Roe, roe, roe your boat
The water is rising since The Leak
CONSERVATIVE, HQ - Despite the meaningful Republican primaries (IN and OH) that took place yesterday, there’s really only one thing on anyone in politics’ mind at the moment: the potential reversal of the so-called Roe Supreme Court decision.
If you have been in the Alaskan bush for the last few days and are only just plugging back into the news, I’m talking of course about the leak on Monday night of what many believe is Justice Samuel Alito’s draft of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
I have thoughts about this, particularly observations that are not being discussed in the national narrative.
In no particular order:
This decision did not end abortion in America.
Despite the hyperventilating by those on the Left, and indeed President Biden who claimed this decision would not only outlaw abortion but somehow lead to Republicans imprisoning LBGT children, abortion regulations have not actually changed.
While Alito’s draft is certainly the best outcome pro-lifers could have hoped for out of the Dobbs case — a complete dismissal of the arguments that were made up to justify Roe in the first place — it’s not the end of abortion in America.
This potential decision simply dismisses the judicial ‘precedent’ set by Roe as a legal defense for abortion. Public policy — ie: the law — doesn’t actually change because of this decision. The decision to legalize or ban abortion is put back in the hands of legislators.
In fact, it opens up potential public policy fights over codifying abortion into law in 50 state legislatures and on the federal level — a tremendous amount of work.
The leaked decision is merely the opening gambit in the next phase of our fight to end abortion. It’s closer to Gavrilo Princip’s assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1915 — the precursor of World War 1 — than it is to General Robert E. Lee’s surrender to General U.S. Grant at Appomattox to end the Civil War
To quote Winston Churchill, “this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
There is a tremendous amount of work ahead for those of us who want to end abortion.
Democrats weren’t taken by surprise by this — they were planning for it.
Democrats were not surprised by this decision. In fact, they’ve been laying the groundwork to fight back since Justice Ruth Ginsberg died, and was replaced by Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
State-level Democrats have been pushing “codify Roe” bills in states across the country — a particularly egregious one passed here in Colorado this spring. They’re working to put the “right” to abortion into law, beyond the reach of the current Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.
While Washington was still reeling from the lead, Dems in Congress were already calling for “codify Roe” legislation to be passed and the filibuster to be disbanded to do it.
Messing around with filibuster go them here in the first place.
Part of the irony in this whole thing is that the current Republican “majority” on the court is there because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) broke the judicial filibuster for President Barack Obama.
If they had maintained the filibuster for judicial nominations, I’m certain that the nominations of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett to the Supreme Court would not all have been confirmed. It’s likely none of them would have been confirmed if radicals like Sanders and New York’s Chuck Schumer had the power to filibuster judicial nominations.
Glorification/deification of the Supreme Court is also responsible for Alito’s decision.
Democrats and Republicans have long deified the Supreme Court. The Court plays an important part in Republic but is still only one of the three branches of government.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg was particularly susceptible to the celebrity deification surrounding the court. The contemporary hagiography of the “Notorious RBG” — complete with bobble-heads, coffee mugs, pillowcases, and key chains bearing her likeness — fed her ego and kept her “resisting” the patriarchy on the court, even at the point when it would have made more sense from the progressive point of view for her to retire during Obama’s tenure. Unlike Justice Beyer, RBG hung on to the fame to the potential detriment of the ideology she revered above the Constitution.
Senate Republicans are far from excited about this ruling.
Senators Lisa Murkowski (RINO-AK) and Susan Collins (RINO - ME) are both pitching a fit about the nomination process of President Trump’s three nominees AND joining forces with the abortion-on-demand lobby to codify Roe into Federal Law.
From Politico:
The Alaska senator is one of two abortion-rights supporters in the Senate GOP and has a unique record on recently confirmed justices. She voted against Brett Kavanaugh, for Neil Gorsuch and publicly opposed the timing but ultimately not the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett. She said moving forward she'd like to see the Senate take up a narrow codification of Roe v. Wade that she introduced earlier this year along with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).
“Roe is still the law of the land. We don't know the direction that this decision may ultimately take,” Murkowski told reporters. “Sen. Collins and I in February introduced a bill that would codify Roe v. Wade. I thought it made sense then and I think it makes perhaps more sense now.”
Susan Collins adds her own whingeing:
Sen. Susan Collins said that if a draft majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade is authentic, then she was misled by two Supreme Court justices whom she supported.
The Maine Republican voted for Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh in 2017 and 2018, confirmations that cemented the conservative majority on the high court. In a Tuesday statement following POLITICO's report on the draft opinion, she recalled interviews with the two now-justices in which she said she pressed them on their view of Roe.
“If this leaked draft opinion is the final decision and this reporting is accurate, it would be completely inconsistent with what Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh said in their hearings and in our meetings in my office,” Collins said. “Obviously, we won’t know each Justice’s decision and reasoning until the Supreme Court officially announces its opinion in this case.”
It’s important to point out that Collins didn’t vote to confirm Barrett, but did vote to confirm President Biden’s first Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — who famously claimed she couldn’t define what a woman was.
Frankly, these two make me worried about federal legislation to codify abortion into law. With Collins and Murkowski already pushing their own bill to make Roe v. Wade law, I’m not as confident in the Republican ability to kill such legislation in the Senate.
Manchin maintains his power over the Progressives, for now.
West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, already instrumental in blocking Biden’s radical agenda, appears to be holding firm in his (correct) support of the filibuster.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is standing firm on his commitment to the legislative filibuster in light of a POLITICO report on a Supreme Court draft opinion that could possibly overturn abortion rights around the country.
"The filibuster is the only protection we have in democracy."
— Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)
As to the substance, he wasn't willing to go there: "I’m not going to comment on a leak from the Supreme Court."
And he echoed an argument from a fellow centrist and filibuster holdout, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), that the 60-vote threshold needed to pass legislation in the Senate has prevented Republicans from passing abortion restrictions.
This will help the Dems on a tactical level.
How this will affect the outcome of the mid-term election remains to be seen. However, the decision — or more accurately, the threat of the decision - will be a short-term tactical shot of adrenaline in the arm of Democrat campaigns.
I’ve written extensively about the enthusiasm gap that exists between Republicans and Democrats. Biden’s failed leadership and inability to deliver on many of his campaign leadership have hurt Democrat activists’ enthusiasm to volunteer for campaigns.
This ‘threat to Roe’ will likely help Democrats' campaigns raise money and recruit more volunteers. It will definitely help close the activist enthusiasm gap between the left and the right.
The Leak is an example of liberals using power.
A lot of Republicans in DC appear to be more outraged by the act of leaking the draft of Alito’s decision than they ever were about abortion.
Certainly, the leak is an egregious breach of trust — and the institutional “norms” that Dems claimed to hold so dear — and likely a fireable offense for whoever did it.
I’m not, however, surprised that some liberal associated with the inner workings of the court would use their position to potentially blow up this decision and bring the pro-murder mob down on the pro-life justices on the court.
Politics at its most basic level is about power. It’s about who is in charge of making the rules and who isn’t. Democrats/liberals understand this at a core level and know what to do with power when they have it. I’m not surprised one of them would do this.
Episode 4 of the Happy Troublemakers Show is out!
In this episode, I interview Mike Mears, former director of strategic partnerships and faith outreach and the Republican National Committee, and former staffer for Concerned Women for America and the Family Research Council.
Most recently, Mike was a consultant for Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s successful campaign.
You can find the audio version of the show on Apple, Spotify, Google and Stitcher.