Pro-Life Voters & The War Cartel: The Alliance Mike Pence Seeks To Reunite
The former VP laid out how he plans to challenge his old boss. Read how Pence seeks to manipulate the pro-life movement into a potential disaster.
Former vice-president Mike Pence announced this week that he was running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. This is the first time a VP has challenged the president in whose administration he served. And while Pence, like all the other Republican challengers, is ultimately just banking on (rooting for?) an indictment of President Trump, the former VP also outlined two key areas where he plans to try and differentiate himself from Trump.
I’m not talking about Pence’s self-congratulatory anointing of himself as a defender of the U.S. Constitution on January 6, 2021. When Pence says he was asked to overturn the election, he’s lying, and he knows he’s lying. That’s covered here. And the full meaning of what we know about that day is covered here. With polls consistently showing that well over 60 percent of Americans now know that undercover FBI agents instigated the riot, it’s safe to assume that those still blaming Trump are doing so simply because they want to.
But there were some actual, legitimate issues that Pence sought to differentiate himself on. Most notably…
*Pence argues that Trump is leading the U.S. on a retreat from our role as the defender of people fighting for their freedom, a direct reference to Pence’s support for a continued U.S. role in Ukraine.
*Pence seeks to appeal to pro-life voters like myself with a call for the GOP to lead on the fight for the sanctity of life, and repudiating the idea that in the post-Roe era, abortion law will be primarily a state-level decision.
It all sounds so soothing and nice. And it would be a great basis for a presidential campaign. If this were 1988. But in 2023-24 it’s a Pied Piper’s call that threatens to lead the pro-life movement to at least disappointment, potentially disaster, and to do the same for the country.
To understand why, It’s important to unpack several decades worth of Republican politics, how the pro-life movement fit into that, and what it means in the new era.
So, get comfortable, we’re going to take a ride through political history in the Roe vs. Wade era, see what we can glean from that and let it shape an understanding for how to move forward.
June 24, 2022
It was the greatest day in American politics in my lifetime and the greatest for the country since the Emancipation Proclamation. On a Friday morning, as I did my work and listened to Steve Bannon’s War Room show, a breaking news report came in from the Supreme Court. “Roe vs. Wade has been overturned!” said the reporter.
There were a lot of emotions on that day. Most importantly, for the over 60 million human beings aborted in the womb since 1973. But as the days passed, there was one thought lingering beneath the surface for me. It was that I had put up with a lot from the Republican Party over the years to get to this point.
There was a lot to dislike about what Republicans had done (or not done) on the broad scope of issues facing the country. We’re about to touch on their often spotty record on the right to life itself. Beyond that, they routinely failed to live up to their professed principles on federal spending, something they reminded us of anew last week. While Democrats fought hard for their voters, GOP officials made a habit of abandoning those who voted for them. All of which was reason enough to be annoyed.
But when it came to what I had put up with, I was mostly thinking about all the foreign wars.
The overturn of Roe came precisely three months after Russia had invaded Ukraine. Prior to that invasion, I was under the honest impression that Republicans had learned their lesson about getting involved in messes overseas after it took us 20 years to get out of the Middle East. Silly me. It turns out that the War Machine had just gone into hiding during the Trump era and waited for the Russian invasion to resurface.
Thus, in the nearly one year that has passed since the overturn of Roe, I find myself growing in agitation at GOP war policy (which is now also Democrat war policy) and finding fewer reasons to overlook it.
Understanding the Pro-Life Perspective
Perhaps here might be a good time to step back and explain why I, and so many others, believe the right to life is not simply one issue among many, but the pre-eminent issue in the voting booth. Thanks to the graciousness of pollster Rich Baris, who recently promoted a Corned Beef Catholicism piece on the Russia-Ukraine War on his terrific Inside The Numbers show, we’ve got an influx of new subscribers who may agree with pro-lifers on abortion, but perhaps not understand why so many of us rank it as the issue above all issues.
And, for the pro-life movement itself, as we enter an entirely new era of politics, I think it’s worth reminding ourselves precisely why so many of us have operated as we did in presidential elections and considering how that applies to the post-Roe world.
It’s not that the pro-life movement has ever believed that life in the womb is more valuable than life outside of it. The notion that pro-lifers don’t care what happens to the child after birth is the real Big Lie in American politics.
