To No One's Surprise, The Republican Party Expose Themselves (Again!) As Hypocrites Who Don't Care About Abortion At All

Walker's promise to file a lawsuit on Tuesday regarding the claim he paid for a girlfriend's abortion was yet another lie (to no one's surprise)

Oct 05, 2022

The people running Herschel Walker’s senatorial campaign knew about the abortion Walker paid for in 2009 (though they readily admit he has lied over and over to them, making their jobs a living hell), but in the words of one person close to the campaign, “people were holding out hope that we have five weeks to go [before the November midterm elections] and it would never come out”. That hope was dashed Monday night when Roger Sollenberger of The Daily Beast broke the story.

Liz Mair, a longtime Republican opposition researcher and consultant with corporate clients in Georgia, told Politico: “I remember hearing about this very early . . . This abortion thing I heard. Having more kids than he was copping to I heard. . . . I had heard about the alleged liabilities. And abortion was top of the list.”

Hours after the story broke, one of Walker’s children, Christian Walker, posted a series of scathing tweets, railing against his father’s constant stream of lies.

I know my mom and I would really appreciate if my father Herschel Walker stopped lying and making a mockery of us. You're not a 'family man' when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence.
Every family member of Herschel Walker asked him not to run for office, because we all knew (some of) his past. Every single one. He decided to give us the middle finger and air out all of his dirty laundry in public, while simultaneously lying about it. I'm done.
I don't care about someone who has a bad past and takes accountability. But how DARE YOU LIE and act as though you're some 'moral, Christian, upright man.' You've lived a life of DESTROYING other peoples lives. How dare you.

Outside of an interview Walker did with Sean Hannity on Monday night, Fox virtually ignored this inconvenient story.

If the stated beliefs of far-right extremists can be taken at face value — life begins at conception and abortion is murder — then what MSNBC’s Chris Hayes tweeted on Tuesday morning is correct: Herschel Walker “paid to have his child murdered”. The fact that not one Republican politician — not even one! — spoke out against the allegations against Walker “shows you that a lot of them don’t actually believe abortion is murder”.

This news will not matter one whit to far-right voters who regard themselves as Christians. As Amanda Marcotte wrote in Salon:

It is unlikely that Republicans actually believe Walker over this anonymous woman, but they don’t have to. They simply do not care. The abortion issue is not and never has been about “life.” Abortion bans are about controlling women and punishing female sexuality, full stop. Walker is a straight cisgender man and a Republican. That means, as far as the Christian right is concerned, he can do whatever he wants when it comes to sex.
It’s not news that the much-ballyhooed “family values” of Republicans amount to little more than a transparent gloss on their belief in maintaining male supremacy and rigid gender roles. This is the same party that fervently supported Trump, a thrice-married chronic adulterer who was caught on tape bragging about how he loves to sexually assault women. . . .
But somehow there is still this chronic myth in the mainstream media that Christian conservatives “really believe” abortion is murder. They do not, because they are not reacting to this story like one would if one actually thought abortion is murder. . . .
If they could get away with it, I have no doubt the anti-choice movement would prefer a law that allows abortions if men agree to them, but not otherwise. In fact, that's the stance that Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe in June, took in 1991. The case was Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and one of the abortion regulations being challenged was a provision requiring married women to notify their husbands before getting an abortion. Alito upheld the law, claiming it was not an "undue burden" because women could beg a judge for an exemption. The Supreme Court later struck down that provision though not other restrictions), because Justice Sandra Day O'Connor took offense at women being treated like their husband's property.
The recent Texas abortion law, based on a “bounty hunter” system, also embeds this notion that women are male property. The law technically allows anyone to sue someone who “abets” an abortion, and common sense tells us the people most likely to want to file such lawsuits would be abusive men trying to punish their exes. In fact, despite anti-choice claims they have no desire to arrest women for abortions, it didn’t take long for a Texas woman to be arrested for “murder” after a self-induced abortion. It turns out that one of the five prosecutors in the District Attorney’s office was also representing the woman’s ex-husband in their divorce.
A similar situation is playing out in Arizona, where Mario Villegas is suing a clinic for “wrongful death” of an embryo for allowing his ex-wife to get an abortion. Villegas’ argument is that his ex-wife supposedly didn’t understand what she was doing. She, on the other hand, maintains she is still glad for the abortion, which she got after being led to believe he had a vasectomy. But in anti-choice eyes, her opinion simply doesn’t matter. All that matter is what the man thinks.

