Trump supporters that hes contradicting himself. Stop trying to show that Trumps solutions wont work. Stop treating Trumps policies as serious contributions to the hopper of policy ideas because theyre not.
Its time for a blackout. We are at a point where the only appropriate response to Trumps ramblings is ostracism. Hes not a reasonable person with whom you can have a rational discussion, and we should treat him accordingly. Whenever Donald Trump says anything even if it has the patina of a reasonable, coherent thought the response of every genuine right-winger should be: I dont care what Donald Trump says. He is an affront to rational thought and reasonable, thoughtful, humane discourse. Im not going to waste time responding to any word that comes from his mouth. Period. He and every one of his bottom-feeding surrogates, and his media minions, and his army of Twitter eggs should be ignored. They should be boxed out of public discourse, with prejudice.
Donald Trump has done incalculable damage to virtually every cause for which the conservative moment has fought for the last 60 years. Its not enough to say hes wrong. He should be exiled from public life. The Left will never do that; Trumps success is theirs. This must be the work of whatever conscientious conservatives remain, and it has to start now.
As Nominee, Donald Trump Would Do Incalculable Damage to the Pro-Life Cause
David French
I agree with Quin Hillyer. Donald Trumps comments on abortion first advocating punishing women who abort then backtracking hours later were indeed a mess. They played into the hands of abortion advocates in every way helping caricature pro-lifers as anti-woman and raising the specter of back-alley abortions. So far, Trumps pro-life conversion has mainly served to make Planned Parenthood look good (he cant stop praising the nations largest abortion provider) and the pro-life movement look bad. He simply has no idea how to talk about arguably the most sensitive issue in politics.
Get ready for a slow-motion pro-life train wreck if Trumps the nominee. Supporting life is about more than merely checking off a box. A Republican nominee faces far tougher questions about abortion than Democrats ever do. Its unfair. Its ridiculous. Its also a foreseeable and predictable fact of life. Even serving temporarily as the nations most prominent pro-life advocate (or at least playing a pro-life advocate on television) would do immense damage to the cause.
Hillary Clinton is a weather vane on many, many issues. On abortion, however, she is a rock-solid zealot, and she has her arguments down cold. The media backs her on this issue unconditionally. The thought that Trump may debate her on life should be chilling to every pro-life activist in America. He not only doesnt know what hes talking about, when push comes to shove, I daresay that hes on her side.
Media Missed Worst of Trumps Abortion Comments
Quinn Hilyer
As is his wont, Donald Trump stirred up a ruckus today when he told MSNBCs Chris Matthews that women who procure illegal abortions should somehow be punished by legal authorities. As obnoxious as the statement was to every serious person both pro-life and pro-choice, it may not have been the worst part of his answer.
While trying to explain his position (or trying to make up a position as he went along), Trump also stepped into this thicket (as reported by the Daily Mail): Matthews asked him how he would go about banning abortions. You go back to a position like they had, he replied, where they would perhaps go to illegal places, but we have to ban it.
Scrutinize that for a moment. If that doesnt play into the hands of the anti-life movement, nothing does. This is a wink-wink/nudge-nudge to the idea that illegal abortion mills or perhaps even back alleys are to be accepted as alternatives to legal abortions rather than that, say, adoptions should be promoted, along with community support for pre-natal care and both pre- and post-natal counseling.
Trumps statement carries the sense of the widespread existence of speakeasies during Prohibition, as if abortion is something to be officially banned but culturally still condoned, like imbibing alcohol.
Of course, Trump late this afternoon walked back his statement, saying he would punish only the abortionist, not the woman who procures the abortion. But the fact that he struggled with the question in the first place, and then took so many hours to recant, is deeply offensive to caring pro-lifers. And the very idea that he would volunteer the idea of going to illegal places, in the context of punishing women who get caught, was effectively an outrageous invitation to use just such illegal places.
What a mess.
Are Trumps Conservative-Media Flacks Preparing to Jump Ship?