While the pro-life movement has rejected the “seamless garment” view, which sought to place the rights of the unborn on the same moral plane as opposition to capital punishment, no one (at least that I know of) ever denied that the threats to the sanctity of life came from all angles. From human trafficking to the launching of unjust wars. To genocide, slavery and everything else that human beings have done to each other since Cain slew his brother Abel.
But one thing that made abortion different is the fact the ideal legislative answer was black-and-white. The unborn child needed to be protected by law. Period. Finding a solution to other problems, with the exception of slavery, was more vexed. Would a proposed solution to hit the trafficking cartels do more harm than good? Is a particular war just or unjust? It’s not always easy to know that in the moment. You have to wait for time to pass to do a sober assessment. But a human being’s right to life and freedom should be sacrosanct under the law.
Furthermore, what made living and voting in the United States from the period of 1973 onward, is that the sheer volume of abortions performed forced it to the top of the list of direct threats to life. No longer something that existed as an isolated tragedy, the Abortion Industry became a full-blown killing machine, generating billions upon billions of dollars annually. The death toll exceeded 60 million human beings in the United States alone.
And because of Roe vs. Wade, pro-lifers were powerless to do anything legislatively to stop it. Even the mildest of restrictions were often struck down by courts.
That made getting rid of Roe the prerequisite for doing anything else. And the office of the presidency held overwhelming power in making that happen—the sole right to make nominations to the judiciary, needing only a majority vote in the Senate to confirm.
Thus, the following confluence of circumstances came together post-1973:
*Abortion, by volume, became the most direct threat to the sanctity of human life in our culture.
*It was a threat against life that had a clear-cut, legislative solution available.
*Roe vs. Wade was a block to move even incrementally towards that solution.
*The office of the presidency was absolutely essential to get rid of Roe.
Hence, all the political commitment and energy of pro-lifers needed to be, first and foremost, directed towards winning the White House.
The Partisan Alignment
In 1973, it was far from a given that the Democratic Party would become the bought-and-paid-for instrument of the abortion lobby. Ted Kennedy at least held a public pro-life stance. Former House Speaker Tip O’Neill had a 100 percent pro-life voting record until his dying day. Jimmy Carter was pro-life. So were many other Democrats. Until they weren’t. By the time I got interested in politics in 1984 and then began voting in 1988, the Democratic Party was firmly in the camp of legalized abortion, while the Republican Party, thanks to the rise of Ronald Reagan, had adopted an unequivocal pro-life platform.
Even so, there was still room in the Democratic Party for pro-life voters. That began to change in 1992. Robert Casey Sr., the governor of Pennsylvania was a Democrat, a liberal across the board with one exception—he was pro-life. He asked to speak to the national convention that summer on behalf of the unborn. Bill Clinton, about to be nominated for the first time, denied the request.
The message the Democrats had sent to pro-lifers was clear. Even though pro-life voters and activists might have agreed with, or at least been sympathetic, to various other aspects of the party platform—particularly access to healthcare and what used to be an antiwar stance—those pro-lifers had been given a clear message—"We don’t want your kind here. We’ll take your vote, but only so long as you sit down and shut up.”
Over the next 10-15 years, the Democratic Party was systematically purged. Casey’s son, Bob Junior, ran for governor of Pennsylvania in 2002 as a pro-lifer. He was buried by pro-choice Ed Rendell under an avalanche of abortion industry money in the Democratic primary. Junior got the message—he’s effectively changed his stance and is now a Senator from the Keystone State, a reliable vote for the Abortion Industry on any vote that really matters.
Maybe it’s because I lived in Pittsburgh for most of the 2000s, but that Casey Jr – Rendell primary fight is one that always stands out to me as the pro-lifers last stand in the Democratic Party. Today, pro-life Democrats are few and far between. The organization Democrats For Life, headed up by the tough and courageous Kristin Day, continues to carry on the fight. I’ve been glad to give DFL some of my small-dollar donations over the years, and as recently as 2020, even volunteered to help one of their state legislative candidates long-distance. But they are like guerrilla fighters exiled to the Isle of Elba.
Hence, if you were a pro-life voter, the Republicans became the only game in town.
The Uneasy Alliance
There’s an excellent book about nations that run expansionist foreign policies. It’s called Myths of Empire, by Jack Snyder. And while there are a lot of great reasons to read it, there was one part in particular that jumped out at me.
