The Weekly Sift

Trump’s let-the-states-decide statement looked clever until Arizona actually decided.

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All across the country, the abortion issue has been helping Democrats and hurting Republicans.

For decades it worked the other way: Pro-choice women were confident the Supreme Court would protect their rights, so they mostly ignored the extreme positions Republican politicians took and based their votes on other issues. But since the Dobbs decision reversed Roe v Wade last year, the intentions of elected officials matter again.

After taking their lumps in the 2022 elections, Republican politicians have been trying to figure out how to finesse the issue. How do they avoid the ire of female voters without alienating their personhood-at-conception base? Last fall, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin thought he had the formula: a “compromise” abortion ban at 15 weeks. But that idea went down in flames as Republicans lost control of the Virginia legislature.

Trump also has been searching for an answer. For a while he also toyed with a 15-week ban, but then last week he stalled for time, saying he’d make a statement this week. I was skeptical about this, because Trump often says he’s going to do something and then doesn’t. But in fact he did make a statement on Monday.

I don’t usually post Trump videos, but I think you need to see this to appreciate just how far off-the-rails this guy has gone. To start with, his make-up is comical; he almost looks like he’s wearing blackface. Then there are the obvious, how-stupid-do-you-think-we-are lies about how “all legal scholars, both sides, wanted and in fact demanded” the end of Roe, and Democrats “support abortion up to and even beyond the ninth month”. (In fact, Biden supports restoring the pre-Dobbs status quo, which drew a line at viability, i.e. 24-28 weeks. More radical people, like me, want the government to butt out completely and let women decide how to handle their own problem pregnancies. But describing that view as “support” for abortion is dishonest. I, for one, am neutral on abortion; I have never tried to persuade a woman to get one.)

But the gist of the statement is that Trump is proud of engineering the conservative Supreme Court majority that decided Dobbs, and he doesn’t want to take any public position beyond letting the states (and not women together with their families and doctors) decide when abortion is permissible. He later said he wouldn’t sign a federal abortion ban if Congress presented him with one. (But then, Trump says a lot of things, and most of them turn out not to be true. When he was president, he claimed his tax plan wouldn’t help the rich. But when Paul Ryan gave him a plan that focused most of its benefits on the rich, he signed it. And we’re still waiting to see the “terrific” health care plan he promised in 2015. )

He’s also proud of being opportunistic on the issue.

You must follow your heart on this issue. But remember: You must also win elections.

That let-the-states-decide position looked clever for about a day. But then a state decided: Tuesday, Arizona’s Supreme Court reinstated an 1864 law banning all abortions that aren’t necessary to save a woman’s life. (In the previous post, I explain why I believe this is a correct reading of a horrible legal situation. It’s the legislature, not the court, that should never have allowed this to happen.)

Then Trump had to scramble: He said Arizona went too far, and predicted the situation would be “straightened out”. Arizona’s mini-Trump, Senate candidate Kari Lake, completely reversed her position. Previously, she had specifically endorsed the 1864 law (by its number in the legal code). But now she says

I oppose today’s ruling, and I am calling on Katie Hobbs and the State Legislature to come up with an immediate common sense solution that Arizonans can support.

So far as I know, this is the first time Lake has admitted that Katie Hobbs (who defeated Lake in 2022) is indeed governor. I also love the invocation of “common sense solution”, a conservative buzz phrase Sarah Palin popularized: It’s a placeholder. You’re supposed to insert whatever position you think makes sense, and then imagine Lake said that.

But Lake hasn’t said anything. As of this moment, neither Lake nor Trump (nor any other Republican who either has real power or is running to get it) has made an actual proposal to fix Arizona’s draconian abortion law. When it comes time to govern — and not just posture — that’s what you need to do: put a real proposal on paper and vote it up or down, knowing that you’ll make some people unhappy.

Are any Republicans, at either the state or national levels, ready to govern? That’s what the coming weeks will tell us.