Many Irish people will never have heard of an organisation called the Susan B. Anthony list, and have had no reason ever to know who they are. For the purpose of this article, however, it is necessary to describe them. SBA, for short, or Susan B. Anthony Pro Life America to give them their full title, are the single largest pro-life political campaign group in the United States, who work to promote the campaigns of politicians who will work to “ultimately end abortion in the United States”.
In recent elections, their spending power is not insignificant: In the 2016 election which saw the election of Donald Trump, the group spent eighteen million dollars supporting pro-life candidates, including Trump himself. Their support can be especially invaluable in Republican primaries, and not only in monetary terms: Like the National Rifle Association when it comes to guns, an endorsement from SBA is a signal to voters that a candidate can be trusted on abortion. Their endorsement, traditionally, has been actively sought by Republican candidates.
I mention all of this because their statement, in response to Donald Trump’s announcement on Monday that he would not pursue any pro-life laws as President and considered abortion entirely a matter for the states, is worth reading as a demonstration of Trump’s now almost complete dominance of the American right. Here it is, with the bit in bold highlighted by me:
“We are deeply disappointed in President Trump’s position. Unborn children and their mothers deserve national protections and national advocacy from the brutality of the abortion industry. The Dobbs decision clearly allows both states and Congress to act.
“Saying the issue is ‘back to the states’ cedes the national debate to the Democrats who are working relentlessly to enact legislation mandating abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy. If successful, they will wipe out states’ rights.
“With lives on the line, SBA Pro-Life America and the pro-life grassroots will work tirelessly to defeat President Biden and extreme congressional Democrats.”
In other words: We are extremely disappointed in your position, Donald Trump, but we will continue to support your election campaign regardless. In fairness, it should be said that their position is not universally shared by pro-lifers: Some individuals have said that they will withhold their support from Trump. But the numbers are small enough that Trump has no immediate cause for concern. It is notable, I think, how far left Trump has been able to move on abortion without any real consequence for him on the right.
And has he moved left? Yes, he has. Recall that in 2016, when seeking election to the Presidency, Donald Trump was all in favour of federal abortion bans: He campaigned on a promise to enact a partial birth abortion ban across all 50 states and territories – something that he now says would be entirely improper as matters of this nature are simply “best left to the states”. Four years ago, even, it would have been impossible to imagine a Republican Presidential nominee arguing that New York has the right to legalise abortion in the ninth month of pregnancy – but that is Donald Trump’s position today, and he is getting many pro-lifers to cheer it. You can argue his position is the correct legal position today, but you cannot argue with a straight face that his position has not changed. He is simply confident that changing his position will not matter to his own voters. And he’s right.
In most normal political movements, it can generally be said that the candidate serves the agenda.
In other words, you support a candidate for office because you trust them to advance the causes you believe in. This means, in most democracies, that political candidates or parties have “core” supporters whose positions might not be universally popular, but whose support the candidate relies upon and thus cannot discard. A good example in Ireland might be Sinn Fein and the IRA: The IRA are not exactly popular with a majority of voters, and there are surely times that Sinn Fein wishes it could distance itself more from various atrocities or historical problems in order to appeal to more voters – but a Sinn Fein that did that would no longer be Sinn Fein, for most of its core supporters. There would be an enormous price to pay.
That is where Trump is different: He is one of a very few politicians in the world where it can be said that the agenda must serve the candidate.
When the Susan B. Anthony list, for example, express their grave disappointment in Trump, they know that they must also re-pledge their support. That is because those running the organisation know full well that forced to choose between a pro-life group and Donald Trump, many – not all but many – of their own supporters and donors will choose Trump over a cause they’ve supported in the past, every single time.
This is also true of many American right wing media outlets, many ordinary Republican Congressmen and Women, and just about anyone who relies on the right-leaning American voter for a living. The same Republican voters who nominated George W. Bush for President twice, and who then nominated and supported John McCain and Mitt Romney, now regard all three men with something approaching disdain, because Trump has demanded that they should. The Susan B. Anthony list is making a rational calculation.
So what’s the problem?