In came in a discussion of Germany under Otto van Bismarck in the late 19th century, and it noted that the political coalitions and industry that profit from military expansion rely on logrolling to sustain domestic support. Or, put more simply, advocates of military adventurism abroad, need to put together support from groups that don’t otherwise support their agenda in order to maintain governing control.
I’m not sure why this struck me. In a way, it would seem obvious. Getting political power, particularly in a nation as populous as the United States, is going to require putting together a coalition of people and groups with varied interests. Any coalition big enough to win a presidential election will have inherent tensions inside of it.
Maybe it was because I was reading Myths of Empire this past summer in Rich Baris’ Book Club, in the context of sorting out my thoughts on what the post-Roe era meant, that this realization struck me. But it’s really simple. The Republican Party, up until the rise of Donald J. Trump, had built its political coalition by starting with three broad groups:
*The so-called “neo-conservatives” who believed in projecting American military power around the globe.
*Supply-side conservatives, who focus on cutting taxes
*The fiscal conservatives, who believed in reducing federal spending and getting to a balanced budget.
Being logrolled into this coalition was the only option the pro-life movement had, given the open hostility of the Democratic Party.
The Results
The Irish writer, William Butler Yeats, once wrote that “things reveal themselves in passing away.” Now that Roe era is thankfully over, let’s see how each element of the logrolled coalition fared, covering the administrations of Ronald Reagan, and both Bushes…
*The tax-cutters did well. Reagan’s tax bills of 1981 and 1986 brought the top marginal rate down from 70 percent to 28 percent. Even with modest increases in future years, our top rate is still only 37 percent. The Reagan tax cuts were a seminal moment in American economic history, and one I think we are better off for.
*The fiscal conservatives have gotten less than nothing. The national debt sitting at $31 trillion will bear witness to that.
*The reason the fiscal conservatives have gotten nothing is the neo-conservatives have gotten everything. Consider the abundant rewards that proponents of military adventurism have reaped. Off the top of my head, they got an invasion of Panama, troops in Kosovo and Lebanon, a CIA-engineered coup in Ukraine, the first Gulf War under Papa Bush, and then the crown jewel—the 20-year gold mine that was the Middle East Wars of Bush the Younger and Dick Cheney. And now they get Russia and Ukraine.
So, the military crowd is doing very well under this logrolled coalition.
In the meantime, there were seven opportunities, prior to the election of Donald Trump, that Republican presidents had to make Supreme Court nominations and deliver for the pro-life movement. Here’s the record:
1981: Reagan appointed Sandra Day O’Connor. She was a failure. Ronald Reagan is held in high regard among pro-lifers, including me. But it has to be said—Reagan was warned in advance that O’Connor was not reliable on the right to life. If you read the book Prince of Darkness, an autobiography by the late Bob Novak, the best political reporter of his day, he recounts the O’Connor nomination. Novak reports that behind the scenes pro-lifers in O’Connor’s home state of Arizona were begging the new president not to choose her. Reagan ignored the warnings. The first chance to deliver for pro-lifers was missed.
1986: Reagan appoints Antonin Scalia. It would be one of the great nominations of all-time. It was made even better by the fact that the Court opening came from the retirement of a Chief Justice, and Reagan completed the parlay by elevating the rock-solid William Rehnquist to the top spot, while having Scalia fill out the group of nine. Scalia would become a legend on the court, a pro-life hero, and his staff would include Amy Coney Barrett, the woman who eventually became the needed fifth vote to overturn Roe.
1987: Reagan picks Anthony Kennedy. This pick proved disastrous, but Reagan can be absolved. His original choice was Robert Bork, a judge so brilliant that he would have made Scalia look amateurish by comparison. But the Democrats controlled the Senate and they blocked the Bork nomination. The judicial bench for conservatives was not nearly as deep as it is today. The problem was made worse when Reagan’s second pick, Douglas Ginsburg, was forced to withdraw because of revelations he had once smoked pot (yes, times have changed). By forcing Reagan to his third-string choice, Democrats increased the likelihood of a bad pick. And they got their wish.
1990: Poppy Bush picks David Souter. This was a terrible choice, and it could have been reasonably deduced at the time that Souter—a man with no real paper trail and championed by pro-abortion Republican senator William Rudman—would fail the pro-lifers.
1991: Given a second chance, Bush Senior came through with the home run selection of Clarence Thomas, and then stood by him through the brutal and slanderous confirmation fight. A great moment and a great win.
