Reminder: majority of adults in swing states are pro-choice
http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/compare/views-about-abortion/by/state/
The percent of adults who say abortion should be legal in all/most cases:
Florida 56%
Michigan 54%
Pennsylvania 51%
Wisconsin 53%
Making abortion the dominant issue at the polls will harm Republicans in general and the Trumpist movement in particular.
Today, pro-choice people can vote Republican knowing that they can’t make abortion illegal because of the Supreme Court, but that would change if Roe v. Wade were overturned.
Lion of the Blogosphere 
Anyone on the right wing who is not braindead should be pro-choice anyway. Childless “elite” urbanites who offer little value should be allowed – encouraged even (although they don’t need much encouragement) – to remove themselves from tomorrow, and abortion is one of the few things keeping underclass reproduction in check.
In a never ending arms race to see who can shoot themselves in the foot repeatedly, the Christian “right” yet again shoots themselves in the foot.
Anon
July 4, 2018 at 2:39 PM
Oswald Spengler
July 4, 2018 at 6:43 PM
Childless “elite” urbanites who offer little value should be allowed – encouraged even (although they don’t need much encouragement) – to remove themselves from tomorrow,
White urban elites should be encouraged to have children and face punitive taxation until they do. Its nonwhites and the underclass that shouldn’t be having children. You have a stunted pathetic moral sense if all you can think of is that liberals = bad.
Magnavox
July 5, 2018 at 2:43 AM
And we should be financing free abortions, female literacy and birth control in places like Sub-Saharan Africa, Egypt, Bangladesh, etc. It is insanity that we ignore the “worlds most important graph” because some evangelicals are scared of women choosing to have sex.
Peter Akuleyev
July 5, 2018 at 8:51 AM
I want to get rid of no fault divorce. That’s where conservatives should move the Overton window.
No fault divorce is a much greater threat to civilization than abortion (which you’ve neutralized me on).
Curle
July 4, 2018 at 3:22 PM
What was different when divorce had fault?
I hear no fault divorce being thrown around a lot as a problem, but rarely does anyone comment what cultural difference a 1950s divorce, rare though it may have been, would have been like.
Paul Ryan's Sickly Old Lap Dog
July 4, 2018 at 5:52 PM
New York State has the most restrictive divorce laws in the country (for example, no divorce until at least a year), it hasn’t made New York a bastion of conservative family values.
Lion of the Blogosphere
July 4, 2018 at 6:08 PM
The cultural difference was its rarity.
Curle
July 4, 2018 at 10:02 PM
“The cultural difference was its rarity.”
Divorce was not as rare in the 50’s as many of us imagine. Read books written at that time and you’ll hear people complaining about the “high” divorce rate. In addition, people in show business were notorious for serial marriages back then. I saw an old episode of the “What’s my Line” show where blindfolded panelists have to guess the identity of a famous guest based on questioning him or her. Musician Artie Shaw was the mystery guest. One panelist asked him if he’d ever been married. The audience found this questions hysterical, as Shaw had been married about 4 times. Interesting that the “conservative” 1950’s audience found this funny. “Maryk” born in the early 1960’s never found divorce to be funny – even as a child I understood moral decline and couldn’t figure out why the rest of the country found it amusing rather than embarassing. Decades later I still feel the same way. And many of the people who laughed as Shaw’s 4 divorces were old enough to be parents or grandparents of baby-boomers. F the “greatest generation” for what they let the U.S. turn into. Happy 4th everyone! …..(I guess this post could be subtitled “Rantings of an angry old guidette.)
maryk
July 4, 2018 at 11:17 PM
There’s a high rate of divorce in America, and then there’s this:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/arizona-woman-92-shot-killed-son-who-tried-putting-her-in-assisted-living-cops-say/ar-AAzy6gG
The propensity for Americans, especially White Americans, to put their parents into an insane asylum, because they hate dealing with their parents when they become senile.
This 92 year old woman in the prole state of Arizona confronted and then shot her son to death, after learning that she would be shoved into a nursing home.
