Roe v. Wade, then let's move on
The Friday Letter / No. 491 / May 6, 2022
Updated with style corrections and additional reporting at 8:35 a.m. EDT
We leave to others most of the brouhaha-ing about the Roe v. Wade atomic bomb – except to conduct a 1-question quiz, based on this statement: Your correspondent supports the repeal of Roe.
Question: On what grounds?
A. Roe should be overturned because life begins at conception and abortion is murder.
B. If a birthing person can choose to kill his/her/ver baby, why can't he/she/viz choose not to wear a mask?
C. Your correspondent could be either for or against abortion and support Roe's repeal. This case is not about the legality of abortion. It is about who gets to decide its legality, the federal government or the states.
If you chose C, take a bow. The fact is that I could be a fierce defender of legal abortion and still argue that Roe is bad law because it ignores the 10th Amendment right of the states to regulate, allow, or prohibit abortion, as they do in every other matter involving the taking of a life (the killing of federal law enforcement and postal workers excepted).
The late Justice Ginsberg would have chosen answer C. She supported legal abortion. She opposed the Roe decision.
And so, while the I-demand-abortion-even-though-I-am-too-ugly-to-get-pregnant crowd has a conniption fit over what may be the end of Roe, birthing persons will be free to get their abortions in states that continue to allow it. Like manslaughter, murder, fatal reckless endangerment, accidental killings, capital punishment, and justified self defense, abortion will be a matter for state legislatures to decide – by the lawmakers who are closest to the people, as the Founders intended.
And by the way, Roe is not the law of the land, as its promoters claim. It is the rule of the land, handed down by unelected judges, not by lawmakers elected by the people.
In re: Clarity v. Fog (U.S. 2024)
On his radio program with Buck Sexton last week, Clay Travis recalled his days as a creative writing teacher at Vanderbilt. To write forcefully, he said, the writer must state his argument clearly in a single sentence. This is what I preached to my freshman composition students.
This is what President Trump must do to win re-election in 2024, make his case in a single sentence, pounding away at it over and over until it becomes ingrained in the national mind.
I don't have the exact quote, but Travis said Trump must use words like this: I am not perfect, but I did a better job than Joe Biden, and if you return me to office, I will fix things.
And leave the 2020 election fraud battles to others.
“I will re-open the Keystone pipeline, and the cost of gas will come down. I will finish the wall, and we will turn back every illegal alien who tries to enter our country. I will stop the flow of fentanyl and other drugs of death coming from China. I will stop the reckless government spending and put the brakes on inflation that is harming every American family. I will continue to create opportunities for all Americans, and resume the growth of jobs for blacks and Latinos, as I did in my first time.”
Elections are about the future, not the past. Somebody who has Donald Trump's ear must help him understand that.
The boogeyman under your bed
Fellow voters, be forewarned that if SCOTUS overturns Roe v. Wade, evil Republicans will quickly outlaw interracial and homosexual marriage. This comes from Eric Swalwell, California's 15th District Congressman.
Although Mr. Swalwell is mentally deranged, he enjoys wide popularity among the lefty-loons of Alameda County, winning re-election in 2020 with 70.9 percent of the vote. Let's just say he is a lifetime tenured member. We suspect his blood pressure rocketed to stroke proportions after the Roe story surfaced, as he joined hysterical wokesters in announcing that the end of the world is upon us.
Given the 5-4 liberal majority at SCOTUS, we must profess skepticism. Would Justice Thomas, whose white wife is the subject of withering lefty attacks, vote with the three other conservatives to ban interracial marriage? Rep. Byron Donalds, a black Republican from Florida who's also in an interracial marriage, is skeptical as well. Stay tuned.
Losing the battle against homelessness
Homelessness is growing almost everywhere. A study from Melbourne, Australia, says the state of Victoria spent $194 million in 2017 supporting its homeless population of 7,600. In the U.S., homelessness is out of control in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and many other cities.
Just so you won't run out of things to worry about, consider this: the growing population of homeless Republicans.
The watershed event is arguably the Senate Republican nomination of J.D. Vance. Two weeks before Ohio's primary election on Tuesday, Vance was running in third place, out of money. The situation looked dire for this champion of the workingman until Donald J. Trump jumped in with his endorsement.
At American Greatness, Eric Lendrum offers this comparison of Vance and Trump: “An outsider businessman who has never run for office before displays a crystal-clear understanding of the struggles of the American working class, and is prepared to criticize both parties for selling out the country.”
This is not your father's Republican Party. Now you would expect apoplexy in the Media Left and not be disappointed. In his Morning Briefing at the New York Times, David Leonhardt called Vance a practitioner of “far-right nationalism.” This is the Left's term for populism, looking out for the commoners, what Democrats no longer even pretend they embrace.
But the real enemy comes from within.
Here is Alexander Bolton's preview at The Hill: “Senate Republicans are privately rooting for former President Trump to fail in Ohio and wouldn’t be at all disappointed if someone other than his endorsed candidate, J.D. Vance, wins the state’s Senate Republican primary Tuesday.”
Today swamp Republicans wring their hands in anguish. Vance won as a populist – a rich one who's had enormous business success like Trump but a populist indeed. His working class roots connect with the coal miners and steelworkers of Eastern Ohio, even though he's a graduate of the Yale Law School. This is what really fries the Beautiful People of Washington who consider themselves far superior to Vance in deciding what's best for the unwashed.