John Daly
Is it just me, or has there been some notable distancing going on over the past week between Donald Trumps usually reliable cheerleaders in the conservative media and their guy? Some of Trumps biggest promoters suddenly seem far less enthusiastic about their candidate, and shockingly, a few even appear to be testing the waters for a public withdrawal of support.
Author and commentator Ann Coulter who just a few months ago famously demonstrated her commitment to Trump by tweeting that shed back him even if he performed abortions in the White House has finally expressed some embarrassment at his conduct.
Im a little testy with our man right now, Coulter told Milo Yiannopoulos (a fellow Trump supporter) on his radio show a few days ago. Our candidate is mental! Do you realize our candidate is mental? Its like constantly having to bail out your 16-year-old son from prison.
Coulter was referring to Trumps derogatory, highly-publicized retweet about Heidi Cruzs looks. Coulter added, This is the worst thing that he has done. Everything else I could probably defend.
Thats a pretty interesting statement, considering that prior to the Heidi Cruz tweet, Trump had mocked American POWs for their capture, ridiculed a reporter for his physical disability, mused about a journalists menstrual cycle and trashed her on the Internet for over six months (all because she asked him a question he didnt like), disparaged Carly Fiorinas face, said George W. Bush lied about Iraq having WMDs, compared Ben Carson to a child molester, and portrayed World War II internment camps as a good idea.
Those remarks merely scratch the surface of Trumps large array of disgraceful statements, all of which Coulter could probably defend. Its hard to fathom how she could possibly view the Cruz tweet as being the worst incident of the bunch, or a bridge too far.
I dont think she really believes that. I think something has changed.
Fox Newss Andrea Tantaros had been an adamant defender and champion of all things Trump for quite some time, both on-air and on Twitter. She seemed to take personal offense to National Reviews Against Trump issue, and has at times lashed out at the magazines writers (which has included the leveling of false charges). Tantaros has taken subtle and not-so-subtle shots at her Fox News colleagues for being critical of Trump her advocacy for the GOP front-runner has been so glaring that even Bill OReilly has called her out on it.
Last week, however, Tantaros unexpectedly knocked Trump on Twitter, lumping his corrosive behavior in with that of President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Ted Cruz, and declared that the United States has no good options in leaders. Since then, her Twitter feed has been virtually empty of both praise for Trump and condemnations of GOP elites a term she had been using quite regularly to define Trump critics.
Something has changed.
Breitbart columnist John Nolte, who has garnered a lot attention this election cycle with his aggressive defenses of Trump, is suddenly conflicted as well.
You might recall that Nolte made waves back in December when he proudly declared that Trumps often-derided assertion that he watched thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrate the 9/11 attacks on TV had been 100% vindicated. Noltes proof came in the form of a local news report describing an eye-witness account of less than a dozen Muslim celebrators who Trump couldnt possibly have seen on TV because they werent captured on camera. Still, Nolte felt it appropriate to actually apologize to Trump for having doubted the candidates thousands claim. It was an embarrassing display, but fairly representative of Noltes accommodating coverage of Trump over the past several months.
Remarkably, Nolte appears interested in putting those days behind him. Early Tuesday, Nolte criticized Trumps temperament on Twitter If Trump had just a bit of self-control hed already be the nominee adding: He seems to enjoy playing with fire more than actually winning.
Three hours later, Nolte expanded on his suggested disappointment, tweeting, Trumps erratic moods make McCain look like the Sphinx. Been on fence between him & Cruz but am growing tired of waiting for him to GROW.
The stark about-face and the laughable notion that hes been on the fence between Trump and Cruz earned Nolte an enormous amount of Twitter heckling from those whove been paying attention to his work since last summer. Even so, Nolte seems eager to abruptly put some distance between himself and Trump, and one has to wonder why.
Something has changed.
Controversial radio host and Trump aficionado, Michael Savage, who has looked past all of the candidates flaws for months, decided that hes so upset over Trumps possible link to the National Enquirer story on Ted Cruzs alleged affairs, that he might just withdraw his support (Savage and Trump reconciled Monday in a fawning interview). Even the Drudge Report is now displaying headlines critical ofTrump, which is something we havent seen much of in quite a while.