2005: Now in the younger Bush generation, Junior put forth John Roberts, both to fill a vacancy and to become Chief Justice. That this pick would prove utterly disastrous wasn’t as obvious at the time as it had been with Souter. But there was certainly nothing in Roberts’ track record to suggest he was solid. And unlike Reagan and Bush Senior, Junior had a Senate that was comfortably controlled by Republicans, and a deep bench of rising conservative judicial talent. Roberts was a lazy pick that at least invited the disaster he became.
2006: This one was interesting. Bush Jr. put forth his personal lawyer, Harriet Miers. She had no judicial experience. No one had any idea what she thought about anything. This was a bridge too far, not just for pro-lifers, but for conservatives of all stripes. Bush, faced with a rebellion in his own ranks, pulled the Miers nomination and submitted Sam Alito instead. Alito would prove solid and was the man who authored the historic Dobbs decision to overturn Roe.
So, that’s the record. That’s how pro-lifers fared in the logrolled Republican coalition prior to Trump.
There were only three good picks in seven chances (Scalia, Thomas, Alito). Even if we cut Reagan slack for the Kennedy nomination, we still have to factor in that Bush needed to be begged and steamrolled for Alito.
We’re talking a 50/50 scenario at best. That’s in comparison to the tax-cutters and the military expansionists making out like bandits. They were feasting while we got scraps from the table.
One thing I do want to step back and again emphasize is that there was no other choice. I’ve found over the years that if I bring this up, pro-lifers get unnecessarily defensive. Perhaps that’s made worse by an environment where liberal Catholics regularly harangued Republicans for their failures, while doing nothing to confront Democrats about their full-on embrace of the Death Industry. I don’t like the fact that I felt no other choice in 2012 but to vote for a man with the character of Mitt Romney. But it wasn’t my idea, nor the idea of anyone else in the pro-life movement, to create the political landscape described above.
The Man from Mar-a-Lago
Donald Trump began reshaping the Republican coalition. He continued the Republican tradition of tax-cutting, with a 2017 tax bill that helped spur the economy. But his America First foreign policy represented a sharp U-turn as far as foreign wars went. And the pro-lifers, instead of waiting for scraps, were eating at the main table.
Mistrust of Trump among pro-lifers, myself included, had been high in 2016. He responded by putting out a list of judges that he committed to choose from, for both the Supreme Court and elsewhere on the federal bench. The list was vetted by qualified people and deemed worthy. Trump was elected. And he kept his promises with the nominations of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanagh, and Amy Coney Barrett.
Moreover, he kept those promises when it would have been easy or convenient to abandon them. It would have been convenient to cut Kavanagh loose after the scurrilous sexual assault charges were made against him in 2018—in a Senate where Republicans had only a 51-seat majority. But Trump stuck with Kavanagh and won the fight.
Then, Trump hit the campaign trail and helped Republicans add two Senate seats in that year’s midterm elections. He had 53 seats to work with when Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away on September 18, 2020.
It would have been easy for Trump to delay a nomination until after the election. Had he done so, he would have ensured a highly motivated pro-life base. He could have said he was being consistent, since Republicans had refused to confirm Obama appointee Merrick Garland in 2016 on the grounds that it was an election year. But Trump didn’t toy with us—acting against his own political interests, he did the right thing and put forth Barrett. The rest is history. And so is Roe vs. Wade.
Republican War Hawks Respond
The War Cartel in the Republican Party was on the run. They had been frozen out in the Trump era. While they were finding new allies in the Democratic Party, they were still plenty of people who benefitted—both politically and financially—from the logrolled GOP coalition of war hawks, tax-cutters and pro-lifers.
Enter Mike Pence. In so many ways, he’s the ideal person to try and revive this old coalition. There are problems with the other challengers to Trump.
Nikki Haley speaks for the War Industry, but social conservatives don’t trust her. For that matter, neither does anyone else. The same goes for Chris Christie.
No one’s really sure where Ron DeSantis is at with this. His original statement on Russia-Ukraine, given in response to a questionnaire from Tucker Carlson, was very America First and I loved it. But the War Hawks, who finance DeSantis’ campaign, yanked the chain of their candidate and he backed down. One DeSantis donor even said that if he wanted America First, he would have given his money to Trump. DeSantis now stays in safe media zones where he’s rarely even asked about foreign wars and never really pressed. It’s frankly kind of heartbreaking to watch.
