Smashmouth Incrementalism and the Trump Train

Introduction

The last month has seen a number of remarkable and momentous events. We may begin with Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, the pressure on him to step down, and the palace intrigue that resulted in him bowing out of the race, but not stepping down from the presidency, and then topped off by his weird disappearance and reappearance.

And then on the other side, the close-call near assassination of Donald Trump and his triumphant fist in the air, followed by the Republican platform backing away from its long-standing commitment to life, followed hard by the selection of JD Vance for veep. This last point was heartening in a lot of ways, but disheartening because Vance apparently softened his pro-life stand in order to qualify for the slot, when he clearly knows better. This brings in—with a sickening but not surprising thud—the realization that in this Trump-transformed Republican Party, commitment to life is not a principle, but rather has become a bargaining chip.

With all of that said, and especially in the light of some of the harder things I am going to be saying down below in just a minute, my plan is still to vote for Trump/Vance in November, and I am going to do this cheerfully, without a qualm, and I am going to do this for the sake of continuing the fight for life. That vote will be in line with, and will be a good example of, what I have been calling smashmouth incrementalism.

I do understand that a jibe will be coming my way. “It looks like your incrementalism is sliding in the wrong direction, pal.” Well, yes. And yet also no. It is absolutely moving the wrong way when it comes to the”new and improved” Republican Party, once again snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. But when it comes to the battlefield at large, there is still a lot of opportunity for intelligent advance.

In the meantime, I would urge everyone to stay engaged with on-the-ground pro-life ministry. If you are looking for a good organization to support, Nancy and I support Tiny Heartbeat.

At the same time, traditional pro-lifers (the genuine ones), smashmouth incrementalists, and abolitionists, all of us together, are going to need a political plan. This needs to be a political plan for DC that allows us to continue to differ among ourselves at the state level. I am writing this because I do think I have such a plan. But before I lay out this plan, a few other things have to be said first.

Trump and Roe

I continue to be grateful to Donald Trump for the overturning of that grotesque decision called Roe. When we compare the old pro-life Republican platform, during which time nothing much was accomplished, and we compare Trump’s three SCOTUS appointments, coupled with his removal of the pro-life commitment from the platform, it should remind us of that principle that Jesus once illustrated with a parable:

I said up above that for the Republican Party, “commitment to life is not a principle, but rather has become a bargaining chip.” But what would we rather have? A principle that is true, but not acted upon, or a bargaining chip that is compromised when it comes to motives, but actually accomplishes something? Actually saves lives?

What I take from all of this is that Trump is not pro-life, but that for purposes of his own he is willing to work with pro-lifers. And so here’s my thinking . . .

A Transactional Moment

Now that we have Dobbs, and we have a lot more latitude for fighting abortion at the state level, this means that Donald Trump believes that he kept the deal that he made with evangelicals in 2016. “If you give me your support in this election, I will give you judges.”

Whether from pragmatism or principle, he is a transactional businessman who keeps the deals he makes. We are like those German banks that he repaid, the ones we learned about in that Stormy Daniels trial. That was the deal in 2016, but this is now 2024. Donald Trump clearly believes that enough water has gone under the bridge that if there is to be a deal now, it needs to be a fresh deal. He wants one that broadens the base of the Republican Party, and we want one that preserves the gains we have made, and actually saves lives.

Now JD Vance said in his speech that social conservatives will always have a place at “this table” as long he is involved in the process, and so we ought to take him up on that. He said that Donald Trump feels the same way. This means that Trump wants to give social conservatives “something we want,” but has decided that he does not want to give us “everything we want” (as signaled by the platform change). This means we need to be shrewd about which “something” we ask for.

So we should sit down at this table, the one at which we were invited to remain, and we should bring up our plan. Did I mention that I have one? What “something” should we negotiate for?

Instead of walking away to nurse our hurt feelings, I believe that all those of us who are anti-abortion should make a point of offering to make a different deal. Trump really is a transactional man, and we, without compromise, can also be transactional—he, according to his principles, and we, according to ours.

But this really needs to be an offer to negotiate, doing so from a position of strength. It should not be a request. It needs to be an offer to deal.

A position of strength, you say? What strength? The answer is whatever strength we have—and we shall see if we have it.

The Deal

And so here it is. Instead of fighting with soft pro-lifers about the party platform, or fighting them about the top of the ticket in national elections, I believe that we should move all our resources to the Senate, doing so with an eye on Senate confirmation hearings for judges.

We are little over three months away from the election, which in presidential campaigns is an eternity, meaning that all kinds of things could still happen. Given the way this year is going thus far, we should budget for it. But if things keep going the way they are currently going, it looks like the Democrats are going to experience a beat down, and Donald Trump will become our president again, this time the 47th. If this happens, there will almost certainly be down-ballot consequences also, with Republicans keeping the House, and regaining the Senate.

My concern here is with the Senate, and the confirmation hearings that will no doubt occur there in the following four years. Let us say, for the sake of illustrating my plan, that the Republicans will have 54 seats in the Senate. What my plan calls for is at least five senators who have a principled pro-life stand, and who are willing to hell-and-high-water for it. Five subtracted from 54 gets us 49, insufficient for a Senate confirmation.

