Thread: Donald Trump’s abortion gaffe won’t faze voters: Mike Huckabee

Donald Trump’s abortion gaffe won’t faze voters: Mike Huckabee
By S.A. Miller - The Washington Times - Thursday, March 31, 2016

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who ended his GOP presidential run earlier this year, said Thursday that everyday voters don’t care about Donald Trump’s gaffe saying anti-abortion laws should punish women for terminating a pregnancy.

Mr. Huckabee said voters are more concerned with electing a president who will “kick tail and take names” than someone who knows the correct political answer to abortion questions.

“If you talk to people in line at the grocery story and you talk to people at a restaurant and you go up and down the streets, they are not talking about the little nuances of what a candidate says,” Mr. Huckabee said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program.

“They are scared to death [that] they’re never going to have a good job again, their country is going to be invaded by people who will change their culture and come to terrorize America like Europe has been terrorized, and frankly they are willing to let some little things about a guy’s statements go by,” he said.

“They want to know are you going to make us better or worse, are you going to protect us, are you going to make us vulnerable like Europe,” he said. “And I think that is what is getting missed in this entire election.”

Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, caused a furor among both pro-life and pro-choice activists Wednesday when he said that under an abortion ban women should be punished for having an abortion.

He later walked back the comment to align himself with the longstanding pro-life position that doctors should be punished for performing abortions in violation to anti-abortion laws.

The abortion dustup was the latest in a series of perceived missteps by Mr. Trump on policy issues, including advocating nuclear proliferation to Japan and South Korea, which contradicts the United State’s longstanding commitment to nonproliferation.

But Mr. Huckabee, a pro-life adherent, said voters just don’t care about policy intricacies or whether Mr. Trump has thought them through.

“I thought all those issues through and I was ready for every one of the questions you are talking about but today I’m sitting in a chair as an unemployed ex-candidate talking to you about a guy who didn’t think them through who is the front-runner,” he said.

“This is what I hear all the time: ‘You know what, he’ll surround himself with people. They’ll fill in the blanks but by gosh I believe he’ll kick tail and take names and that’s what we need right now,’” said Mr. Huckabee.

Mr. Huckabee has not endorsed Mr. Trump, but he has frequently defended the candidate and his daughter, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is a senior adviser to the Trump campaign.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...e-voters-mike/

I'm Pro-Choice which means I support the decision of the woman regarding a pregnancy, whatever decision she makes, I support, because I believe she knows best what is the right decision for her at that time regarding having a baby. So Pro-Choice supports the Pro-Life girl or woman who wants to have a baby while protecting the rights of the girl or woman who doesn't. To me, that's the best view because you support people who want to have children whenever nature calls while protecting the rights of people who want medical intervention to disrupt nature's call. Nature is a wonderful thing, but nature also has forces that are not in the best interest of humans, and we support intervention against nature all the time to protect ourselves. To me this is no different.

I believe Roe v Wade settled this on a satisfactory level for all girls and women in 1974. Since then of course there's been a huge enterprise develop through 501 C 3 organizations, organizations funded with big donor money to fight the issue from one side or the other. Churches decided to get involved as well, and so it's been kept a source of political disruption and division ever since.

Ted Cruz for example opposes abortion without exceptions. If you're raped, he wants to force girls and women into childbirth against their will and has the audacity to call this "embracing her". If you're a victim of incest, he wants to force girls and women into childbirth against their will and calls her a "victim". If you're at risk of illness, injury or death from childbirth, he wants to force you to die having a baby against your will and calls this "conservative principles". If your fetus has serious problems of deformity or malformation or defect, he wants to force girls and women into having these babies against their will and calls this "informed".

Donald Trump is pro-life with exception to rape, incest and the life of the mother. He used to be Pro-Choice, and personally I think he's a still a combination of those two views, and frankly, I'm fine with that. This is not a agenda item for him, he wants to secure our borders, balance our budget and fix our trade deals to make our country great again.

I think Donald Trump is Pro-Life on a personal level now because of an experience he had with a rich couple who with the choice in hand decided to have a child late in life after their other children were nearly raised, and for them it worked out great. I'm sure she had the best medical care and money wasn't an issue. But, what if something had gone wrong and she died having a baby she really wasn't interested in having to begin with due to age and higher risk of complication? That would have been a very sad outcome and had she been forced into it by law, that would have been a great tragedy for her and her family.

