A new abortion stance
Donald Trump has no interest other than winning. So it’s telling that he believes his interest will be best served by softening his position on abortion.
We already knew he was flexible on everything, not only abortion. He once declared himself “very pro-choice.” There was a time when he thought his best tactical association would be with Democrats. Then political advisers told him about the fertile field of rightwing resentment and reminded him that resentment was his greatest natural gift.
It’s perverse to say that Trump, in a social media post Sunday, provided good news to women wanting the right to choose for their own bodies. But it’s true. He revealed himself leery of their political clout in the battleground states he lost last time but leads this time.
He is saying essentially that a strict anti-abortion position is a loser, and he doesn’t do losing.
He knows where the women who matter are—suburban Atlanta, greater Phoenix, suburban Philadelphia, greater Milwaukee. They voted in droves against him in 2020, partly because of his behavior and party because he put in place the U.S. Supreme Court that would repeal Roe v. Wade. If he can turn a few his way, or keep a few at home, he wins those states and the presidency, everything else being equal, which it isn’t.
He’s under multiple indictments now. And Joe Biden was a neutral default choice then. Now he’s older, burdened with world woes and lathered in liberalism. Not all women who want control of their bodies are liberals.
So, the easiest tack for Trump— and he likes easy tacks—is to soften a little on abortion and hope the anti-abortion zealots can hold their noses, an exercise in which he’s already provided them training and made them expert.
Trump waited to articulate this abortion slide until he had locked down the Republican presidential nomination. He knew he would offend hard-core pro-lifers by switching for the general election from a position in favor of a national ban to a position that states decide. True pro-life zealots know that more than half of states continue to allow abortions.
A hard-core pro-lifer could say that Trump now advocates killing more babies than he will save, there being more residents in pro-choice states than pro-life states.
Somebody might ask Jason Rapert about that. I lost his phone number on purpose after he got trounced for a nothing office by Leslie Rutledge.
Trump also now says he favors abortion exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the mother. He’s getting close to being able to endorse the pro-choice amendment proposed in Arkansas.
Biden knows what Trump is up to. He responded to Trump’s repositioning by saying that it doesn’t matter what Trump says now because, if he gets back to the White House and his party pushes in Congress for a national abortion ban, as it will, then he’ll go along.
That’s plausible. It’s a fair-enough prediction. I just don’t know if it’s so.
The only thing scarier than the prospect that in a second term Trump will go along with anything the extreme right dreams up is that we really have no idea what Trump will do in a second term absent his essence, which is to win the next election.
Since winning defines him, and since he defines winning in entirely personal and not national or societal terms, we are left to ponder an unhinged madman trying to figure out in a second term with no re-election allowed what he can win next.
The only thing we can say for certain in today’s context is that Trump has made clear that he knows that a strict anti-abortion position is a loser.
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers’ Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett feed on X, formerly Twitter.