Something has changed, but what?
Is it the collective realization that the worst possible candidate to put up against Hillary Clinton is now just a stones throw away from actually winning the Republican nomination, and that they helped bring the effort to fruition?
Is the thought of a landslide loss at the hands of the man they compromised their principles to legitimize causing them to worry about their professional longevity? (After all, Dick Morris certainly paid a price for his grossly awry analysis back in 2012.)
Maybe theyve become exhausted with defending the indefensible, and no longer feel they can keep putting forth the effort at this point in the contest. Maybe theyve realized that the fan-following theyve accumulated is composed of some awfully unsavory folks.
Maybe some behind-the-scenes relationships with Trump have somehow been damaged.
Whats clear is that the one person who hasnt changed his behavior is Donald J. Trump himself. Hes just as poor of a candidate as hes always been. Hes just as flawed just as vulgar, immature, and controversial. Hes every bit as lost on policy and shallow on solutions. Trump hasnt taken some unexpected, ideological turn, or crossed new boundaries of indecency that he hadnt already crossed. Hes the same guy hes always been a liberal-leaning showman who somehow won the devotion of many in the conservative media-entertainment complex.
And yet, hes just now become toxic or at least embarrassing to some of them. I imagine the real explanation of why is probably a pretty interesting one.
Poster Comment:
A member of the forum indicated how much they missed seeing National Review articles so I collected these recent ones. I had seen one other yesterday at their site but otherwise had not visited NRO since 3/13 to read an article and prior to that on 1/4/16.
a woman in relation to a child or children to whom she has given birth.
A definition of 'mother' that the pro-abortion crowd readily embraces.
Pro-lifers would not agree. To them, every pregnant woman is already a mother.
You know as little about pro-life as Trump does.
This isn't new stuff. These arguments were largely settled a century ago, when women got the vote, when the pro-life movement started. It does go back 50 years before the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
Catholic clergy would not claim you as Catholic at all.
They oppose the death penalty almost as strenuously as they oppose abortion. And they don't advocate the death penalty for a mother. Or even the nurses and doctors. Or the landlord that rents the building to the abortion clinic. Or the workers of the utility company that provides the electricity to the clinic. ...
You're just being silly. I would think even you would recognize it.
Catholic clergy would not claim you as Catholic at all.
They oppose the death penalty almost as strenuously as they oppose abortion. And they don't advocate the death penalty for a mother. Or even the nurses and doctors. Or the landlord that rents the building to the abortion clinic. Or the workers of the utility company that provides the electricity to the clinic. ...
You're just being silly. I would think even you would recognize it.
My view on the death penalty is God's: that he who sheds blood, by man shall his blood be shed - but also that the process to determine guilt must be a sure process. God established a sure process, requiring two or three witnesses, with each witness himself or herself subject to the same penalty for perjury as the accused faced, and with the witnesses required to carry out the sentence.
That means that witnesses who commit perjury also directly and knowingly commit murder - and face God confirmed in their guilt.
We have no such system. Our system of death penalty justice is corrupt, capricious and unreliable. Therefore, I OPPOSE the American death penalty, because of the risk of executing the innocent, due to the fact that our justice system is inadequate by God's standards.
Group membership is a big thing for you. I'm indifferent to it.
Group membership is a big thing for you. I'm indifferent to it.
Fine. I consider that you have tacitly admitted that you are entirely outside the Catholic pro-life mainstream, far beyond the public positions of any Catholic clergy, and even beyond the positions of groups like Priests For Life and Operation Rescue. You are far more extreme than any of them.
Latest posts page is 97% Trump in the headline. 3% adulterer Cruz.
I'd point out that there are only "claims" of a Cruz affair by a sleazy tabloid that has endorsed Trump and whose publisher is close friends with him. Trump, OTOH, is an admitted serial adulterer who loved to brag for years about sleeping with other men's wives and who openly conducted affairs with models and actresses like Marla Maples. Until he finally married "my supermodel", Melania.