Our Republican Party really needs to move our political elections off this needle. Like Trump said in his interview with Matthews, this is a very complicated issue, and he's right. The issues, desires and decisions are very complicated, there is no right public answer to each situation, the decision to reproduce is one of the most important personal and private decisions a woman makes in her life. Politicians who can't secure a border, can't balance a budget, and can't design a trade deal that benefits our country, are not the right people to be making the decision on reproduction in our country for political gain, so my advice to my fellow Americans is don't let them. Tell them all to shut up about abortion, and go fix our country.

Republicans need to demand that our National Platform Committee return our party to a neutral position on abortions, the way it was for most of my adult life. That was the right position, that is the proper view for a political party, and that is the true Republican view, laissez-faire, which means leave the people alone.

Trump: Ban Abortions, Punish Perpetrators

"There has to be some form of punishment."

3.30.2016 Paul Bois

Donald Trump has issued his most pro-life statement yet, declaring that abortion should be banned and even initially stating that there should be some punishment in place for women who get them, not to mention the providers.

In an interview with Chris Matthews of leftist MSNBC Wednesday, Trump was grilled on his newly professed pro-life stance when the host asked that if he really believes abortion is murder, then does he support punishment for the perpetrators of some kind? Though attempting to dance around the question, Trump eventually came out in the affirmative.

"There has to be some form of punishment," Trump said, declining to specify what exactly the banishment should be.

Referring to abortion as a "very serious issue," Trump supported a full-on ban with some exceptions. He did concede that women still would obtain abortion illegally, a trump card (pun intended) usually employed by the left, but he stuck by his stance regardless.

"Well, you go back to a position like they had where they would perhaps go to illegal places, but we have to ban it," Trump said.

Both anti-abortionists and pro-abortionists responded with harsh criticism; Trump's presidential rival John Kasich, for example, told MSNBC: "Of course, women shouldn't be punished for having an abortion."

But Trump never stated what the punishment would actually be and even eschewed possibility of jail time. Obviously if states were to make abortions illegal, some type of legal ramification would have to be in place. What that would be remains a question for debate, but current state abortion restrictions and the pro-life movement itself generally favor a penalty on the illegal abortion provider, not the woman.

Later Wednesday afternoon, Trump clarified his position in a statement released by campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks: "This issue is unclear and should be put back into the states for determination. Like Ronald Reagan, I am pro-life with exceptions, which I have outlined numerous times." If abortions were to be banned by the states, the statement read, "the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman."

The Freedom Center is a 501c3 non-profit organization. Therefore we do not endorse political candidates either in primary or general elections. However, as defenders of America’s social contract, we insist that the rules laid down by both parties at the outset of campaigns be respected, and that the results be decided by free elections. We will oppose any attempt to rig the system and deny voters of either party their constitutional right to elect candidates of their choice.

Trump: Ban Abortions, Punish Perpetrators | Truth Revolt

Referring to abortion as a "very serious issue," Trump supported a full-on ban with some exceptions. He did concede that women still would obtain abortion illegally, a trump card (pun intended) usually employed by the left, but he stuck by his stance regardless.

"Well, you go back to a position like they had where they would perhaps go to illegal places, but we have to ban it," Trump said.

He's exactly right. He's always right. That is exactly what will happen, because that's why the matter went to the US Supreme Court to begin with. That's not a "left" trump card, that's just an historical fact. Girls and women who do not want to have a baby will do anything to get rid of it including risking their own lives to do so.

When he said "some conservatives in the Republican Party support punishment of women", he's exactly right on that as well. People who say otherwise are lying through their teeth. I've blogged elsewhere on this issue and believe me, many Conservatives who blog about it want her prosecuted for murder and put to death. Ted Cruz for example wants capital punishment for abortion providers.

These are not rationale positions for our little Land of Liberty whose Constitution is founded on the principle of laissez-faire which means leave the people alone.

As far as I am concerned, nobody is injured when a woman gets an abortion. The contents of a woman's uterus are not a person, legally or morally. Abortion should be state funded along with access to birth control.

Trumps stand on abortion doesn't even slow me down. If he intends to do the rest of the things he says he wants to do, I still support him.