Year: 2016

Bill Kristol Is Even More Delusional Than I Thought

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I wasn’t expecting any good to come out of Kristol’s desperate search for an independent presidential candidate….but this is so, so much dumber than even I was expecting.

I like David French a lot — he’s a smart, serious conservative, a combat vet, a religious liberty lawyer, and one of National Review’s better analysts. But if an actual officeholder or past candidate’s chances of winning the election were already extremely remote, how is somebody with no name recognition outside of right-wing wonk circles going to make a dent?

Don’t tell me about pie-in-the-sky scenarios about the Electoral College turning the decision over to the House (which not only would require an absurdly specific win/loss ratio to happen, but would probably result in Trump anyway). Tell me how this makes President Hillary Clinton less likely. Tell me how conservatives recover from a leftist 6-3 (or worse) Supreme Court majority and enough illegals-made-voters to give Democrats a permanent national majority.

I get it. I hate Trump too. I stayed on board with ‪#‎NeverTrump‬ for as long as I could. I’ve gone through all the anger, confusion, depression, and desperation over how horribly wrong this election has gone. But after gaming out how all the scenarios play out, I simply can’t conclude that staying home or voting independent/3rd-party/write-in would end in anything but a net disaster for the country’s future.

All we can do now is bite the bullet. It pains me to say it, but right now the cretinous orange buffoon is the only weapon at our disposal with which to stop Hillary Clinton from giving the Left a lifetime stranglehold on the federal government. So vote for him, hope that his selfish political interest (NOT nonexistent personal principles) force him to follow through on his biggest promises, prepare to go back to #NeverTrump in 2020 if he betrays us (hell, let’s plan on primarying his second term anyway), and spend the next several years fixing our mistakes as a movement that got us into this mess in the first place, so we’ll never squander an opportunity like a Ted Cruz again.

Should You Vote for Donald Trump?

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After decades of lackluster presidential nominees who embodied various diluted forms of center-right thought, this year we finally had an authentic, passionate movement conservative to rally around in Ted Cruz. Finally we had an opportunity to restore the Constitution, liberty, and prosperity; to take real steps toward ending the massacre of abortion, to shrink government rather than slow its growth, to turn the tide of America’s culture war and put the Left on the defensive for a change. Finally we had our chance to vindicate conservatism against the cancerous moderation espoused by the Republican establishment.

And we blew it. Thanks to a perfect storm of primary voters letting themselves be conned by a clown and divided among a half-dozen mediocrities and vanity candidates, and too few conservative leaders willing to show leadership and make clear that Cruz was the only serious choice, instead we’re now stuck with Donald Trump as the GOP nominee for President of the United States. A choice so manifestly terrible that it seemed inconceivable a year ago. Yet here we are.

So patriots have a decision to make: hold our nose and vote for Trump to protect the country from Hillary Clinton, or stay home to protest Trump’s lack of character, competence, and conservatism? My answer has wavered back and forth over the past year, so I hope this review of all the arguments for and against will help similarly conflicted conservatives find a definitive answer.

Before diving in, let’s dismiss two unserious options out of hand: voting for Hillary Clinton (such a despicable, asinine idea that those who’ve written and published it should be ashamed of themselves), and voting for a third-party or independent candidate (no, not even that obnoxious imbecile Austin Petersen who gives Glenn Beck such a tingle up his leg). It’s simply delusional to believe the latter could actually become president, so if you’re doing it for the symbolism it’s functionally no different than staying home. If you absolutely must put down another name at the ballot box, at least choose a deserving and likely future nominee by writing in Ted Cruz.

(Caveat: if by some bizarre, infinitesimal, miraculous twist of fate a quality conservative somehow uncovers the secret path for an independent candidate to reach the White House, I of course reserve the right to take that back and revise the conclusion of this post.)

That said, let’s begin. Continue reading →

New at Live Action: Pro-Lifers Need to Defeat Abortion, Not Compromise With It

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In a rare, refreshing instance of someone other than the pro-life blogosphere telling pro-abortion extremists to grow up, Kyle Lorey has a column at Odyssey this week making the case that abortion defenders should stop calling pro-lifers “anti-choice.”

