Will Dems Run on Roe v. Wade in 2022?
2 Sep 2021
CLAY: Looking at the Texas law as it pertains to abortion and trying to project what we thought the Supreme Court might do. And, by the way, Iโm Clay Travis; heโs Buck Sexton. We appreciate all of you hanging out with us. Encourage you to download the podcast. Blown away by how many of you are listening there. We also always love the 400-plus affiliates we have in all 50 states, and we thank all of you, for being such big proponents for the battles we fight every day, for being the tip of the spear to help us make a difference in this country.
So letโs talk about whatโs going on in the Supreme Court. Thereโs been all these emergency appeals trying to strike down the Texas law. The Supreme Court late last night, issued a little bit, I think, Buck of a preview for where they might be going as many different cases from many different states reached the Supreme Court. I believe Mississippi is up next on the official docket of the Supreme Court and the law that Mississippi has put in place as it pertains to abortion. But predictably, the left-wing in this country, is losing their mind.
Listen to cut 14 here and what Joy Reid had to say on MSNBC last night.
REID: By next summer (dramatic pause), we could be living in our own version of the Handmaidโs Tale, where forced birth is the law in large sections of the country, including (dramatic pause) for children.
CLAY: All right, so that is the discussion thatโs going on. Letโs have a more intelligent discussion.
BUCK: Have you ever heard forced birth, by the way? Iโm wondering whatโฆ You know, they use all these euphemisms for abortion, and they also will have all these scary terms for people actually having their children. But that was a first for me. Iโve never heard that.
CLAY: Yeah, thatโs the Handmaidโs Tale, where theyโre trying to terrify women all over the country. But hereโs the political angle on this mixed with the legal angle, which is what we talked about yesterday. I am not surprised at all that the Supreme Court decision here was 5-4. This is me putting my lawyer hat on. My prediction is that many of these state regulations are going to be held up by a 5-4 vote.
Chief Justice John Roberts is an institutionalist. Heโs an incrementalist. He will be terrified by the idea of overturning Roe v. Wade from 1973. I think the balancing act that is going to end up occurring is by defaultโฆ Theyโre not going to directly overrule Roe v. Wade. But they are going to allow more and more restrictive state laws to be legal. And that is going to effectively rescind a federal rule on abortion and return the decision, as it pertains to abortion, to individual states and individual state legislatures.
And I believe that margin is going to be 5-4. Even though there is a conservative majority, 6-3, I think John Roberts is going to side with the liberal element here. So in his mind, he can argue this is not a direct political decision. Even though the case is being made, Buck, I think, is going to be not an aggressive court overturning Roe v. Wade. Theyโre just going to punt this back to the individual states and allow them to make the decision.
BUCK: How do they do that without overturning Roe, because Roe says thereโs a federal right to abortion?
CLAY: Interesting. So itโs a good question. So the history has been, what exactly does that right to abortions mean? In terms of how many weeks, what is going to be the standard? And I think theyโre going to continue to dial back the number of weeks that a state can restrict abortion.
BUCK: Right. That may be a more Planned Parenthood v. Casey issue, when it comes to the actual specifics of what abortion entails.
CLAY: Theyโre going to avoid saying, โHey, weโre directly overturning Roe v. Wade,โ and theyโre going to citeโฆ This is my prediction. I think theyโre going to look at technology, I think theyโre going to look at medical advances, what you can determine about the state of a fetus now, compared to even back in 1973. And I think they are going to slowly dial back the amount of protection, federally, that exist, and allow states to incrementally take over more of the decision. Thatโs my prediction.
BUCK: This is where this is heading, Clay. Itโs going to be the nastiest political fight we have seen, probably in our lifetimes.
CLAY: Itโs going to be the Kavanaugh hearings on steroids.
BUCK: Itโs going to make the fights over election results and things like that, look like a tea party, I think โ and not like a Boston Tea Party, a nice one where the people have little China cups and stuff.
CLAY: (laughing)
BUCK: And the reality here is the left is going to go absolutely all out. I mean, thereโs this whole machinery of the abortion industry that is enormously influential and powerful. Itโs really the only thing, as a Democrat, that you have to sign on. To be a Democrat, you must be pro-choice, pro-abortion.
Thereโs no room for other things, really, as a Democrat in todayโs party or in their party. And theyโre going to put a pressure campaign together against sitting Supreme Court justices, the likes of which we have never really seen before. It will be somewhat similar to the ferocity of the smearing Kavanaugh campaign, but it will be much more drawn out. And the stakes in their mind, will be even higher. The left has convinced, unfortunately, millions of women and just leftists in general, that thereโs an enslavement of their body that would occur the moment that Roe v. Wade didnโt mean you could have an abortion in all nine months of a pregnancy.