Their choice will be Vance or Democrat Rep. Tim Ryan, whom Leonhardt calls “a moderate Democrat.” Ryan's rating by the conservative Heritage Action for America is zero. The American Conservative Union gives him a more charitable 9.9 lifetime rating. The winner will succeed anti-Trump liberal Republican Rob Portman, who rates a 63 at Heritage.
Vance said he is grateful for Trump's endorsement and acknowledges its effect, but he wisely notes that his fortunes began to change once voters became more familiar with the populist message he made famous in his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.
Establishment Republicans had been giddy over the prospect of Trump's endorsed candidate going down. Vance beat his closest competitor, three-time Senate loser Josh Mandell, by seven points. All of Trump's other Ohio endorsed candidates won as well.
Says John Binder at Breitbart, Vance's story “follows the struggles of his family in Middletown, Ohio, notably tackling the issues of addiction, quality of life, working class values, and the deindustrialization of America’s heartland through the lens of his childhood.”
Binder says Vance walks in the footsteps of Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan, appealing to “those left behind by the globalization of the American economy and a Left-Right immigration agenda hellbent on transforming the workforce and electorate.”
He says Vance won by “pushing back against multinational corporations with near-monopolies in particular markets that have increasingly snuffed out small, family-owned businesses.”
This is your new Republican Party, the Party of Trump, the Party of J.D. Vance and Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott and Byron Donalds and some others.
We can't predict where folks like Jeb Bush, Bill Kristol, Jonah Goldberg, Rob Portman, John Thune, Richard Burr, Mitch McConnell, and others will find homes, but increasingly they are feeling like the guy who wore white socks and a tuxedo at the dance, uneasy, out of place in the GOP. Somebody needs to find them a tent and an Obama phone, quick.
Short takes on the news
While illegal immigrants storm our beaches and Hunter Biden runs around the world stuffing his pockets with Chinese cash, Attorney General Merrick Garland is busy creating a new bureaucracy called the Office of Environmental Justice. Its purpose will be to help “communities of color” battle the effects of climate change and environmental crime and pollution, The Hill reports. . .
The Soros-backed prosecutor in St. Louis refused to charge an armed man who tried to hijack a marked city police car. Police arrested a 27-year-old man with first-degree robbery, armed criminal action and resisting arrest, Police magazine reports. This is the same character (the prosecutor, that is) who charged a local husband and wife with defending their home against an angry mob in 2020. . .
News alert. Rep. Pramile Jayapal, Democrat of Washington, just revealed that the Supreme Court “does not have the right” to overturn Roe v. Wade. “. . . these justices are acting like this is somehow something that they have the right to change,” she said on a CNN program, quoted by Dave Rubin at The Blaze. “They do not have the right to change this, which has been settled law for two generations now of people who have grown up, who have gone through their twenties in the firm belief that they can make these decisions about their own bodies.”
This got us to wondering. Did the Supreme Court break the law when it overturned Plessy v. Ferguson with its 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision? Where did SCOTUS get this authority? . . .
If you're wondering what journalism schools teach their budding world saviors, a guess that constitutional law is not one of them would be a good one. Two journalists at Newsweek argued this week that the Electoral College should be abolished because “It was created between all white guys who did not trust voters to make the right choices.” Nothing surprising here. If things aren't going your way, blame “racism.”
Races to watch
Keep your eye on President R. Boddie (that's his first name, not his office). He's running for governor of Georgia. Mr. Boddie, whose home address is listed as Covington, last sought office in 2020 as a candidate for president, running from Ohio. He and his running mate garnered exactly three votes. But we have an explanation: Ohio had a crowded field of 10 candidates. Donald Trump elbowed Mr. Boddie out of the pack by hogging 3,154,834 votes.
We were curious, however, to locate Mr. Boddie's third voter, assuming he and his running mate voted for themselves. Alas, our crack research team came up empty. We called the number on Mr. Boddie's Ballotpedia profile without success. Mr. Boddie has seven children, which leads us to conclude that he faces an uphill battle for the governorship given that he didn't even carry his own family, let alone a single precinct, in his presidential run.
We wanted to know if Mr. Boddie is a crackpot or a serious patriot exercising his right and duty under our wonderful system of government to serve his country. If you know his whereabouts, please ask him to call. Our vast and influential audience just might push him over the top – or at least get his kids on board.
A note to readers
We make corrections, clarifications, and additions to The Friday Letter in the hours following its release at 8 a.m. EDT. To see these changes, go to stephencombs.substack.com and click on “Let me read it first.”
Recommended reading
“McConnell's 'exhilarating' insurrection”
While publicly projecting a sober tone to the public, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was “ecstatic” over Trump's loss in 2020, Julie Kelly writes at American Greatness, quoting a new book.
“A dirty little secret about January 6 – one of many – is that Democrats and establishment Republicans, not Trump supporters, wanted to shut down the official proceedings of that day,” Kelly writes. It was McConnell who prevented them. “Ten incumbent and four newly-elected Republican senators planned to work with their House colleagues to demand the formation of an audit commission to investigate election 'irregularities' in the 2020 election.”