Posted on 03/31/2016 3:51:54 PM PDT by Kaslin
By this time, everyone with a television, a smart phone or a computer has already seen the MSNBC town hall exchange between Chris Matthews and Donald Trump where the abortion question came up. (Even if you lack all three of those modern devices, you may have caught wind of it via the screams of horror emanating from the windows of your neighbors, both Democrat and Republican.) But on the odd chance that you were in a coma for the past sixteen hours and happened to turn to Hot Air before doing anything else this morning, here’s the short but brutal recap. (WaPo)
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump came under fire Wednesday for saying that women should be subject to “some sort of punishment” for undergoing illegal abortions, a position that antiabortion and abortion rights groups alike emphatically denounced.
The GOP front-runner said during a pre-taped town hall hosted by MSNBC that criminal punishments would be appropriate for women seeking abortions if the procedure were made illegal nationwide. Moderator Chris Matthews pressed Trump on the practical implications of banning abortions.
Before going any further, I’d like to preface this column with something that at least approaches a bit of an apology to my friends in the #NeverTrump camp because yesterday’s events led to a wake-up call of sorts for me on a personal level. As regular readers know by now, I’ve gone out of my way to leave some maneuvering room for the GOP this fall by attempting to maintain Donald Trump’s status as a viable back-up plan if Ted Cruz fails to secure the nomination. (And I’ve been gently taken to task for it by some very prominent writers.) I recognize that I may have even engaged in a bit of willful disregard for some of the more troubling aspects of his campaign rather than simply throwing up my hands and tossing the keys to the Oval Office to Hillary Clinton. But after a night to sleep on and digest last night’s debacle, even I must confess that something in the stew smells like it’s gone past its expiration date here.
Allahpundit seemed to touch on part of what went wrong yesterday when he wrote this:
You can almost see the wheels turning in his head here: He knows, as a political matter, that he can’t let Cruz get to his right on abortion. Republicans will let him slide on a lot — a lot — but if he gives them reason to think he’s BSing them on an issue at the very core of social conservatism, it could give Cruz the break he needs to take off.
I think part of that analysis is correct, but it doesn’t fully get to the uneasy feeling that interview brought on. It’s a suspicion that I’ve had nagging at the back of my mind for months, even as I’ve tried my best to keep Trump viable as a general election candidate. Unlike Allahpundit, I don’t see this as Donald Trump making a quick calculation of how to best position himself against Cruz here. The more likely (and disturbing) conclusion is that Donald Trump is someone who really doesn’t know much of anything about the conservative movement beyond what he read in some headlines while contemplating a run for the GOP nomination. He’s like the student who failed to study for the test and is now picking the multiple choice answers which sound the best even if they are extreme catnip designed to catch the unwary in a failing grade.
This isn’t a crazy theory because what we’re seeing is the essence of a populist strategy without any real research behind it. If you want to win over the hearts and minds of conservatives, you identify what they most want but can’t obtain under the current rules and then offer them the moon. In retrospect, we’ve seen this too many times before, and while some of the answers sound great and stir up the masses with great support, they all fall short to one degree or another in terms of practicality. Immigration? Everyone else wants more border patrol and aggressive ICE enforcement. So I’ll give you a wall the size of the moon which won’t cost a dime. Trade deals? The other candidates are free traders who don’t address issues of job outsourcing and trade deficits. I’ll just screw everyone else on the planet and build virtual tariff walls. War on terror? Those other guys talk tough about confronting the enemy, but I’ll give you torture and huge conquering armies laying waste to the Arabian Peninsula.
And when it came to the abortion question, Mr. Trump obviously recognized that everyone on the conservative side of the fence was, to one degree or another, against the procedure. So his first impulse was to start putting pregnant women in jail. Too many authors on the Right have already described how damaging this is to the pro-life movement, but it took several hours of immediate backlash before Trump finally arrived at his third answer which was at least somewhat close to the correct one.
What this tells me is that Donald Trump never studied for the test when he decided to win over conservatives in his quest for the nomination. He just trusted in his instincts, scanned a few topic summaries and went into it like a real estate negotiation, promising the clients a mansion when he knew they’d wind up in a condo. Unfortunately this is akin to trying to win over the affection of a petulant child you’re babysitting who doesn’t want to eat their vegetables. Rather than promising a better selection of healthy options and a treat after the meal, your first move is to simply tell them everyone will have chocolate layer cake for their entire dinner.
It’s difficult to admit it, particularly when so many pieces of the plans Trump has proposed at least sounded like great ideas on paper. And the rest were able to be written off by saying, “at least he got a conversation started” on the issue. All that may be true, but underneath it all, Donald Trump doesn’t understand conservatism. He’s winging it as he goes along and the learning curve has finally left him behind.