Fine. I consider that you have tacitly admitted that you are entirely outside the Catholic pro-life mainstream, far beyond the public positions of any Catholic clergy, and even beyond the positions of groups like Priests For Life and Operation Rescue. You are far more extreme than any of them.
Of course I am "more extreme": I have talked to God. I have had the Holy Dove fly into my face. I have experienced a multitude of major and minor miracles. So, when it comes to the ultimate Truth: that God is, has opinions, has revealed them about certain things, and I know some of those things, and know that the God behind them exists, for certain. I don't have faith, I have the certitude of experience.
This does indeed make me a very rare person who is utterly outside the mainstream of normal human life. And I account that a gain.
The central feature of my political focus is what I understand from God: the protection of living human beings, for life is the gift from God, the precious thing. Not property. Not power. Not status. Not acceptance by men. Life, and love.
THEREFORE, in the political sense, I focus on matters of life, from very beginning - which God revealed as conception - to the very end of physical life and afterwards, for life does not end with physical death; the spirit goes on and will one day occupy a body again.
These things are so.
Abortion, death penalty, war, medicine, food stamps, housing, environmental protection: these are the things that are always at the center of my political focus, because people's lives are at the center of God's focus.
You are not as close to God. You've got competing loyalties, such as "scientific logic" and "practical realities", and organization, and of course an abiding belief in certain political and socio-economic norms.
They cause you to face what is True: that an unborn baby is a living human being, a soul breathed out by God, and that killing it is killing a human being, and that whoever does that is a killer, and twist it. You're afraid that if you stand for the whole truth, you will be laughed at, isolated as a wing nut - as you would isolate me.
I am an isolated person BECAUSE I talk with God, and therefore do not compromise with human weakness on matters of life. I will not estrange myself from the absolute Truth, of God, in order to try to get along with blind blundering humans, like you.
The doctor and woman and nurse are murderers. Should they be put to death? Ultimately, it does not matter. They will die anyway, sooner or later, and if unrepentant in their murder, and unforgiving of others, they will face God proud and arrogant murderers, and they will experience Gehenna before they are resurrected. This is so. So whether they are brought under human justice or escape it is ultimately irrelevant.
But if we're going to impose human justice on them, that justice must conform to God's justice, otherwise it is not justice. When a man is executed in error, because all of the procedural safeguards God requires have not been respected, then many men and women have conspired to shed human blood. They did not have to. They chose to. They chose to believe that their traditional system has some sort of standing and justification. But nothing that departs from God is ever justified. The executioner who earns his living killing convicts who kills an innocent man is, in fact, a murderer and faces the due penalty for murderers. He CHOSE to risk his eternal happiness in order to make money shedding human blood. The men who burnt up babies firebombing cities on both sides in war are killers of the innocent - America and Congress and solemn declarations do not wipe away bloodguilt before God, for God's commandment to not shed human flesh cannot be modified by some petty little pile of transitory dust like the US Constitution.
Yes, I am entirely outside the usual paradigm, because I talk to God. And you would do well to listen to me on these matters, because I never make anything up when it comes to what God has commanded, what God says.
Where I don't know, I don't add. But where I do know, I don't subtract.
But you, you are compromised with the world. A woman murders a baby, and you know it, but you're AFRAID of men, you're AFRAID of what other men will say or think. You're AFRAID that if you stand for the truth you know, that you will be marginalized. So you compromise on the truth in order to be better thought of.
And in so doing, you emasculate the morality of what you believe in.
In the end, if you stay with God, you cannot ever lose, because the end of life is not the end at all, and what happens NEXT is a continuation of here.
Now, I recognize that today I have gone off the reservation of propriety twice - by belitting you elsewhere. That was wrong. I was angry and I should not have done that. Jesus said that he who calls his brother a fool risks the fires of Gehenna. An argument on a chat-room is not worth that.
So I'm sorry I went overboard in criticizing you. I am not sorry about my positions on life, because they are God's, straight, pure and uncompromised.