JS
July 5, 2018 at 12:43 AM
” Musician Artie Shaw was the mystery guest. One panelist asked him if he’d ever been married. The audience found this questions hysterical, as Shaw had been married about 4 times.”
That’s still kind of funny, I don’t care who you are.
Mike Street Station
July 5, 2018 at 5:53 AM
The important thing is to remove the financial incentives, not really fixating on whether the divorce is “no fault.” The family courts have devolved into a huge profitable racket and the government freebies for “poor” kids are out of control. Both should be dismantled.
Divorce court should be replaced by a simple table passed by the state legislature, as is the case in a lot of Europe. In my opinion, without mutual consent the party filing should get nothing and default custody should go to the non-filer. With mutual consent there should be zero payments if there are no kids, and then a payment table considering number of children. The payments should not be informed by income and should simply be based on cost of living figures for the state. At no point should it be possible to involve lawyers. It’s paperwork same as when you got the marriage license.
Probably also a good idea to make it impossible to profit from a bastard, via either welfare or child support. A lot of women are getting pregnant and extracting money from the glorified sperm donor and/or the government, because the incentives are significant. If you’re not married, no money. Go beg the churches for help.
The financial incentives we have set up around family law and welfare are a much bigger issue in the grand scheme than the abortion fixation.
bobbybobbob
July 4, 2018 at 6:42 PM
Instead of building barriers to divorce how about making marriage only for people who really want it. Red state trailer trash talk about family values, get married at 19 and get divorced in 30s.
mpt
July 4, 2018 at 8:58 PM
^^This
Curle
July 4, 2018 at 10:03 PM
I also think that conservatives should focus on getting rid of frivolous divorce.
If conservatives could just focus on ending frivolous divorce, out-of-wedlock births, and affirmative action, they’d gain my support. Right now they are focusing exclusively on issues I don’t care about: the wall, Jesus, “white nationalism”, more Jesus, ending abortion, gays, getting gays to pray for Jesus, more Jesus, and denying science.
SC
July 5, 2018 at 9:12 AM
Conservatives should be in favor of marriage and against premarital sex, I don’t see much of that, I just see them being against birth control and abortion.
Lion of the Blogosphere
July 5, 2018 at 9:49 AM
My own belief is that abortion should be legal, but rare and unusual.
cesqy
July 4, 2018 at 3:47 PM
I agree that it’s a mistake to make the election a referendum on abortion because pro-choice Republicans who currently feel abortion is safe would bolt.
I don’t think the poll numbers are wrong. But a binary choice such a “legal/illegal in all/most cases” doesn’t reflect how people feel about specific situations. For example, a couple of years ago, I saw an old survey which showed the pro-life and pro-choice percentages on specific situations. If memory serves, about half of the pro-choicers would ban late term and partial birth abortion. And about half of the pro-lifers would allow abortion for rape, incest, birth defects, threat to mother’s life, etc. In practice, this means that half of pro-lifers would never vote to restrict abortion.
In short, half the population are moderates who agree on abortion regardless of what they call themselves. While the other half is split between extremists who want all or none. Any national politician who tries to change things will irritate 75% of the public — the 50% of moderates who like things as they are plus the 25% of extremists on the other side.
The only time a politician would find advantage in a national election is if the discussion were about the extreme cases of either late term / partial birth abortion or banning abortion altogether. That’s why the left-wing media and politicians always try to frame it as the latter. And, since the media is dominated by leftists who would frame any discussion as the latter, we need to avoid this issue completely.
I personally think abortion is gross but that banning abortion would be a disaster. Not only for society but for most of single mothers as well.
destructure
July 4, 2018 at 4:15 PM
Trump will nominate Barrett making liberals expend political capital and energy huffing and hawing about abortion. They will show normie’s just how out of sync they are and how much they hate America once again.
After the chimpout, Barrett’s nomination gets killed and some judge with no track record on abortion, but intense border enforcement will be put in.
Paul Ryan's Sickly Old Lap Dog
July 4, 2018 at 5:56 PM
A lot of ‘fragile republicans’ are negative voters ie they vote against the dems rather than embrace standard republican ideals. Going back to 1980s right to life platforming will scare them away.
