Posted on 08/11/2015 8:20:38 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
This past weekend at the Red State Gathering, every Republican presidential hopeful demanded the defunding of Planned Parenthood in the wake of the undercover videos exposing their organ harvesting. That was at a minimum; more than one demanded a criminal investigation of the nation’s largest abortion-mill chain as well. However, Donald Trump got pushed into endorsing the status quo during an interview on CNN’s New Day, Breitbart’s John Nolte reports. Video picks up at 5:53:
“The problem that I have with Planned Parenthood is the abortion situation. It is like an abortion factory, frankly,” Trump said. “And you can’t have it. And you just shouldn’t be funding it. That should not be funded by the government, and I feel strongly about that.”
Actually, that’s not a bad answer, although Trump seems unaware that Planned Parenthood already argues that federal subsidies don’t fund abortions. However, Chris Cuomo then changed tactics by talking about the importance of the other services provided by Planned Parenthood, and Trump didn’t avoid the trap:
When pressed on non-abortion services Planned Parenthood allegedly provides, Trump said, “What I would do when the time came, I’d look at the individual things they do, and maybe some of the individual things they do are good. I know a lot of the things are bad. But certainly the abortion aspect of it should not be funded by government, absolutely.”
Trump continued, “I would look at the good aspects of [Planned Parenthood], and I would also look, because I’m sure they do some things properly and good and that are good for women, and I would look at that, and I would look at other aspects also. But we have to take care of women.”
Nolte raises the first obvious problem with that position, which is that the $500 million or so in government funding allows abortions to take place, whether it’s aimed at those services or not:
In other words Trump is open to a status quo many conservatives find unacceptable and immoral; also a typical federal government shell game to skirt around the law. If you give Planned Parenthood money for these so-called “other things,” the abortion provider can shift money from those “other things” to abortion.
Chris Cuomo tried the same argument on Trump that Mark Halperin used with Rick Perry a few weeks ago. Perry didn’t buy into the premise, and instead turned the question around on Halperin, to the delight of the Morning Joe panel at the time. Trump didn’t learn from that schooling, instead getting locked into Cuomo’s context.
Trump misses another point in this exchange too, which is that Planned Parenthood is hardly the only option for those other services that Trump wants to keep funded. In fact, no one is arguing that these services shouldn’t remain funded, but only that federal subsidies for them flow to other clinics that don’t perform abortions as their core business. The federal subsidies going to Planned Parenthood distort the market, boosting the largest player at the expense of smaller clinics more suited to deliver care in their communities. One would think that Trump would be particularly well positioned to explain that.
What makes this even more interesting is that Trump said he wanted a government shutdown to defund Planned Parenthood just eight days ago, during an appearance on Hugh Hewitt’s show:
HH: The word is that the Democrats will filibuster and the president will veto — that’s the only way to get rid of Planned Parenthood money for selling off baby parts is to shut the government down in September. Would you support that?
DT: Well I can tell you this. I would and I was also in support if the Republicans stuck together you could have done it with Obamacare also, but the Republicans decided not to stick together and they left a few people out there like Ted Cruz. You know, they left a lot of the people who really went in and wanted to do the job and you know what? If they had stuck together they wold have won that battle. I think you have to in this case also, yes.
That’s a mighty big shift from one week to the next. However, this doesn’t look like a flip-flop as much as it does a case of a candidate being unprepared. Trump’s initial response would have been solid, had he stuck to it, but he seems unaware that Planned Parenthood apologists rely on the argument that federal subsidies do not fund “the abortion aspect” of Planned Parenthood now, which is how they’ve fended off attempts to defund the company in the past. It’s not a fatal error, especially for Trump, who can certainly clarify and amend these remarks to the satisfaction of the base — as long as he remains consistent on it in the future. Even at that, though, it demonstrates the rather facile grasp on public policy issues that Trump has long demonstrated.
Besides, people who look for “fatal errors” from Trump miss the point. As I explain in my column at The Week, Trump’s popularity really isn’t about him — it’s about the voters who want to shake up a system that ignores them. That goes well beyond the fringes, and it’s happening in both parties:
Many Beltway pundits assumed that Trump’s “blood” remark would be a crash-and-burn moment. They clearly have a lot to learn about the conservative voters who will ultimately make that decision. While many of them understood and agreed with the unvitation in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s attack on Kelly, no one that I spoke to at the RedState Event had sworn him off as a candidate. These were not rabid Trump backers unwilling to tolerate criticism of a personal hero, but conservatives frustrated by a party that they feel has stopped listening to them, and largely talks over them. Many of these conservative activists see Trump as a man who breaks that pattern. They want to send a message to the GOP and force the party to pay attention to its base voters.
They aren’t alone, either. A similar dynamic has played out on the other side of the aisle. Hillary Clinton came into the race not just as a favorite, but as the only realistic option for Democrats. The Clinton team had made sure of that, packaging her as inevitable and locking up the majority of the party’s establishment donors. Yet the former secretary of state, the first woman in either party to seriously contend for the nomination, could barely fill her “reboot” event in June on New York City’s Roosevelt Island. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders — who isn’t even registered as a Democrat — has 28,000 people cramming into venues to hear him speak. One of these two contenders has become a rock star, and it’s not establishment favorite Hillary Clinton. …
Candidates like Trump might be unserious or even clownish to the media and political analysts, but the large number of people who latch onto them as a vehicle for their frustration are not. This populist impulse on both sides of the aisle threatens to derail the two-party system. Unless the leadership in both organizations starts paying more attention to voters than the status quo which those voters are rejecting — and finding leaders in anyone who can give vent to their frustration — they may be the authors of their own demise.