But I do not apologize for my simple positions themselves. That they are outside the mainstream is because the mainstream is not with God.
#25. To: TooConservative, misterwhite, Roscoe, Vicomte13 (#0)
several leading abortion opponents addressed this question here at National Review in a 2007 symposium.
Good stuff!
"In the tradition of legislating on abortion, a certain distinction was made out of prudence: On the one hand there may a young, unmarried woman, who finds herself pregnant, with the father of the child not standing with her. Abandoned by the man, and detached from her family, she may feel the burden of the crisis bearing on her alone, with the prospect of life-altering changes. On the other hand, there is the man trained in surgery, the professional who knows exactly what he is doing he knows that he is destroying a human life, either by poisoning a child or dismembering it. And in perfect coolness and detachment, and at a nice price, he makes the killing of the innocent his office-work. Certain women may indeed be guilty of a callous willingness to destroy a child for the sake of their own self- interest. But the law makes a prudent, tempered choice when it makes the abortionist the target of its censure and brings solely upon him the weight of the punishment. [...]
"Contrary to the pervasive myth that women were prosecuted for abortion before Roe, consistent state abortion policy for a century before Roe was not to prosecute women. Abortionists were the exclusive target of the law. That was based on three policy judgments: the point of abortion law is effective enforcement against abortionists, the woman is the second victim of abortion, and prosecuting women is counterproductive to the goal of effective enforcement of the law against abortionists. In fact, the irony is that in nearly all of the reported court cases explicitly addressing the issue of whether a woman was an accomplice to her abortion, it was the abortionist (not the prosecutor) who pushed the courts to treat the woman as an accomplice, for the obvious purpose of undermining the states criminal case against the abortionist (including the abortionist Ruth Barnett when Oregon last prosecuted her in 1968)."
"Contrary to the pervasive myth that women were prosecuted for abortion before Roe, consistent state abortion policy for a century before Roe was not to prosecute women. Abortionists were the exclusive target of the law. That was based on three policy judgments: the point of abortion law is effective enforcement against abortionists, the woman is the second victim of abortion, and prosecuting women is counterproductive to the goal of effective enforcement of the law against abortionists."
And it would have taken Trump, what, five minutes to browse through that?
Trump is lazy. And he is stupid.
As a result, he has blundered into giving the enemies of the unborn a major propaganda victory.
Perhaps you see why serious pro-lifers were so angry at what he did. Some of these posters here at LF are just as uninformed on the topic as Trump. But they aren't running for prez as the candidate of the pro-life party either. Which means they aren't the targets of libmedia hacks like Matthews, just trying to create a Todd Akin moment from which they can make their War On Women ads.
"On the one hand there may a young, unmarried woman, who finds herself pregnant, with the father of the child not standing with her. Abandoned by the man, and detached from her family, she may feel the burden of the crisis bearing on her alone, with the prospect of life-altering changes."
Whoa! THIS is the point in time that we're presented with the problem and have to make a decision? After numerous horrible decisions have already been made by this individual, NOW we're asked, "How can we help this poor, troubled girl?"
Let's rewind. How about if we help by telling this young, unmarried woman not to have sex until she gets married? This way, she won't "find herself" mysteriously pregnant. Also, the man is less likely to leave.
We can help by telling her the location of Planned Parenthood where she can obtain free contraception and advice on how not to "find yourself" pregnant. Or infected by some disease.
Isn't that better than waiting until she's pregnant and "helping her" by murdering her unborn child?
SJWs always lie. SJWs always double down. And in your case, the SJW also begs the question.
"A female parent; especially, one of the human race; a woman who has borne a child; correlative to son or daughter." Webster's Dictionary (1828)
"A female parent; especially, one of the human race; a woman who has borne a child." Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
"The definition of a mother is a woman who gives birth or who has the responsibility of physical and emotional care for specific children." Webster's New World College Dictionary
"A woman in relation to her child or children." Oxford Dictionary
I would ask you for the source of your imaginary "pro-life" definition of "mother" as a childless woman who paid someone to kill her unborn baby, but we both know you're lying.