NO RIGHT BUT THE RIGHT TO LIFE.

Establishment conservatives (that is, the ones blessed with phony-baloney jobs at National Review and elsewhere) were outraged yesterday when Donald Trump (briefly) asserted that once abortion is made illegal -- the fervent hope of all wingnuts -- women who have them will have to be "punished." Cuz duh it's murder, as they keep telling us, right? Some of the brethren were honest enough to admit they were outraged because Trump was spoiling their traditional line of bullshit -- like Matt K. Lewis, who probably isn't smart enough to know that's what he was doing:

In truth, like the notion that there should be exceptions for rape and incest, the notion that only the abortion doctor (not the woman having the abortion) should face penalties, is inconsistent with the notion that “abortion is murder.” 

Yet these political compromises are necessary in order to cobble together a palatable and defensible (if admittedly inconsistent) public policy position that might someday actually be able to win the argument in mainstream America. 

Part of the goal is to remove the ability for pro-choicers to demagogue the issue by scaring vulnerable women. Now, thanks to Trump, that’s back on the table.

Yeah, thanks a lot, Donald! To win back whatever credibility they had with female voters, conservatives rushed to assure them that they love women and consider them too dumb to share culpability in what, from their perspective, is a hit job on an innocent and autonomous fetus. At the New York Daily News, Charles Camosy says women are not the victims of politicians who would strip them of reproductive rights, but of abortion mongers like Hugh Hefner and the men of the Supreme Court who inflicted Roe upon an unwilling womankind:

Someone who is coerced into having an abortion as a means of having social equality should not be put in jail. Women, like their prenatal children, are victims of our horrific abortion policy.

[Pause to let that comparison sink in.] 

Instead, physicians who profit from the violence of abortion ought to be punished. Philadelphia’s Dr. Kermit Gosnell...

When they start waving the bloody fetal-parts, you know they've got nothin'. Most of the brethren just stick with the pre-arranged story, which is basically "we would never say such a thing about our beloved broodmares."

Meanwhile out there in Jesusland these lovers of women, frustrated in their attempts to flatly ban abortion, keep themselves busy thinking up new ways to fuck with women who have them, and even with women who have miscarriages, I guess as a demented way to emphasize the superior rights of fetuses over those of their incubators; in the latest such exercise, Indiana passed a bunch of bizarre restrictions, including these:

Provides that a person who knowingly transports an aborted fetus into, or out of, Indiana commits a Class A misdemeanor, unless the aborted fetus is transported for the sole purpose of final disposition. Provides that a miscarried or aborted fetus must be interred or cremated by a facility having possession of the remains. Requires a person or facility having possession of a miscarried or aborted fetus to ensure that the miscarried fetus or aborted fetus is preserved until final disposition occurs.

These people are nuts, and their loving-caretaker routine won't last long once they return to federal power.

THE GOP DELUSION.

Donald "Big Pussy" Trump won by a landslide in New Hampshire and sensible people aren't the only ones disconfited --  long-term wingnut-welfare recipients are as well, but for different reasons (briefly: Trump jumped the line, cannot be relied on to destroy Social Security and Medicare, and by fear-mongering straight-up without recourse to traditional dog whistles has shattered the notion that Republican positions on minorities and immigrants have any more courtly or civilized basis than an appeal to naked animal hatred).

They express this discomfiture in a number of ways. First and foremost: Denial. "Marco's Moment Is Now," insists Michael Graham of The Weekly Standard. "No, not Saturday night’s debate: This is Marco's moment." (I am put in mind of  Max Bialystock getting Lorenzo St. DuBois to audition for Springtime for Hitler: "Wait, wait, this is Boomerang! This is Boomerang!")

Getting knocked-down in New Hampshire does not have to be the end of Rubio's run for the GOP nomination. It could be the real beginning. It's all up to the junior senator from Florida.

Graham may just be covering for his boss, who bet long on the thirsty childman. At National Review, Eliana Johnson speaks of "Marco Rubio’s New Challenges" rather than Marco Rubio's Collapse. There are other candidates for anti-Trump savior: At National Review, Jeremy Carl calls NH "Armageddon for the Establishment," because of Trump and the "less obvious" winner... third-place finisher Ted Cruz -- whom I guess you could say the Republican "establishment" doesn't like, if only because no one likes Ted Cruz. "Ted Cruz Might Be The Real Winner In New Hampshire" says Matt K. Lewis. "...The primaries are about to head South, which is Cruz country." Wow, a Republican who can carry the South! Now all he has to do is get people in the rest of the country to embrace Opus Dei crackpots.