It’s a shame abortion is a political issue at all. It should be a medical issue/ decision. And I say this as someone who believes in the personhood of the fetus. All abortion does, politically, is give dems leeway to poison the pot and distract from conservative sanity.
toomanymice
July 4, 2018 at 6:02 PM
You are way underestimating the number of republicans who take the abortion issue very seriously and vote. If you announce some sort of politically expedient “we don’t really take it seriously” position these consistent voters will stay home. The pro-abortion people either aren’t consistent voters, or will invariably vote democrat anyway. There’s a small shrieking class of pro-abortion harpies. It’s not really an important group to appeal to. The much larger group of relatively ambivalent people will vote on economic issues, and not be dissuaded by anti-abortion rhetoric.
bobbybobbob
July 4, 2018 at 8:10 PM
That seems to describe a number of Republicans. I recall reading Red State (pre Trump era) years ago and in the comments of the article some commentor noted that they would support a socialist as long as it banned abortion. That comment got a lot of likes. For some voters, abortion is the only issue and everything else is secondary. That seems weird to me, but they might think I’m weird for making immigration my number one voting issue.
Mike Street Station
July 5, 2018 at 5:59 AM
I’m well aware of the intensity of committed pro lifers and am sympathetic to a degree. It’s just a shame the issue is politicized at all.
toomanymice
July 5, 2018 at 10:22 AM
1. Abortion, at a certain point, unquestionably becomes murder
2. Many voters we need want abortion to remain legal
3. Anti abortion people are themselves overwhelmingly in favor of allowing abortion for rape and incest, so they themselves are willing to make moral compromises for political expedience
4. We are in a demographic war. A literal war. We cannot afford more blacks. In fact, the entire world cannot afford more blacks. How many blacks do pro life life people think that the world can sustain? Do pro life people want more blacks?
Otis the Sweaty
July 4, 2018 at 6:28 PM
That’s not true. A perfectly reasonable case can be made that infanticide isn’t murder.
Magnavox
July 5, 2018 at 2:46 AM
Pro life people are largely fundie Christians who can’t do math. It doesn’t occur to them that the economy can’t sustain a boom in black, Hispanic, and underclass white births.
SC
July 5, 2018 at 7:43 AM
Very few anti-abortion people are willing to take the logical step of prosecuting mothers who abort as proxy murderers, which they clearly are if you believe abortion is murder. That tells you something right there.
Peter Akuleyev
July 5, 2018 at 8:57 AM
That’s also a very good point.
Magnavox
July 5, 2018 at 12:18 PM
Like many crimes committed by women we give them a pussy pass, we will just assume she is in some mental state which require help rather than jail. It is normal and done for almost every crime performed by women. If it is a man killing this baby we will say it is murder and put them in jail with no hesitation. So it has nothing to do with what we think about the child, it is with what we think about the perpetrator.
Hashed
July 5, 2018 at 7:55 PM
Excerpt from WSJ editorial:
Many on the left and right will disagree with this analysis for different reasons. Conservatives want to believe that Roe can still be repealed in toto, like Plessy v. Ferguson , and we admire their conviction. Liberals want to scare Americans to believe abortion rights are in peril so they can intimidate enough GOP Senators to defeat whoever Mr. Trump nominates to replace Justice Kennedy.
The headlines are already targeting GOP Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Shelley Moore Capito, and abortion is the political cudgel. Ms. Collins said over the weekend that she won’t vote to confirm a nominee who shows “hostility” to Roe. She isn’t likely to face such a choice.
No one on Mr. Trump’s list of nominees will claim to want to overturn Roe—and not because they are lying. In their caution and deference to precedent, they will be showing proper conservative respect for the law and the reputation of the Court.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-abortion-scare-campaign-1530573972?mod=djemMER
Frau Katze
July 4, 2018 at 7:10 PM
Don’t subsidize single moms.
Stupid hoes shouldn’t get a red cent for having more crappy r-selected kids. Let’em live on the street or go hungry.
fakeemail
July 4, 2018 at 8:01 PM
The intelligent non horrible person solution is birth control and abortion, not mass starvation.