After explaining his decision to not state his own position on abortion in hopes of keeping readers on either side from reading his critique through a predetermined lense, Lorey writes that the label needlessly gets in the way of having productive conversations about abortion and potentially finding areas of compromise…

If the left wishes to advance their cause, they needn’t focus on overturning the entire moral viewpoint of pro-lifers—such an approach is doomed to failure. Instead, they should focus on the nitty-gritty; this allows the debate to focus on specifics and pragmatics as opposed to sweeping generalities about the inherent immorality of the opposing side. If both sides can forget those huge differences, real discourse about state and federal policy can be achieved. Toward this end, divisive rhetorical tools should be curtailed—including the terming of pro-lifers “anti-choice.” If a Republican who wished to compromise with the Democrats referred to them as “communist swine” while discussing policy with them, everyone would be much less willing to even begin to engage.

This is all true enough; there are some things that well-meaning people on both sides should be able to agree on, like actual women’s health care, basic protection for infants who survive abortions, giving abortion-minded and post-abortive women support instead of punishment, and requiring common-sense medical standards to protect women from so-called “medical practitioners” who don’t have their best interests at heart.

Read the rest at Live Action News.

New at Live Action: Vox Spreads Abortion Myths While Pretending to Correct It

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Just days after unsuccessfully arguing that banning abortion with rape and health exceptions is still too extreme, Vox has a new video that purports to debunk the “biggest myth about abortion you probably think is true.” Unfortunately, being Vox, all the video ends up doing is reinforcing myths.

The video’s narrator, Liz Plank, demonstrates that those who “feel passionate about abortion” “don’t know much about it” by interviewing pro-life protestors outside the Supreme Court.

Read the rest at Live Action News.

New at Live Action: Sanders Says He’ll Use Justice Department “To Go After” State Pro-Life Laws

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In a bid to counteract Hillary Clinton’s narrative that she’s the one true pro-abortion candidate, Vermont Senator and Democrat presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has offered his most aggressive promise to abortion fans yet.

On Monday, he essentially told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes that he would use the power of the presidency to disenfranchise pro-life voters at the state level…

[I]t is no secret that in states all over this country, in a dozen different ways, there are governors and legislatures who are trying to make it impossible for a woman to control her own body. I will use the Department of Justice to go after those states in every way that I legally can. I believe that in the United States of America women have that right to control their own body[.]

I find that, I must say, completely hypocritical for my Republican colleagues who tell us every day how much they hate government, how they want to get government out of our life, but they think that local state and federal government have the right to tell you and every woman in America what she can do with her body. That is hypocrisy.

The second part of that statement is a cheap attack Sanders has hurled repeatedly throughout the campaign, but while it might amuse his groupies jonesing for a quick hit of smug superiority, all it really does is display the shallowness of his arguments on the issue.

Read the rest at Live Action News.

New at Live Action: Vox Declares Even Abortion Exceptions “Major Human Rights Problem”

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There’s been a lot of talk about abortion exceptions lately, mostly in the form of abortion defenders brainstorming to figure out the best ways to turn them against pro-lifers.

Usually it’s as simple as “they oppose any exceptions because they’re extremists who don’t care about women,” but they also have a backup narrative. At Vox, Emily Crockett attempts to argue that instead of concessions pro-life politicians have made to pro-abortion fears, for which pro-choicers should be grateful and reciprocate with concessions of their own, “these exceptions are actually a major human rights problem.”

Give pro-aborts an inch, and they’ll bludgeon you with it for the rest of your days…

Read the rest at Live Action News.

