There was an evangelical beauty pageant in Washington, DC today. At Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Conference, a major gathering of religious conservatives and campaigners, a procession of presidential candidates strutted their stuff in the ballroom of the Washington Hilton. Keen to see the contenders in action, I went along (Cockburn in tow).
Ron DeSantis delivered a battle report from his ongoing “war on woke.” Vivek Ramaswamy offered a characteristically caffeinated spiel and touted his status as “the first millennial to run for president as a Republican.” Mike Pence walked out to Kid Rock’s “Born Free.” Miami mayor Francis X. Suarez told attendees, “I would say bienvenidos a Miami but we’re not in Miami!” So true, Mayor Suarez. Chris Christie came out swinging and was booed for doing so (more on that later). Tim Scott was his earnest self. Asa Hutchinson almost forgot to mention he was running for president — something the audience probably needed reminding about. (“By the way I am running for president of the United States,” he said halfway through his speech.) Most of the rest of the GOP field will address the conference Saturday, with Donald Trump headlining tomorrow evening.
So far at least, the star of the show wasn’t a candidate but a court decision. Tomorrow marks a year since the Dobbs ruling was handed down. Starting with Faith and Freedom head honcho Ralph Reed, speaker after speaker took the opportunity to celebrate the anniversary of the end of Roe.
Even as the FFC crowd took their victory lap, the politics of abortion remains a headache for the Republican Party — not least for its presidential contenders who must strike a balance between satisfying pro-life primary voters and not alienating moderates on abortion who they need to win in the general.
In tackling this thorny issue, will 2024 contenders take a safety-in-numbers approach? In his speech today, Pence — perhaps the most committed pro-lifer in the presidential field — made the case for a fifteen-week national abortion ban and called on “every Republican candidate for president” to do so as a “minimum nationwide standard.”
The stance has the advantage of both specificity and flexibility: no one can accuse anyone taking this position of not giving them a straight answer on abortion; to moderates on the issue, candidates can argue that a fifteen-week limitation is comparable to many European countries; to hardline pro-lifers, candidates can present this as a nationwide minimum and say they hope states go further. Pence said more or less exactly that today.
Lindsey Graham was granted prime speaking time today to make the case for a fifteen-week ban, something he introduced in the Senate last September. At the time, Graham’s proposal was seen as an unhelpful contribution ahead of the midterms. More than six months on, though, a fifteen-week national ban is not dismissed as bad politics so readily. The “leave it to the states” messaging hasn’t served Republicans well — and they know it. Hence why Graham’s proposal is getting more of a hearing this time around. “This is a united moment,” Graham said this morning. Graham hopes to align his party’s position more closely with the public — a majority opposes first-trimester abortion restrictions and supports second- and third-trimester bans with exceptions — and put the onus on Democrats to explain what limitations they would place on abortion.
Whether or not it is the answer to the GOP’s abortion headache, a push to get candidates to sign up to a fifteen-week national ban does force the issue with the field’s frontrunner. When he addresses the Faith and Freedom crowd tomorrow, he will doubtless bask in the glory of being the president who tilted the court in conservatives’ favor, thus bringing down Roe. But will Trump, who has worried about the electoral impact of hardline pro-life policies, get more specific? More to the point, will he need to get more specific?
On our radar
WHITE HOUSE HAS NO ANSWERS ON HUNTER The bombshell claims of an IRS whistleblower released Thursday are a reminder to the White House that the plea deal offered to the president’s son earlier in the week would not be the end of their Hunter woes. And yet the president’s spokespeople had no good answers to an increasingly frustrated White House press corps this afternoon. When Newsmax’s James Rosen asked about the claims, the usually unflappable John Kirby responded: “I’m not going to address this issue for you. I’m just not going to do it.” KJP had nothing to say either, and the reporters in the room grew more and more frustrated.
OBAMA IS BACK Barack Obama has resurfaced in recent weeks with a rebuttal against Tim Scott on race and, according to Politico, with a series of meetings with young Democratic lawmakers. Writing for The Spectator, Billy McMorris asks whether he can clean up the mess he helped make.
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Christie does what he said he’d do, gets booed
Chris Christie lived up to his promise of running as a call-it-as-I-see-it anti-Trump candidate in his speech this morning. As soon as he signposted that he wanted to talk about character, it was clear that Christie would be the first and possibly only speaker to say disobliging things about the former president. “We need once again as people of faith to put character first,” said the former New Jersey governor. “Beware, everybody, of a leader who never makes mistakes.” He got the boos he doubtless expected he’d get.
“I’m running because he’s let us down,” said Christie after explaining his past support for Trump. “He has let us down because he is unwilling to take responsibility for any of the mistakes that were made and any of the faults that he has and any of the things that he’s done. That is a failure of leadership.”
Acknowledging the frosty reception he received, Christie said: “You can boo all you want. But here’s the thing: our faith teaches us that people have to take responsibility for what they do. People have to stand up and take accountability for what they do. And I cannot stand by.”
–OW
How is the feng shui at Axios?
DC media or Curb Your Enthusiasm? Axios co-founder Mike Allen is certainly known more for his newsletter-writing ability than his social awareness, but even Cockburn was stunned by a phrase that supposedly once came out of Allen’s mouth.
A spy was riding the Axios building elevator with Allen the morning after one of the outlet’s parties last spring. “Last night was so perfect,” Allen told one of his toadies. “As you know I over-index on Feng shui. The room was perfect, the group was perfect.” There was one downside, though: Allen griped to his colleague about “Tom, who didn’t loosen his necktie.”
“What an absolute psychopath,” the spy said of Allen’s Queer Eye-esque party analysis. A message to Mike: invite Cockburn next time — he does wonders for the Feng shui…
–Cockburn
From the site
Matt Ridley: Who are the three Wuhan scientists that first got Covid?
Charles Lipson: Was Joe Biden in on Hunter’s grift?
Roger Kimball: The known unknowns of 2024
Poll watch
PRESIDENT BIDEN JOB APPROVAL
Approve 42.3% | Disapprove 53.6% | Net Approval -11.3
(RCP average)
2024 MATCH UPS
Biden 44% | Trump 43%
Biden 43% | DeSantis 37%
(Emerson)
Best of the rest
Matthew Continetti, National Review: Supply side, still
David Brooks, New York Times: The age of spectacle is upon us
Matt Barnum, Chalkbeat: Test results show striking drop in thirteen-year-olds’ math and reading scores
Faith Bottum, Wall Street Journal: Biden’s fishy plan to breach the snake river dams
Ruy Teixeira, the Liberal Patriot: Five reasons why Democrats should focus obsessively on working-class voters
Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution: Is American culture becoming more pro-business?