Some of this may sort itself out as the GOP field narrows, but that won’t solve the problem. It just may lessen the symptoms, but even that’s a long shot. The first party to understand and integrate the Internet era of populism wins in 2016.
Update: Kurt Schlichter is less patient with Trump’s supporters.
Don’t wast your time I don’t support Trump and so I am GOPe don’t you know. GOPe is the new N word on FR and gets slung around on FR the same as the N word gets yelled out at a Hip-hop concert rather it applies or not. Especial for those of us that don’t like Trump’s do!
We're giving Iran 350 billion but telling them they can only spend it on non military stuff, yea oh uh, sure...
If Trump is president and is willing to sign PP defund legislation, then the GOP will not send it to him.
In fact, I would not be at all surprised if Trump is elected president that the GOP and Democrat party impeach and convict him.
They are a an exclusive club to which Trump is not a member.
And yes, I excuse Trump’s statement. Trump is not the one funding PP, the GOP is.
I didn’t call you GOPe. And I didn’t snark at you, either.
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!
Perhaps a Trumpette....a The Donnie Quote a Day might stir things up a bit??
“All of the women on ‘The Apprentice’ flirted with me — consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected.”..The Donnie
. “I think the only difference between me and the other candidates is that I’m more honest and my women are more beautiful.”.....The Donnie
This could become great fun!
I wonder how much any...of the other Republican “front runners” donated to the Clinton Foundation?..../s
Exactly! Money is fungible.
Meaning: The bum who promises that he won't spend the $5 you give him on booze might be telling the truth! All he has to do is re-dedicate the other $5 he had been planning to use for cigarettes to booze - and then use the $5 you gave him for cigarettes.
Regards,
of the other Republican “front runners” donated to the Clinton Foundation?
Which number is higher the number of Republicans who sat on their hands the last 6 plus years or “front runners” who donated to the Clinton Foundation?
My candidate did neither!
thanks for sharing S.D.
Surely Trump, as a businessman, realizes that money is fungible, and thus funding Planned Parenthood’s “non-abortion services” vs. funding abortions is a distinction without a difference.
IMHO it’s like saying that the Nazis weren’t so bad that at least they created jobs. Has he lost his mind? Females can get BC pills cheap and don’t have to go to Pl. Parenthood (an odd thing in calling women seeking abortions a parent)
“Trump wants to help poor women who can not afford private insurance.”
They have Obamacare, don’t they?
Here’s the reality of the situation: PP gets $500 million from the fed, either through Medicaid or Title X reimbursements as you said, but it doesn’t matter what fedgov entity the monies come from, the fact of the matter is its fed money meaning our money.
The fact of the matter is, for all the abortions that couldn’t be paid for by some of the women, that cost was defrayed by the payments you spoke about earlier, Title X, Medicaid, etc, as well as any services provided to such (financially) poor women like mammograms Pap smears etc.
Here’s the giant rub: the majority of the services that PP provides ARE abortions! That’s why I said the fact they provide other services is a smokescreen for Congress, so they don’t have to be blatant about the reason they are asking for money every year and go to them saying, “we need another $500 million to kill another million babies this year”.
Even though that’s EXACTLY what the BULK of that $500 million is used for. So it’s a smokescreen, the other services they provide. No one in Congress bothers to go through the expenses line by line because again, they don’t want to face the reality of the situation, the reality being they are complicent in the worst Holocaust since, well the Holocaust from WWII itself.
So if Trump’s idea is implimented, then it’s just a simple matter for them to cook their books, to make it look like they do a lot more Pap smears and mammograms than they actually do, or reduce the actual number of abortions they do (this is why it’s so difficult to get actual numbers on them until recently at least) so that they can justify still receiving $500 million just for “other costs”. But of course it will go towards their (unstated) goal of population control through abortions of the most defenseless, the poor and marginalized. Margret Sanger would be proud of their work today I’m sure; gotta keep the number of those “brown babies” low.
Make no mistake there is no “earmarking” that would be effective with such people. We are talking about the same kind of people who butcher babies every year for a living, and sell the more well formed on the black market. Do you really think that kind of person would be honest about not using money from the fedgov if Congress said, “Now play nice with this money, we don’t want it being used for abortions”. Wink wink.
Yeah, riiiiiight...
And that defunds PP...how?
Not bashing Cruz, as I read others doing to Trump over *words*, but this doesn’t seem to jive vs. ‘Mr. Constitution/small govt’
I see it too. (C) don’t go ‘far enough’...
NO tax $$ to ANYONE. This is a basic Constitutional premise
Interesting.. you accuse me of being LIV, yet you imply PP’s sole source of funding is the federal government. You apparently aren’t aware of the funding streams that flow from scores of corporations and other private interests to PP. My point, socialist, is that the taxpayers should NOT be funding PP. It’s not the role of the federal government.
And the GOP will blow up Trump Towers too, right? Since we’re into hyperbole, let’s go all in.
As opposed to your selfishness, I actually have a heart for US citizens who can not afford expensive healthcare insurance. Read my profile page and learn something.
You are indeed a LIV.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.