Itโs a central pillar of leftism. Itโs not just another thing. It is the one thing that they hold sacred on the left above all else. So theyโll fight for this, Clay, more ferociously and in more underhanded fashion to keep this thing alive, than anything else I think weโve ever seen. Those are the stakes right now, politically for them. And you can see it already. Theyโre freaked out! Nothing has even happened yet.
CLAY: Yeah, and hereโs the big picture, okay? Big picture, I think that the Democratic Party, they failed on the economy. They failed on the border. They failed on Afghanistan. Theyโre failing on covid. All of those are failures. I think that this is going to be what they run on in 2022, Buck.
BUCK: Well, if your prediction about the court is correct and thereโs a major pairing back of the rights of Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
CLAY: Even if it doesnโt happen, theyโre setting the narrative that itโs going to happen, Buck, and theyโre going to try to go after these suburban women. We talk about the 40% you lost; the 40% you got. Suburban women are in that 20%. They are what helped to get Joe Biden elected, and suburban men.
BUCK: But without Trump in the picture, do you think that really works? Itโs going to be members of Congress. Itโs gonna be senators and the state level.
CLAY: Itโs a great question, and I think this is where they are desperation-wise though, Buck.
BUCK: What else do they have?
CLAY: Thatโs right.
BUCK: They have the insurrection.
CLAY: Which I donโt believe is going to work, right? So Iโm just trying to think, where are the battles going to be fought? Politics is about choosing the battles that you want to fight that you think you can win. I think there are losers on the economy. Losers on covid. Losers on the border. Losers on murder and crime.
BUCK: By the way, I donโt even know if you have to say, โI think,โ Clay.
CLAY: (laughing)
BUCK: We could say the data reflects it. Of course, I agree objectively speaking, thatโs whatโs going on. Even the data reflects what youโre saying, based on the poll numbers that Joe Biden currently has.
CLAY: Yeah.
BUCK: I also think they got a little lazy, where even the Russia collusion didnโt work to get Trump out of office, but it was incredibly effective โ and people hate what I say this. They know itโs true. Itโs incredibly effective as a smear to get into gears of the Trump administration โ
CLAY: It delegitimized a lot. Yes.
BUCK: โ to slow them down, to create all these other narratives, and to throw people into depositions and make them defend themselves, and all this crap that the Trump team had to deal with because of the Russia collusion lie. Now they think with the insurrection, โOh, weโll kind of run the same playbook of this thing that we make a huge deal about that we talk about forever.โ But it doesnโt work when youโre in power, because people actually want results.
CLAY: Thatโs right. This is it. I think youโre right. This is the play. Iโm not telling you where we are right now. Iโm telling you, what is going to be the play in 2022? I think youโre right. Insurrection canโt work. It can motivate maybe some of that base. They can try it.
BUCK: Theyโll try.
CLAY: But I donโt think it will resonate in suburban districts. What theyโre going to go after is the Handmaidโs Tale argument that Joy Reid just tried to argue, that you are not going to be able to make a choice about whether or not to have a baby.
BUCK: But we do have to remember that it is likely, when we look back at the Kavanaugh situation โ and I was living in D.C. and living a few blocks from the White House and just down the street from Capitol Hill when that whole thing went down, and it was crazy in that city, and people were astonished at howโฆ It wasnโt just ugly. It was evil what they were doing to Brett Kavanaugh.
CLAY: Yes. Yes.
BUCK: The lies that people were telling about him. The way the media was reporting on it. Like I said, it made a lot of wartime conservatives out of people. But, Clay, that probably kept the Democrats from taking the Senate in 2018. Remember, that wasโฆ You know, I remember there were senators. I actually spoke to Lindsey Graham about it. Tucker gave him the rough treatment last night.
CLAY: Lindsey Graham was phenomenal in the Kavanaugh hearings.
BUCK: He was amazing on Kavanaugh, and he was going around on the election cycle, talking about that issue. He was. No, that was Lindsey Grahamโs best moment ever. I saw the Tucker thing last night and thought, โWhew! Okay.โ See? Sometimes, things get heated even within the GOP tent.
CLAY: I think youโre right. I think as bad as that hearing was in the Senate, I think this is going to be on steroids in 2022, โcause I think itโs the only angle the Democrats think they can play.
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