We’ll see what happens with Tim Scott. He may end up jousting with Pence in the lane (to the extent that one exists) of people who want to restore the old, logrolled coalition. Scott has the social conservative street cred necessary, but we don’t know if he’ll take up the War Crusade with the same fervor as Pence.
None of the challengers have made military adventurism and social conservatism their platform to the degree that Pence has. He is the personification of the old coalition.
A Brave New World
I’m in my early fifties. Next year will be the 10th presidential election I’ve voted in and the 11th I’ve seriously followed. And it will be the first one where the specter of Roe vs. Wade isn’t hanging over our nation. If you’re a pro-life voter, my age or younger, you know no other world than the one where Roe drove our presidential politics. Where to from here?
How about we start by going back to the reasons listed above that defined why the right to life our driving force in presidential politics. Let’s see what still applies and what’s changed.
*Tragically, we still live in a nation where the Abortion Industry is a billion-dollar killing machine.
*But we now have power to at least make headway in stopping that machine.
*In the new era, the office of the presidency has very little power.
Thus, the moral imperative remains. But the landscape is drastically different.
Here’s the reality when it comes to the presidency—it’s main job now is to simply serve as a defensive mechanism. The president can and must veto any efforts to codify Roe legislatively. But that’s about it.
Yes, you could theoretically push for Heartbeat Bill—a ban on abortion after six weeks, as has been passed in states ranging from Florida to Texas to Georgia. But there’s no national support for that kind of restriction yet.
Look, I have enough Irish Catholic blood in me to always welcome a futile crusade against power. But you better be sure you know what you’re getting into, and the most likely outcome of a national crusade for Heartbeat legislation is defeat and the election of people who will codify Roe, stripping all the pro-life states of their newfound opportunities.
Thus, doing what Pence seems to be advocating has almost no upside for the pro-life movement and a devastating amount of downside.
*More realistic is the push for a federal ban on late-term abortions—anything after 15-20 weeks. Even many people who consider themselves pro-choice are on board there. But even here, any legislation at all, is going to need 60 votes in the Senate to break a filibuster. No Democrat will vote for any restriction on abortion whatsoever, even if their rank-and-file would be okay with it. A few Republicans will break ranks—Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski for sure, and you can always count on Romney to bail when you need him most. In practice, the GOP would need about 64 or 65 seats in the Senate to simply get a ban on late-term abortions. It’s a non-starter.
*But what if you just focus pro-life efforts on the states? I mentioned the legislation that’s passed in Texas, Florida, and Georgia. I know there are several other states that I don’t have at my fingertips right now. In fact, estimates that come from no less than Planned Parenthood themselves suggest that abortions have already dropped 35,000 in one year because of new state laws that followed the fall of Roe. At least 35,000 human beings, who would otherwise be dead, are alive today.
To me, what that suggests is that pro-life attention must be focused like a laser on the state level. The same energy that once went into presidential races must now go to governor’s races and state legislative offices. This is, of course, in addition to the even more important work that can always be done in any political circumstance—rosaries to Our Lady of Guadalupe (patroness of the Americas and the unborn) and being as generous as possible with the local crisis pregnancy centers.
We have a lot of opportunities. But if abortion continues to be a prominent issue in presidential politics, it’s far more likely that something bad (the codification of Roe) will happen, then something good. I wish it were different. I believe one day it will be. But we’re a long way from that day. So, let’s clear the debate out of Washington and into the state capitols.
The Coming Republican Battle
One thing is looking clear—the Republican primary is shaping up as a choice between those that want to go back to the old logrolled coalition on one side, and Donald J. Trump on the other.
Mike Pence is not the most serious challenger to Trump (to the extent that there is a serious challenger besides a corrupt Department of Justice). But I’ve focused on him because his platform offers the clearest contrast for understanding what’s really at stake.
The old-school logrolled coalition—supply-siders, military adventurists, and social conservatives—relied on the existence of the Cold War and the existence of Roe to hold together. Many of them have spent thirty-odd years pretending the Cold War is still going on, reaching its height with this insane effort to risk nuclear conflict over the eastern part of Ukraine. Pence has clearly taken the side of the outdated Cold Warriors. Now, he’s cast his lot with those who want to act as though Roe still exists.
