Life a year after Dobbs, the Left’s skewed view of conservatives, and “sexually graphic materials” in Iowa political ads. It’s been quite a week on the presidential campaign trail.
15-Week National Limit
U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) marked the one-year-anniversary of the end of Roe v. Wade with a call to action.
In a column published in the Des Moines Register, the Republican presidential hopeful writes the seismic Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling issued on June 24, 2022 “further bolstered the right to life and allowed our nation to begin repairing a terrible decision” in 1973’s Roe.
“One year ago this week, a generation of prayers, votes, and marches for life paid off in an historic victory. I was proud to vote to confirm Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, and I have never been prouder than I was last June 24th when they ignored the angry mobs, followed the Constitution, and overturned Roe v. Wade,” Scott wrote.
The senator says he is “100 percent” pro-life, but his idea of abortion limits may not sit well with many in the pro-life movement. If elected, Scott proposes beginning with a “15-week national limit” — or allowable abortion up to nearly four months into a pregnancy. Preborn heartbeats can be detected as early as 5 1/2 weeks, definitely by seven weeks.
But Scott is a realist. He’s reads the polls. He knows Republicans lost votes they seemed assured of getting last November in the wake of Dobbs.
“Poll after poll shows that a clear majority of Americans oppose abortion in the second trimester and agree it should be restricted. Which raises the real question: Why is the radical left okay with aborting babies up until the day they are born?” Scott wrote.
Cartoonish Bigotry
A cartoon published this week in the Quad City Times caught the attention of Ohio businessman and GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy — and not in a good way.
The cartoon depicts Ramaswamy, a second-generation Indian American at a sparsely attended campaign stop of “MAGA friends” — a reference to former President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan, but more so what the cartoonist apparently believes to be the slack-jawed, racist yokels who support the MAGA movement.
One voter at the rally points his finger and calls Ramaswamy a “Muslim!!” Another yells out, “Show us your birth certificate!!!” And yet another mockingly screams, “Get me a Slushee Apu!!!”
“It’s sad that this is how the MSM views Republicans. I’ve met with grassroots conservatives across America & never *once* experienced the kind of bigotry that I regularly see from the Left. Iowa’s @qctimes absolutely has the right to print this, but it’s still shameful,” Ramaswamy, a tenacious First Amendment advocate and anti-woke crusader tweeted.
It’s sad that this is how the MSM views Republicans. I’ve met with grassroots conservatives across America & never *once* experienced the kind of bigotry that I regularly see from the Left. Iowa’s @qctimes absolutely has the right to print this, but it’s still shameful. pic.twitter.com/5QNwGSJgJb
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) June 22, 2023
It’s not the first time the political outsider has been racially objectified by the left.
Earlier this year during an interview about post-Civil War America, CNN host Don Lemon, who is black, attempted to race shame Ramaswamy.
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t express your views,” Lemon said. “But that you’re sitting here, whatever ethnicity you are, splaining to me what it’s like to be Black in America. I’m sorry.”
Woke warrior Lemon, who has had a history of saying things that have gotten him in trouble at CNN, was promptly fired from CNN.
‘Warning: Sexually Graphic Materials’
If a new political mailer hitting hundreds of thousands of Iowa and South Carolina homes this week seems “inappropriate,” it’s by design.
As Fox News first reported, Never Back Down, the super PAC backing GOP presidential candidate and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, takes on the the Left’s “book ban hoax.”
A disclaimer states, “Warning: The contents of this mailer include sexually graphic materials that Ron DeSantis removed from schools.”
It includes censored excerpts from the book “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe, which the governor’s office has previously described as an “explicit, pornographic book showing sex acts,” Fox News reported.
“This is a censored version of an actual book that Governor DeSantis helped parents remove from Florida schools. The uncensored version is much more graphic,” the mailer states.
Critics of the “age appropriate” policies have described the campaigns as “book bans.”
“Book banning erodes our democracy, removes vital resources for student learning, and can contribute to the stigma and isolation that LGBTQI+ people and other communities face,” the White House has said.
Earlier this year, DeSantis displayed some sexually explicit material from some of the books during a press conference when local media outlets reportedly cut away from the live event, inadvertently proving his point.
Haley’s Big Speech
Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley plans to deliver a “major foreign policy speech” on China next week. The address is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Tuesday at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.
Haley will then sit down with AEI executives, Zack Cooper and Robert Doar, as part of the institute’s “A New China Playbook” series. They will dive into how the U.S. can maintain its competitive edge against China while strengthening partnerships with allies in the Indo-Pacific, Haley’s campaign states.
The former ambassador to the United Nations under Trump has been pounding the foreign policy drum on of late. In a Washington Post column she wrote, “The story of the Biden administration’s approach to China has been weakness.”
Conservative columnist Liz Peek agreed in a piece for The Hill, but said Haley should have added “utter confusion” to her descriptor of Biden foreign policy.
“As Haley searches for daylight in the crowded Republican forest, she is smart to fasten on Biden’s China policy,” Peek wrote in the column that Haley’s campaign on Friday distributed far and wide. “Americans, alerted by Donald Trump — possibly his most important legacy — to Beijing’s long-time theft of intellectual property, unfair trade practices, human rights atrocities and cheating on international commitments, rightly distrust China and expect our government to protect our interests.”
Trump Fundraiser Draws Breathless Coverage
And speaking of Trump, the so-called mainstream media is breathlessly reporting that the GOP presidential frontrunner appeared this week at a fundraiser on behalf of people charged in the January 6, 2021 riots at the U.S. Capitol.
“I’m going to make a contribution,” Trump told the gathering hosted at his own private golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, NBC News reported. The group, Patriot Freedom Project, included at least one actual defendant along with multiple family members of those charged in what the news outlet continues to characterize as an insurrection.
Per usual, the NBC account, fails to note wide-ranging allegations of Justice Department abuses in the investigation and mention in passing (at the bottom of the story) that some of the detainees have been held more than two years without trial, including those not charged with any acts of violence. Many have been held for long periods in solitary confinement, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul wrote in a February 2022 appeal for due process.
Trump heralded the defendants, NBC News reported.
“You have police officers, you have firemen, you have teachers, you have electricians, you have great people, and they’ve been made to pay a price — in many cases, not all cases,” Trump said.
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Donald Trump” by GPA Photo Archive. Photo “Vivek Ramaswamy” by Vivek Ramaswamy. Photo “Tim Scott” by Tim Scott. Photo “Ron DeSantis” by Governor Ron DeSantis. Photo “Nikki Haley” by Nikki Haley. Photo “The White House” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 3.0.