Magnavox
July 5, 2018 at 2:46 AM
Thank you for saying this.
Abortion is better than infanticide.
Birth control is better than abortion.
SC
July 5, 2018 at 7:46 AM
Reminder: the same people who are against abortion are also against birth control.
Lion of the Blogosphere
July 5, 2018 at 8:17 AM
@Lion
So what you’re really saying is, the people who are against birth control AND abortion are just plain stupid.
SC
July 5, 2018 at 9:09 AM
I think they are dishonest about what they are for.
And if they are REALLY for traditional marriage, they should be more for traditional marriage, something I seldom hear anyone being in favor of even from the Christian Right.
Lion of the Blogosphere
July 5, 2018 at 9:46 AM
The intelligent person realizes that people respond to incentives and examples. Shooting people at the border may be cruel, but you wouldn’t have to do it very many times before the whole problem went away. Likewise, it wouldn’t take a whole lot of destitute single mothers before that lifestyle choice became an obviously horrible one.
bobbybobbob
July 5, 2018 at 10:33 AM
Reminder: the same people who are against abortion are also against birth control.
the people opposed to birth control are also opposed to abortion, but not vice versa. The number of people opposed to birth control is much smaller than the number opposed to abortion. How many states have laws on the books banning access to birth control waiting for the moment the relevant supreme court cases get overturned like they do with abortion?
bobbybobbob: what you’re talking about is the province of libertarians, a kind of very stupid smart person. So you’re half right. The fact is if poor people were rational in the absense of welfare states then married and single poor people wouldn’t be having children in those countries. But it simply isn’t so.
Magnavox
July 5, 2018 at 12:06 PM
There are a lot of conservative types who want to end federal funding for it, even though it’s a tiny amount of money compared to the cost of free medical care for women and their babies.
Lion of the Blogosphere
July 5, 2018 at 1:48 PM
If you want a stupid person with a low future time horizon to not have children you have the government pay them not to have children. Don’t get rid of the government and cross your fingers that everything will magically work itself out
Magnavox
July 5, 2018 at 12:08 PM
Mayor Bloomberg came out with awesome anti-pregnancy ads in the subways. That was doing something good! I miss Bloomberg so much.
Lion of the Blogosphere
July 5, 2018 at 1:49 PM
“Reminder: the same people who are against abortion are also against birth control”
Birth control is too broad a term. People against abortion oppose post fertilization birth control methods, which they consider abortion, but opposition to contraception is rare, at least among protestant Christians. Even most of the Catholic couples I know obviously used birth control during their child-bearing years, despite Catholic teaching on the issue.
J1
July 5, 2018 at 9:24 PM
If you are willing to let children starve to death or die of exposure, wouldn’t it be far more humane to abort them in the womb?
Peter Akuleyev
July 5, 2018 at 8:59 AM
Latin America is the land of your dreams. Here abortion is banned and abandoned children are living and dying and killing on the streets en masse. Why not move to Salvador instead of moving Salvador to US?
zenit
July 5, 2018 at 4:02 PM
http://dailycaller.com/2018/07/03/conservatives-trump-supreme-court-brett-kavanaugh/
MEH 0910
July 4, 2018 at 9:01 PM
It’s ALL about abortion… they don’t have anything else about him being a secret liberal.
Lion of the Blogosphere
July 4, 2018 at 11:02 PM
He is openly liberal. For God’s sake, he is as stupid about abortion as you, Lion.
You know that, you are a smart guy.
He is a mediocre little man who got good grades in his first year at a law school that his rich parents worked hard to allow him to get into, and who caught a couple lucky breaks after his lucky first year good grades. He is not a good judge and never will be.
howitzer daniel
July 5, 2018 at 1:29 AM
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/judge-brett-kavanaughs-impeccable-record-of-constitutional-conservatism/
MEH 0910
July 4, 2018 at 11:22 PM
Hymen Roth
July 5, 2018 at 2:03 AM
Fake tweet.
Lion of the Blogosphere
July 5, 2018 at 7:10 AM
All the people that I don’t like should be getting abortions, like Democrats. Live births are for good people.
map
July 5, 2018 at 11:58 AM