I think Trump has to find the crest of the wave and ride it. That seems to me what Obama did in 2008 and 2012. In the case of abortion, I wonder if the correct position might be “let’s change society such that we do not castigate women having a baby out of wedlock.” The only problem with that answer would be that single mothers are the demographic most dependent on welfare. Helicopter money would seem to fix this problem, but that is of course another issue.
I agree with trump. So sick of you pro choice people. My gosh it doesn’t make sense that we want to throw illegal aliens but baby killers are not punished. That is ass backwards. I am ashamed of the pro choice FREEPERS.
I keep coming back to a GOPe Globalist image for him.
I agreed with every word. You pro choice baby killers are rediculous. You want to jail cocain buyers. You want to jail illegal aliens, you want to jail people for illegal things people do. If abortion is illegal, jail the baby killers for Gods sake. This is making me sick so many liberals are Cruz supporters.
Another abortion lover. You guys are sure showing yourself today. So you finally admit that you support baby killers. Great. Just great.
And lay off the booze too.
In the real world voters aren’t voting for trump? You can’t be that stupid. Trump has a huge amount of voters then Cruz. But since Cruz and a bunch of you are baby killer lovers now perhaps the numbers will go up. It is shameful that you don’t care about babies.
You lay off supporting murdering babies first.
I honestly, 100% do not get what was supposedly so bad about what Trump said.
So true. I had been trying to take a break from this, but after reading the thread title, and with so much going on, I invested the time. Trump's instincts were right and I thought the whole Town Hall went fine. If one is pro-Life, and abortion is made illegal (too weird to write if life is made legal), then of course some kind of responsibility is going to fall upon those who break the law.
What came to me as I watched the exchange was this. We already have pregnant mothers called to account for what they do with their bodies when they take drugs illegally and get caught. They often are charged with child endangerment (at least in my part of the country), put into a testing program, and often lose parental rights to their child if they continue to use. Those are direct actions against what a woman chooses to do with her body when what she chooses is illegal and endangers a child, even an unborn one. That is as of today, that is not theoretical.
I guess I have to go see how far Trump walked back his comments, but I don't think he needed to budge. Consequence is a reasonable pro-Life position if we were to ever actually have the recognition of every human life protected under the Constitution.
What's happened to Free Republic?
You and I used to have great and friendly conversations.
And it's not just you....or me.
I do think you are awesome. I am confused about this trump bashing. What did he do wrong?
Trump did walk it back but the drive-bys will use this against Trump from now until election time.
Can’t People READ. The question was about “ILLEGAL ABORTIONS”
What is an ILLEGAL ABORTION
an abortion performed contrary to the laws regulating abortion. Illegal abortions are often associated with life-threatening complications.
True words
>>> I WANT IMPERFECTION. THAT IS PROOF THAT THEY ARE NOT POLITICIANS.
Politicians want you to believe that they don’t make mistakes. However, what they possess is “message discipline”, which means they learn to tell you the same lie, time and again, with a straight face, even as the circumstances on the ground change.
And I agree, that is what I like about Trump... he converses with the audience (which means his words are often subject to retraction), rather than the “right” words from the politicians’ mouth that are never followed up with matching action.
As predicted, I just caught the 9pm news (Central Time), and:
Kasich bemoans that Trump is not presidential because of his comments on Birth Control
Hildabeast attacks Trump on his stance
Cruz says he is not Presidential either
Even Bernie takes a swipe at all the Republicans...
I guess Chris Matthews hit one over the fence for the Democrats, because as sure as shootin, Kasich and Cruz did NOTHING for the Republicans, and Hilda and Bernie have shown that they are clowns.
Surprisingly, Trump clarifies his words, without being talked over, and being screeched at, and moved on. Before you say that a President should be able to handle this, remember, it is not tolerated for anyone to speak to Obama like this, When it comes to touching Obama, nobody gets close, yet nobody questions it. So what is Presidential about Matthews going at Trump?
You say that if it was Cruz, he would not flinch, yet, He folded like a cheap suit when being interviewed by Wallace. http://dailycaller.com/2016/01/31/watch-ted-cruz-get-flustered-when-chris-wallace-fact-checks-him-video/
Or here about being interviewed about dirty tricks
http://www.businessinsider.com/fox-news-chris-wallace-interview-ted-cruz-2016-2
Or about his incessant lying...
http://www.forwardprogressives.com/fox-news-chris-wallace-crushes-ted-cruz-lies-economy-obama-video/
I have not seen you self righteous people talking about that, now, I wonder why that is???
bfl
Those leftist media will destroy any republican from out biggest RINO to our most conservative Republican. Meanwhile Hillary and Obama mostly get away scot free. Obama always and Hillary gets some only cuz Bernie is in the race otherwise nothing.
I'm going to take JimRob's advice and just play it cool.
But, be advised, the enemy media is your foe, not me.
They will play Trumps's abortion faux pas over and over and over again, leading many people to believe Trump wants to put women in jail for having abortions.
It's how the mainstream, democratic media works.
It sucks.
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