What Was Lindsey Graham Thinking?

John R. “Buck” Surdu

This week Lindsey Graham introduced a bill to create a nationwide ban on abortion after 15 weeks. This plays right into the hands of the Democrats, who are whipping up their base for the mid-term elections. It provides them with talking points to say, “See, we told you Republicans are trying to outlaw all abortion!” With the Republicans doing everything in their power to lose what should be a runaway success in the midterms, this was yet another strategic blunder from a party characterized by strategic errors, fecklessness, cowardice, and infighting.

Life begins at conception, and abortion is wrong in most cases. This is not about “choice,” as the woke Marxists in our indoctrination camps that identify as schools want you to believe. As a Libertarian at heart, I think that if you want to get an abortion, that is between you and your God; however, I resent it when even one cent of forcibly extracted taxpayer funding is used for that purpose — directly or indirectly.

Two weeks ago, a classmate I like framed this as the government mandating what someone does with their bodies. That same choice doesn’t extend to Fauci-directed vaccinations or the rights of the unborn. As a firm believer in the 10^th Amendment, I believe the Dobbs decision was exactly correct: the Constitution does not give the federal bureaucracy the authority to impose its will on this issue, and abortion (and about 90% of what the federal government does) should be pushed down to the States – whether they want that authority or not. That’s what the Constitution says, and it is about time the Supreme Court started to enforce the 10^th Amendment!

So, while I may agree with the sentiment behind Graham’s proposed bill, I believe that even if it passes, the Supreme Court will eventually rule such a law unconstitutional. More importantly, it was a strategic blunder.

According to a recent Fox News poll, here are the most important issues for voters rolling into the midterms:

• Inflation/Cost of living/Gas prices 19%
• Abortion/Roe v. Wade 16%
• Jobs/Economy 15%
• Voting out Democrats/Anti-Biden 7%
• Immigration 6%
• Climate Change 4%

Why fire up the Democrat base?

A commentator at Communist News Network proposed a theory of why he thinks Graham proposed this bill at this time.

Graham sees that his party is getting clubbed on the issue [of abortion post Dobbs]. And some conservative states now have near-total abortion bans in place. Which puts Republicans running for Senate across the country constantly on the defensive, trying to defend a position that is hugely unpopular with the public.

And so, Graham is trying to give Republican candidates something to talk about that he believes threads the needle between keeping the GOP base, which is adamantly opposed to abortion in all forms, happy and not totally alienating the center of the electorate. 

Graham is hoping to give Republicans a positive talking point on the abortion issue — something his side can point to as evidence that they are not the intolerant ogres that Democrats have, to date, effectively cast them as in the wake of the Supreme Court decision.

The Dobbs decision did not ban abortion, despite what the media, Leftists, and politicians will tell you. It recognized that abortion is not something the Constitution gives the federal government authority to decide on a national level. Yet, Democrats continue to panic monger by telling people that the “illegitimate” Supreme Court banned abortion. (“Illegitimate” means anything the Democrats don’t like.) “The Supreme court just took away a non-existent ‘right’ not within the purview of the federal government in the first place,” they say. Yet, the Democrats are successfully demonizing Republicans with the full cooperation of the Leftist media. In addition to banning abortion, Democrats claim Republicans want to ban contraception, gay marriage, and fornicating. Sigh.

Someone recently opined that Graham was being smart, by proposing a limited ban that aligns us with most European nations. How do you know when a politician is lying? His lips are moving. I don’t for one minute think that Quisling Graham is this clever.  The same people who are unwilling or unable to grasp the nuance of pushing the abortion decision down to the States is not the same as banning abortion are supposed to grasp the nuance that Graham’s bill makes us like Europe? (Frankly, I rarely look to Europe for an example of what the United States should do.) How the Left has gleefully jumped on Graham’s proposed legislation to bludgeon Republicans leading into November shows how the argument that we are merely falling in line with Europe tells me that if that was indeed Graham’s design, he has failed.

States that immediately passed sweeping bans on abortion or activated trigger laws in the wake of Dobbs played right into the hands of Democrats. The Dems can point to those laws as proof of their slippery-slope alarmism. Thanks to Graham, they can now point to proposed Republican legislation which will partially ban abortion nationwide — but it is a national-level ban. It doesn’t matter that this legislation doesn’t have a chance of passing both houses or being signed by the Dictator in the White House. This proposed legislation is PROOF of what the Democrats say Republicans plan to do if they gain power. Republicans stand for nothing and have proposed not a single positive, unified, hopeful policy they will work to enact after the Red trickle in November other than perpetual counter investigations and “those other guys suck more than us.” As a result, Republicans have abrogated defining their platform to their enemies.

Well done, Lindsey Graham. You have provided the talking points the Left needs to support their assertions against Republicans. You have also helped further restrict the Red Wave to a Red Spittle. Whose side are you on? Perhaps Republicans do not want to regain power. They are certainly behaving that way. Republicans seem more comfortable kvetching and throwing stones than being in charge and having to actually lead and govern.