We have zero desire to obsess about this prez’s malarkey as much as liberal outlets did over the last guy, but he’s sure making it hard. The latest from President Joe Biden: “This MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history. Recent American history.”
He was suggesting the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade could be followed by other outrages, such as letting states pass laws “saying that children who are LGBTQ can’t be in classrooms with other children.” Huh?
For starters, the leaked draft opinion takes great pains to explain why Roe is unique, its reversal is no reason to expect a similar undoing of the gay-marriage ruling and other expansions of Americans’ constitutional rights.
Second, Biden conveniently forgets (or, who knows with him, maybe he really doesn’t recall) that he himself was anti-Roe for at least a decade. “I don’t like the Supreme Court decision on abortion. I think it went too far,” he told the Washingtonian in 1974. In ’82, he backed a constitutional amendment to undo the decision and let states decide, as the draft ruling prescribes.
Third, how is MAGA anti-gay, when Donald Trump not only literally waved the rainbow flag at the Republican National Convention but as president appointed the highest-ever openly gay official, Richard Grenell?
As for “most extreme”: Even if 1960s terrorist groups like the Weathermen don’t count, how does Biden ignore the substantial wing of his own party that wants to defund the police as inherently racist, not to mention the #AbolishICE crowd? Oh, and also end all US carbon emissions without actually having practical alternatives.
As we’ve noted, the end of Roe will dent abortion rights in parts of America, but only by putting the issue back into normal politics. Biden’s bid to paint it as the first salvo in a wholesale remaking of America is just a desperate attempt to change the subject from soaring inflation, a virtually open border and rising crime — the problems every poll shows the public cares about most, and every one of them belonging at the door of Democrats’ extremist agenda.