New at Live Action: Cecile Richards Equate Abortion “Rights” with Fight Against Racism

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Last week we covered Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards’s condescending non-answers to pro-life students attending her speech at Georgetown University, but it turns out that wasn’t even the most outrageous highlight of the event. No, that would be the part of her speech when she said:

Our history with race in America is something that we all have to address, including Planned Parenthood. It’s important that we understand our collective history and the legacy that it leaves on those that are still living in an unjust system. Lack of access to healthcare and reproductive rights is a result of many factors—race, gender, sexual orientation, geography and immigration status. In order to build true equity in America we have to address it all.

Yes, that’s the president of the country’s largest killer of minority children comparing her side to the fight against racism.

Read the rest at Live Action News.

New at Live Action: Raw Story Hypes Planned Parenthood Employee’s Profanity-Laden Rant

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Without accurate facts and superior reasoning to vindicate their position, the pro-abortion media often finds itself having to scrape the bottom of the barrel for morale boosts.

On Friday, Raw Story’s Tom Boggioni provided a golden example of the phenomenon by gushing over how “awesome” it was to read a Portland, Oregon Planned Parenthood employee known only as Damien “smack down” pro-lifers in a Tumblr post (Tumblr sign-up required to read) and follow-up to critics supposedly illustrating the critical importance of the abortion giant’s work.

For those keeping score, profanity-laden rants that coddle pro-abortion biases and ignoring news stories that undermine the preferred narrative meet Raw Story’s definition of awesome; fact-checking reports before publishing them and accurately characterizing articles you’re criticizing do not.

Read the rest at Live Action News.

New at Live Action: Donald Trump’s Amendments to GOP Platform on Abortion Would Be a Disaster

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If it wasn’t already clear that Donald Trump doesn’t really understand how pro-lifers think, he’s doing a bang-up job of reinforcing the point every few weeks. As Live Action News’ Danny David covered earlier, Trump said the following on the Today Show:

SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: The Republican platform, every four years, has a provision that states that the right of the unborn child shall not be infringed. And it makes no exceptions for rape, for incest, for the life of the mother. Would you want to change the Republican platform to include the exceptions that you have?

TRUMP: Yes, I would. Yes, I would. Absolutely. For the three exceptions, I would.

GUTHRIE: Would you have an exception for the health of the mother?

TRUMP: I would leave it to the life of the mother, but I would absolutely have the three exceptions.

Pro-life activist Abby Johnson had some choice words in response:

Read the rest at Live Action News.

New at Live Action: Pro-Aborts Freak Out After O’Reilly Hits “Health” Loophole for Abortion

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Bill O’Reilly’s done it again. Pro-abortion bloggers are suffering conniptions over the Fox News host’s statements in the below segment the other night:

 

O’REILLY: If you are going to say that the two Democrats running for president both favor pretty much abortion at any time, for any reason, and they hide behind the women’s health issue, but that could be a migraine headache, you know. OK, I don’t want to have the kid, my boyfriend left me, my husband left me, whatever it may be, I got a migraine, kid is going to be born next week.

KIRSTEN POWERS: I don’t think that many people get abortions because they have a migraine headache.

O’REILLY: It doesn’t matter. It’s theoretical. When you have two candidates saying they don’t want any limitations, alright, in the law place, alright, they don’t want any. And that can happen. We know it happened in Kansas, did that big investigation on Tiller, you know it happened there. And so that’s so radical and so far away from what the American people want that that’s just one example.

Media Matters ran with it. Raw Story’s Arturo Garcia characterized O’Reilly as saying women will “make up migraines.” Ellen at Crooks and Liars said it displayed O’Reilly’s “naked hatred for women.” Megan C at Left Wing Nation asks, “Where’s the straight-jacket for this guy?” Fusion’s Taryn Hillin wails that he insinuated “women are somehow cavalier, weak, or lazy for choosing not to have a baby.” Joe Clark at If You Only News calls it a “sexist asinine abortion argument” that “will make you want to vomit.” And Sydney Robinson at The Ring of Fire oh-so-cleverly called him a “big pig” spewing “hatred and bigotry.”

That’s an awful lot of hyperbole when “we don’t understand the subject matter” would have gotten the point across just fine.

Read the rest at Live Action News.