As fellow Republicans duck and cover, Graham doubles down
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has lost that loving feeling. With Graham’s liege lord, Donald Trump, both out of office and the D.C. spotlight, as well as on legal hard times that threaten actual hard time, Graham must miss that reflected orange glow. He needs to grab back a little press attention.
Other Republicans are sheltering from fallout from the Dobbs decision cancelling Roe v. Wade and abortion access. (Remember Republican howls about cancel culture?) Voter backlash against an abortion ban in Kansas this summer put them on notice that even in red states opposing abortion rights could be a political job-killer. Voter registration among women is surging in battleground states.
Meanwhile, Graham is leaning into banning abortion (Forbes):
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is set to unveil a new bill Tuesday that aims to restrict abortion access nationwide, a politically risky move that comes as the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and a spate of near-total abortion bans in several Republican-controlled states appear to have galvanized Democratic voters ahead of the November midterms.
In an email sent out to reporters, Graham’s office said he will hold a press conference at the U.S. Capitol with anti-abortion leaders to announce the “Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children from Late-Term Abortions Act.”
According to the Washington Post, the bill is expected to propose a 15-week nationwide abortion ban, but its unclear if there will be any exceptions for victims of rape or incest or to save the mother’s life.
Graham’s proposal is D.O.A. in a Democrat-controlled Senate. Not even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will kill the filibuster to pass anti-abortion measures should he regain control in January after the 2022 elections. President Joe Biden would veto it.
“If Graham’s bill is as advertised, we should be clear that this is actually a blue state abortion ban,” tweeted TPM’s Josh Marshall. “The vast majority of red states already have bans stricter than this one. So the point here is really only to overrule the laws of blue states that protect abortion rights.”
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes called Graham’s proposal “a gift to Democrats.”
Republicans would like to shift the national conversation away from Dobbs and Team Trump’s mounting legal troubles related to Jan. 6 and stolen national security secrets. Maybe it’s just me, but Graham’s proposed legislation is not the way to do it.
Forbes again:
61%. That is the percentage of Americans who want states to guarantee access to abortion, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll last month. The poll also notes that 65% of Americans disapprove of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Yeah. Good luck with that, Lindsey (Political Wire):
Tom Bonier: “In my 28 years analyzing elections, I’ve never seen anything like what’s happened in the past two months in American politics: Women are registering to vote in numbers I’ve never witnessed. I’ve run out of superlatives to describe how different this moment is, especially in light of the cycles of tragedy and eventual resignation of recent years. This is a moment to throw old political assumptions out the window and to consider that Democrats could buck historic trends this cycle…”
“With over two months until Election Day, uncertainty abounds. Election prognostication relies heavily on past precedent. Yet there is no precedent for an election centered around the removal of a constitutional right affirmed a half-century before. Every poll we consume over the closing weeks of this election will rely on a likely voter model for which we have no benchmark.”
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