The problem, in short, is that all of this has costs, many of them imperceptible in the moment, but all of them mounting. Consider, for example, the fact that in 2016 supporters of Donald Trump described the election as “the flight ‘93” election: In other words, your qualms about Donald Trump were irrelevant compared to the unspeakable harm of electing Hillary Clinton.
Now consider that eight years on, those same voters are being told that they must move substantially closer than they ever were in 2016 to Hillary Clinton’s policies on abortion, transgenderism, and gay rights in order to win Trump the election. So the political dial of the Republicans has shifted to the left on policy, while voters content themselves that it has stayed sufficiently own-the-libs aggressive rhetorically.
Consider too the impact on pro-lifers, who have just surrendered most of their pretence at holding political leverage over the Republican Party.
Politics is ultimately a transactional business: Pro Lifers support American Republicans because Republicans are expected to deliver for them. That is no longer the case: Now, per SBA, a Republican must only be one or two degrees better than a Democrat to win their support.
Consider too the impact on other Republicans: By abandoning an orthodox conservative position as “extreme”, Donald Trump has essentially thrown every other holder of that position, both now and in the future, beneath the bus. A Republican candidate tomorrow who believes what Republicans have believed on this issue for generations will now be, truthfully, “more extreme on abortion than Donald Trump”. Everything – including the future electoral viability of pro-lifers – must go under the bus if it serves the cause of getting the American right four more years of Trump.
Finally, there’s the politics of all of this, which is entirely questionable. We are told by those who make a living cheering Donald Trump’s every move that this is political genius, because it “neutralises abortion as an issue for the general election”.
In the first instance, it should be recognised that many of those voices would have called literally any statement from Donald Trump on abortion “genius” because that is what they exist to do: Like much of the American Right’s media, they exist now primarily to reinforce the personality cult of Trump, and like many on the right they fear the consequences of being seen to oppose him or criticise him. Dissent has a high price – just ask Liz Cheney (who, incidentally, has never wavered on abortion).
The first argument made in defence of Trump’s position is that it is the constitutionally correct one – that since abortion is a matter for the states, this will somehow prevent Democrats, out of some sense of honour, from attempting to legislate on a pro-choice basis nationally. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, both nonsensical and hypocritical.
Democrats, after all, will simply point to previous precedent from Donald Trump himself: The candidate who ran promising a federal ban on partial birth abortion in 2016 now says that such things should be left entirely to the states. In other words: Federal interference in abortion law is neither right nor wrong as a matter of principle – in Trump’s view it is a simple matter of political expediency. Democrats might also point to the fact that Republicans previously supported the Defence of Marriage Act, which sought to ban gay marriage nationally; or the Hyde Amendment, which restricted abortion funding nationally.
Again, though, his supporters find themselves in the position of arguing that none of that matters, and that Trump is right on federalism this time, and was wrong last time. All the while, it’s their position that shifts, in accordance with the needs of the candidate.
Finally, Donald Trump is set to cast his vote for President this year in Miami Florida, where he resides. When he votes, there will be another question on his ballot paper: A referendum to overturn the state’s six week ban on abortion and legalise abortions all through pregnancy, including the very partial-birth abortion he previously sought to ban nationally. Donald Trump will be asked how he is voting on that referendum, which will force him to state a position between unlimited abortion on one hand and a very restrictive law on the other. What’s his answer going to be?
Ultimately, that’s his choice: Whatever he says, the truth remains that far too many American Pro Lifers will vote for him anyway because they will rationalise, if needs be, that supporting partial birth abortion in the ninth month of pregnancy in a Florida Referendum is still better than Joe Biden.
You might doubt me on that, of course, but you’ll be wrong.
Donald Trump says that all of this is necessary because winning the election is the most important thing. The great irony, of course, is that winning the election would have been much easier had he simply chosen to stand aside in favour of another candidate. That’s what somebody who really cared about the cause might have done.
The problem is that the “cause”, for many – indeed an apparent majority – is no longer about anything other than Trump himself. These are the dangers of a cult of personality. With Trump, the right no longer needs to be anything of substance. Just a little better than the alternative is good enough.
All of which is ironic, since the whole basis of his primary campaign, in 2016, was that being “just a little better than the Democrats” was what made his Republican opponents weak and unacceptable.
How times change, and how Donald Trump changes you. Without, in most cases, your even noticing.