This is going to be particularly pertinent in the runup to the Iowa caucuses that will open the presidential primary season. The Iowa GOP caucus has always been driven by a strong evangelical Christian, heavily pro-life vote. With President Trump making statements in support of exceptions for rape and incest, the Logrolled Coalition is seeking to exploit that and turn the caucus into a debate on who can come out for the strongest abortion restrictions on the federal level.
But that debate is built on a lie, and all the involved candidates already know it. All the candidates know very well the landscape I’ve laid out regarding what level of support there is for different abortion laws, and the overwhelming odds against passing anything in Congress. Yet, they are going to try and fool the pro-life voters by making promises they can’t keep.
Do you doubt me? Well, listen to some leaked audio that came out of a strategy meeting in the DeSantis campaign. DeSantis, with a rightfully earned strong record among pro-lifers, is among those presumed likely to try and push Trump into an abortion debate in Iowa. But the leaked audio shows the strategists explaining that what DeSantis actually believes is that this is an issue best left to the states and that any efforts to move federally run the risk of more harm than good.
In other words, Governor DeSantis believes exactly what is outlined here. As does President Trump. As does anyone else who could realistically win a Republican presidential nomination. I hope DeSantis will be honest enough not to participate in any deceitful attempt to turn the caucus into a debate aimed at manipulating pro-lifers. We already know Pence will stoop to that level.
What someone should ask Pence—or anyone else who starts trying to talk about their pro-life credentials, is, if it means that much them, why are they running for president in this post-Roe era? Why not run for governor? Or, if Pence is addicted to Washington, run for the Senate seat in Indiana that’s open this year and get the Republicans one step closer to that filibuster-proof majority.
In other words, Mike Pence, has outlined two key tenets of his platform. One is a commitment to ongoing foreign wars. The other is the right to life. On the former, the office he seeks will have complete control to carry out his agenda. On the latter, he will have almost no authority whatsoever. Which item do you think he really cares about?
Trump & The New Era
President Trump addressed the question of abortion at his recent townhall on CNN. If you haven’t seen it already, you can watch the townhall here, and the abortion issue comes up at the 34:15 mark.
Naturally, I disagreed with the president when he talked about the exceptions. No human being is an exception. None of us control the circumstances under which we are born. We still have the right to life. But Trump’s position, as he noted, is no different than Ronald Reagan’s. It’s also no different than George W. Bush’s, whom the pro-life political establishment championed, and who has still yet to say even a kind word about the overturn of Roe vs. Wade.
But I was also struck by the following:
*Trump openly embraced and took credit for the overturn of Roe, calling himself “honored” to do it. This was by no means a slam dunk. The overturn of Roe has made life harder for Republicans of all stripes, as Democrats find it easier to raise money and turn out their base. Trump stepped into the pitch and acknowledged his historic role, rather than running from it (which is what Republicans across the country did this past November).
*In saying that there were voters like me who believe in life under all circumstances, Trump also pivoted and said “the real extremists are the ones who would rip a baby out of the womb in the ninth month.” In other words, he was telling us—“I’m not completely with you, but you’re not the crazy ones here.”
*And, though I consider conversations about the federal role useless, and even dangerous in the current climate, he seemed to indicate he was behind some sort of federal late-term abortion ban.
So, if you’re a pro-life voter, what you get with Trump is someone who is not “one of us” but who respects us and has delivered for us. I’d rather have the guy who’s with me 75 percent of the time, delivers the goods on that 75 percent, and is at least honest about the other 25 percent, than the phony who pretends he’s with me 90-100 percent of the time, while delivering nothing.
The Road Ahead
Every pro-life voter has to decide for themselves what this new era, one that we longed would come into existence, actually means. For me, one thing I’m firm on is that I’m not going back to the old era. The office of the presidency, thanks to the overturn of Roe, has been restored to its normal function. A president now has far more power to act against threats to life that include the trafficking cartels at the southern border, and threat of war in eastern Ukraine.
There is a clear choice between the Republican Party—
One side wants to manipulate voters into a pre-Roe, Cold War coalition that will be a boon for the military industry while posing real risks to the pro-life movement in exchange for minimal gain. Mike Pence is one of several aiming to speak for that side.
The other side wants to move into the new era, work at the state level to save lives, and use the presidency to protect us from unjust wars abroad and human trafficking at home. Donald Trump speaks for that side.
Where other candidates fall between that spectrum, we’ll have to see. But I know what side I’m on. I don’t want to go back.