Republican Time Machine Returns America to Civil War Era with Arizona Abortion Ruling
Arizona State Senator Led Tongue Prayer from Floor Prior to Ruling
A long running debate on how far back the Republican Party wants to drag America has finally been settled. Most critics have invoked 1950, right before the civil rights era exploded and minorities still “knew their place.” Although, the recent open sewer of misogyny spouted by Trump’s “alpha” apparatchiks, like Nick Adams, leads one to believe the date might be 1918, right before women secured the ability to vote.
Thankfully, the Arizona Supreme court brought some clarity. It ruled that an antiquated 160-year-old state abortion ban was enforceable–firmly placing the date of the GOP’s time machine at 1864, predating Arizona statehood by 58 years.
As if to drive home the point of GOP backwardness, an Arizona State Senator led a prayer from the floor, speaking in tongues, prior to the abortion ruling. As my friend and Washington political consultant Joel Lawson asked, “Had Enough Yet?”
Apparently, not.
A week earlier, Florida’s right wing Supreme Court paved the way for Gov. Ron DeSantis’ six-week abortion ban to take effect by May 1. The twin rulings seriously complicate Donald Trump’s chances of returning to the White House.
His sense of panic was palpable, with the state rulings coming on the heels of Trump claiming that abortion should be left to the states, instead of a national ban. (Not that he’s serious about his new position and wouldn’t backpaddle the moment he was reelected.)
A few weeks ago, I predicted Trump was likely to lose because his support in key swing state suburbs would collapse over abortion. Trump is the person solely responsible for Roe v Wade being overturned, as he has bragged about on several occasions.
His recent contortions to run away from this trainwreck have put him in an awkward position with his normally fawning evangelical base. Even the groveling MAGA sock puppet Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who supports a national ban, broke with his overlord. "It's a state's issue up to a point," said Graham. "But the pro-life movement, I've told the president, is not about geography; it's about the child."
Staring into the abyss of political oblivion, Trump scolded Graham and sternly warned the GOP’s fanatical base that unless they aborted their obdurate position, there could be an electoral wipeout in 2024.
"People like Lindsey Graham, that are unrelenting, are handing Democrats their dream of the House, Senate, and perhaps even the Presidency," Trump lectured on Truth Social.
Trump is a crass and soulless political opportunist who would probably support post-birth abortion up to the age of 10 if it would return him to the White House. He’s banking on his cult surrendering their principles on abortion, which is a good bet, considering they have cravenly capitulated on every other issue they once purported to champion.
But even if the tremulous Graham repents and Trump can snake charm his rightward flank, he still must contend with the legions of highly motivated women, and the men who love them, flocking to the polls to ensure the clock doesn’t turn back to 1864.
Former Republican operative Steve Schmidt wrote about the meaning of this election:
This election is about screaming “Stop!” Perhaps, the message can be delivered at such a volume that it will be another 160 years before a major American political party allows itself to be hijacked by an extremist cause. 2024 must be a year of rebuke and boundaries.
While abortion is a real issue impacting millions of people, it is a proxy fight for whether Americans will remain a free people or meekly bow down to the forces of fascism. Author and talk show host Thom Hartmann put the larger picture in to focus:
Democracy is in trouble, and the Russian/Ukrainian conflict highlights how imperiled it is becoming in the 21st century. The real issue in Ukraine isn’t just land, any more than the real issue in the US is abortion: that’s all the activity on the surface. What’s grinding away below the surface, however, is the erosion or outright destruction of democracy itself, whether by invasion from without or corruption from within.
Congressional Republicans aren’t helping Trump’s case with moderate suburbanites. The GOP-led House is a dysfunctional mess and its members so radicalized they sometimes make Trump look sane by comparison.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is circulating a caustic 5-page memo calling for the ouster of Republican Speaker Mike Johnson. According to her screed:
If these actions by the leader of our conference continue, then we are not a Republican Party — we are a uniparty that is hellbent on remaining on the path of self-inflicted destruction. I will neither support nor take part in any of that, and neither will the people we represent.
Fully funding abortion, the trans agenda, the climate agenda, foreign wars and Biden’s border crisis is not ensuring liberty, opportunity and security for all Americans.
Only in Greene’s demented psyche could Johnson, a former attorney for the right-wing Alliance Defending Freedom, a supporter of “ex-gay” ministries, and a proud promoter of Trump’s illegal efforts to stay in office after he lost to Joe Biden, be considered a liberal.
Unbelievably, Greene isn’t the craziest member of the House. That award would go to Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA). A formerly abusive cop, before hanging up his tainted badge to run for Congress, Higgins makes Greene look like a beacon of sanity on a foggy night. The Washington Post reports:
The hard-right congressman, now in his fourth term in the House, has said that “ghost buses” took agents provocateurs to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to instigate the riot. He has claimed that the federal government is waging a “civil war” against Texas. And he has called the criminal charges against former President Donald J. Trump for mishandling classified documents a “perimeter probe from the oppressors.”
But far from relegating Mr. Higgins to the fringe of their increasingly fractious conference, House Republicans have elevated him. They made him the chairman of the subcommittee overseeing border enforcement, and Speaker Mike Johnson named him one of 11 impeachment managers tasked with trying to remove the homeland security secretary from office in a Senate trial set to take place next week.
Is this really the type of unhinged clown that most voters believe can solve their problems and improve their lives? I’m highly skeptical.
Democrats are rightfully concerned about the possibility of young voters moving toward Trump, particularly considering the broad dissatisfaction this demographic share over Biden’s handling of Gaza. But as Jordan Weissmann from the publication Semafor explained, “Young people hate the Democratic party, except on election day.”
The New Republic points out that even if Biden loses some younger voters, recent political shifts by older voters would still secure a second presidential term:
In recent years voter turnout among the young has been rising, and in 2020 its turnout was indeed, as the Institute of Politics says, “record-setting.” Voter turnout for 18- to 29-year-olds rose 11 percentage points over 2016. But it was still only 50 percent, while turnout for 45- to 64-year-olds was 66 percent and turnout for people over 65 was 72 percent. Looking at the composition of voters in 2020, we find slightly more than 60 percent of them were aged 50 or over. Only 17 percent were aged 18 to 29, and only 23 percent were aged 30 to 44.
Winning older voters matters more, politically, because, well, they’re 60 percent of the electorate. And here the recent news has been strangely good. Even as Biden is losing altitude among younger voters, he appears to be picking up support…among older voters.
A Marist poll found baby boomers supporting Biden over Trump, 53–45 percent. A February New York Times poll similarly found Biden leading Trump among voters 65 and older, 51–42 percent.
Biden doesn’t have reelection in the bag and Democrats must work frantically to bring home a win in a politically polarized nation. However, I’m willing to bet that a majority of voters prefer democracy over authoritarianism, don’t want to offer more power to whackos like Reps. Greene and Higgins and desire access to contraception and abortion rather than going back to 1864.