For laughs there's "Jeb Bush Gains Some Steam After New Hampshire" (WSJ) and, my favorite, "Why Can't Kasich Win?" by Jay Cost ("Isn't the Kasich case at least as persuasive [as] the Bush case?" Now that I can believe!).

I don't like Trump either, and I am convinced someone other than he will be nominated. But with me, one has nothing to do with the other -- America has disappointed me many times and I'm sure will disappoint me again, so I don't think we're too good for nominee (or, God forbid, President) Trump -- I just think Trump will fall because the GOP has too much invested in getting one of their made men on the ticket, and they control the means of production. These conservative columnists, on the other hand, are writing rotisserie league campaign speeches; they write as if they believe their columns and blog posts, despite being read entirely by people who already agree with them, can actually affect the race. That's what makes them pathetic: They're putting on brave faces for a mirror.

UPDATE. Comments are (as is traditional here at alicublog) glorious, and I have to call attention to a burst of song from Ellis Weiner:

You’re standing onstage one night
While running for POTUS
Debating your foes because
It’s part of the gig.
Then Monday they take a vote
You’re handed your hat and coat
But this could be the start of something big.

It goes on below the fold.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the President's press jihad and how it excites the brethren, who see new life breathed into their ancient, endless Blar Har Liberal Media memes. I gotta say that American Thinker/Patricia McCarthy thing was a find. It's not even 800 words long but it's so mindlessly vituperative that it sounds like one of Castro's seven-hour speeches. (People like that fascinate me. They're not even just bad writers; they hardly seem to have the capacity for linear thought -- they just generate trite insults like some kind of denunciation diffuser.)

For reasons of space and clarity I had to cut a reference to Matthew Boyle's attempt at Breitbart to amplify the propaganda power of the CNN tsimmis by blaming it on a couple of popular rightwing hate objects:

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats find themselves on the hot seat as insiders point to leftist staff for members like Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Kamala Harris (D-CA) as being responsible for the thinly-sourced hit piece. Staff for Harris deny any involvement, but Warren staff have not responded.

I bet if this all happened a few months ago, before she started rocketing up the hatewank charts, Harris' place in the conspiracy would have been taken by Hillary Clinton. "Insiders point to leftist staff of" is absurdly weak, but by the time this bullshit devolves to even less scrupulous wingnuts like Pat Dollard it becomes a bald assertion -- "Democrat Senators Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren Behind Debunked CNN Trump Hit Piece" -- and thousands, maybe millions of dummies come to know to a certainty -- without ever seeing any proof -- that Warren and Harris were caught on film by James O'Keefe whispering fake news to Jeff Zucker while double-teaming his cock. (I probably shouldn't even joke about such a thing, as by next week some of the boys will be claiming it as the true facts.)

Special mention goes to Matt K. Lewis, a world-class both-siderist, for his festival of risible tweets claiming that Obama caused Trump by destroying "norms."   Among the highlights: "1) Obama *was* divisive, 2) I didn't vote for Trump, & 3) you are being divisive by insinuating that I'm a racist." I could give you the context but, really, at this point do you even need it?

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the alleged end of the culture war. Both rightwingers and leftwingers have suggested it's done, but I say this is America, where no grift stops until it runs out of suckers -- and this one's not even close to running out.

I should mention that the white-flag-waver with whom I started the column, Matt K. Lewis, has in a follow-up hedged on his original claim that "The culture war is over, and conservatives lost." Now he thinks there's a chance. Among his proof points:

The good news for cultural conservatives is that a new generation, aided by new technology, might finally conspire to change things. Young conservatives like R.J. Moeller — the man who brought comedian Adam Carolla and Dennis Prager together — are dedicating their lives to ideas and culture, not overt partisanship.

Apart from creating the headline lounge act in Hell, this is what Moeller's about.  I'm sure he can get people to pay him for it, but it hardly seems like a way to win hearts and minds.

UPDATE. In comments Spaghetti Lee has an angle:

I think the overtly churchy, you're-going-to-hell culture warriors are going to fade out, honestly. Who the hell is going to replace Pat Robertson or Maggie Gallagher when they bite the big one? I think we're going to see/are already seeing a rise in its more insidious cousin, the libertarian conservatives who are too hip and cool and with it for things like making sure 90% of the country actually has livable incomes and that the air and water supplies aren't full of poison...

He numbers among them the Randroid priest who can talk to kids.