There was an interesting discussion in Betty’s thread about about the legislator who was shocked that actual women are being hurt by the law he helped pass. If you missed that post, I think it’s worth going back to.
Bupalos shared his theory about the Republican position on abortion:
I think a lot of folks make the mistake of thinking the Republican abortion position is either more convoluted and conflicted or rational than it is.
It’s quite simple and clear. Their position on abortion is simply part of the overall agenda. They want to go back in time to an imaginary past. They want to solve what they see as social and moral and economic problems with one weird trick that has the benefit of being so impossible that it will never be tried and thus never be disproven. They can’t bear to look ahead, so they cover their eyes and dream.
The reason this guy didn’t think about the real world consequences of his vote is that he had a prior commitment to not living in the real world, where we are all here in the present and time is moving forward. Conservatives long ago gave up on slowing the movement of time and upped the ante to reversing it.
It isn’t “hate” or “controlling women” and he never wanted to actually hurt real women. He’s quite genuine. He wanted to help imaginary women, in a made up land of yesteryear. Unfortunately he got a real phone call in the real world that intruded on that delusion…
I think there’s a lot to be said for the idea that they want to go back in time to an imaginary post the exists only in their minds.
Kent replied with a different view:
I think it is simpler than that. I think abortion was simply a culture war issue that Republicans could use to cement their fundie base and mobilize large numbers of shock troops to go door to door during elections. The pro-life wackos are more or less the GOP equivalent of the unions that provide foot soldiers for the Democrats.
As long as Roe was in place they could stir up their rabid base of fundie foot soldiers by demagoguing on abortion because it didn’t really affect anyone else. Because Republicans are absolute masters at demagoguing to their base.
But with Dobbs they are now the dog that caught the car and they don’t quite know what the fuck to do. Suddenly their positions and laws are not simply performative nonsense that doesn’t actually affect anyone. Suddenly it affects EVERYONE and not in good ways.
Anyway, fuck them. They are now caught in a trap of their own making. The only way to deal with it is to flush them down the toilet via the ballot box.
And Roger Moore chimed in:
I think you’re missing an important point. Yes, the R position on abortion started out as a cynical ploy to recruit foot soldiers for the cause, but that was 40-50 years ago. The people who developed that cynical ploy are retired or dead, replaced by the foot soldiers they recruited. To them, abortion isn’t a cynical political ploy used to convince the rubes; it’s evil and the defining issue of our time. It’s a real shock to people who have believed in abortion as an issue for their whole political lives to discover it’s more complicated than they realized.
Maybe everybody’s right?
I want to include this tweet again, even though I posted it last night.
Michigan Deputy Attorney General Christina Grossi making an impassioned plea to allow women the ability to continue making their own decision about their bodies, their futures and their lives. pic.twitter.com/hSGwGhYQ6k
— Dana Nessel (@dananessel) August 19, 2022
It seems to me that the case that Deputy Attorney General Christina Grossi (Michigan) makes above is language that we can all use as we talk about this with people. Watching that clip also makes me feel especially good about the funds we have raised for Michigan, where the Governor, Secretary of State, and the Attorney General are all offices held by strong women who are up for reelection.
Regardless of why or how we got here, what are we going to do about it? How do we keep this issue front and center through the election in November?
Someone in the comments last night mentioned Roe, Roe, Roe your Vote – I checked twitter and it doesn’t appear to be a hashtag yet, but people do seem to be including that as sort of a tag line on their comments. I like that because it’s clever enough that we can use it over and over again without it being tiresome.
Open thread.
How Can They Be Like This? And What Are We Going To Do About It?Post + Comments (141)