This fall pro-life activists need to call upon every Republican senator and every Republican senatorial candidate to commit, on the record, that they will refuse to vote to confirm any nominee for the federal bench, and especially SCOTUS, however qualified, if that nominee is not absolutely committed to upholding Dobbs. If they refuse to commit, or if they take the pledge but then waffle on it, then they will be challenged in the next primary election.

We really need to hold this line, in case someone like Thomas retires, and we absolutely need to strengthen our position, in case one of the liberal seats comes open, which is where the hot war will be conducted.

This commitment to vote no would be a negative vote that is based on policy, and so there would be no need to resort to character assassination the way the Democrats do. It would be possible for these five to say that the nominee appears to be a respectable gentleman, and that he looks great on guns, and on regulatory agencies, but that they do not intend to allow any backsliding on the life issue. They are not willing to erode the legacy of our 45th president. We need to insist on living up to what we have already attained.

So the thing that these senators would be calling upon Trump to do is nothing less than what he did in his first term. More judges like that, if you please. This should not be a deal that Trump would be averse to. He was willing to do this the first time. And justices who are sound on life issues are likely to be good on all the other issues that Trump clearly cares about far more—an observation that doesn’t necessarily go the other way.

At the same time, with official Washington being the way it is, these five senators will need to have liquid nitrogen in their veins, because if they act on this plan they will be vilified to the moon and back. Say that Donald Trump nominates someone in the John Roberts zone, and the Gang of Five says nothing doing. If such a thing were to happens, the full fury of the media establishment would come down on them. I don’t know why. Maybe they got a call from Russell Moore. But they need to stick to their guns. The base line is this—no judges that would walk back the gains we have made. Ideally the smashmouth part of this never happens out in the open, and is negotiated behind closed doors. But wherever that boundary is established, it will be tested, and we will see what our five senators are made of.

It would actually be best to have seven senators in case two of them fold.

Some Definitions from a Smashmouther

Smashmouth incrementalists want to take every gain we can take in the moment, but never want finally to “settle” until we have obtained an absolute ban on all human abortion. That is the goal, and we must never forget that this is the goal. The abolitionists want to go for the absolute ban now, with no agreed-to compromises on the way. I don’t see any reason why we could not cooperate on something like this proposal, which would permit us to pursue our respective strategies at the state level.

Now the abolitionists tend to think that the smashmouth guys talk a good game, but that when it comes down to the point, it is feared that they will do what Marco Rubio did, or what JD Vance did, in an apparent bid to be more attractive as a vice-presidential pick. “Under these circumstances, we will agree to let you kill the baby.” But in combat, there is a difference between deciding not to attack that hill yet and making a truce never to attack that hill. The former is consistent with smashmouth incrementalism, and the latter is not.

But just imagine being in the position of someone like Rubio, where you make such a move, but then you don’t get the nomination. Like selling your soul to the devil at the crossroads, and then discovering in the fine print that he really only promised you mastery of the ukulele.

Because of the ways that some pro-lifers have fought, and the way some have compromised, the abolitionists believe that compromise is inherent in the position itself, and that this kind of waffling is inevitable. They believe that about us, and we still believe that the whole set-up reveals inconsistencies in the abolitionist approach. So I don’t believe that waffling is inevitable, and I think that a fight to implement this proposed plan would demonstrate that. This would give us a chance to work through the differences, and perhaps regain some trust.

Not a full olive branch there, but there are a couple of olive leaves.

A Postscript on Vance

Aaron Renn recently wrote on how Vance’s conversion to Catholicism was in part a reaction to the anti-intellectualism of evangelicalism. But this entire issue illustrates what a mare’s nest that is.

From all reports, Vance is a very smart man but the move he just made on the life issue was not from someone who cares deeply about the life of the mind. The position on life that Vance has come to adopt is inconsistent with his earlier pro-life premises, inconsistent with any stated desire to protect the lives of more developed children in utero later on, inconsistent with the teaching of the Catholic church that he claims to be in submission to, and inconsistent with Scripture and natural law. Out of all the possible positions on abortion, this halfway position is the most incoherent of all of them. The pro-choicers know how to treat the fetus as just a cluster of cells, and pro-lifers know how to treat the unborn child as a child. But this? No one who adopts this position gets the right to complain about anti-intellectualism ever.

Moreover, this is something that a shade tree mechanic in a West Virginia holler understands, and something that 92% of Vance’s Yale classmates don’t understand. And while I understand that Vance’s entire constituency is made up of the forgotten man, it seems that more of Yale rubbed off on him than he perhaps realizes. And one of the features of the forgotten man is that he is less likely to forget things himself. If there is one thing that the fundamentalist turn of mind knows how to do, it is to follow arguments, and how to project the trajectory of ideas.

Vance’s political constituency is the same demographic constituency that has made Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter such a smash hit, and Vance is soon to discover how hard it will be to lean into these people and lean away from them at the same time. That is something that they notice.

If Vance represents the pro-life position, if this is what it now means to be pro-life, then the abolitionists are right to reject it. But his position doesn’t mean that . . . because frankly, this is a position that doesn’t mean anything.