Writer Kurt Schlichter spoke for all members of the GQP and their far-right media bootlickers when he succinctly tweeted: “Let's assume it's true. Don't care.” (Schlicher has previously written that the “tolerlance of abortion” in the United States will cause future generations to “recoil in horror”.)

Instead of demanding Walker be arrested as an accessory to murder — which is exactly what Republicans want the law of the land to be for every single American woman or young girl who gets an abortion — the National Republican Senate Committee stated that it “stand[s] with” Walker. While they have no real option other than doubling down on Walker, the party has no agenda other than gaining power and punishing their enemies. “They have no principles. No ideology. No values.”

In this case, their mantra is “Abortion is murder but murder is fine if it gets us one more Senate seat”. Writer Craig Calcaterra remarked after seeing one excuse for Walker’s actions:

It's been a while since I've seen the Republican ethos so perfectly set forth. Crass and dehumanizing sexism, whataboutism, transparently situational ethics, and above all else a lust for power which must be satisfied whatever the cost. It's almost a thing of beauty.

Walker had a “record-breaking” fundraising day while MAGA World trashed his son, who promised to reveal more details about his father’s past — “things you can’t even imagine” — if the harrassment continued. One official from The Party of Personal Responsbility said Christian would be “solely to blame” if Herschel loses the election.

Brian Tyler Cohen: “White evangelical conservative Christians in Georgia voting for the domestic abuser who paid for an abortion over the literal reverend is proof that it’s always been about power and not holiness to them.”

Jill Filipovic: “It’s almost like... Republicans don’t actually believe abortion is murder, but they do believe that men should have unfettered control over women's bodies.”

Amanda Carpenter: “I’m against abortion in all cases except for convenience of the father, politics, and personal interest.”

David A. Graham, The Atlantic:

The yawning hypocrisy between Walker's policy ideas and his own behavior is one symptom of a Republican Party in flux on social issues, and particularly on abortion. . . .
Walker followed Trump in combining the censoriousness of the Moral Majority with a total lack of personal moral code.

Oh, remember that lawsuit Walker promised he would be filing against The Daily Beast bright and early on Tuesday morning? . . . Guess what? . . . Tuesday came and went and Walker didn’t file shit.

Speaking of shit, The Daily Beast also reports “Trump Razzed Giuliani About How Much His Shit Literally Stinks”:

While aboard one of the former president’s planes with Giuliani, Trump made it a point to “loudly complain” about “the odor after Giuliani had used one of the plane’s bathrooms, so that other aides could hear.” “Rudy! That’s fucking disgusting!” Trump yelled. . . . The Daily Beast couldn’t reach Giuliani.

Did anyone call Jenna Ellis?

New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman writes in Confidence Man that Trump was worried that when Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested for sex trafficking she might drop his name to prosecutors. According to Haberman, Trump kept asking, “She say anything about me?” Maxwell was eventually convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Haberman also reports that Trump often told administration officials that he nominated the “first mentally retarded attorney general” in history. That would be Jeff Sessions, who was the first Senator to endorse him in 2016.

Truth Social is running an ad designed to dupe supporters of QAnon into buying an overpriced combo flashlight/phone charger that also includes a “survival radio”. The ad says you should be prepared for a coming “storm”. For reasons unknown, the ad features a picture of the Toronto skyline.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is busy creating campaign ads for her opponent. (Other than being a racist troll and moronic shit-poster, she has no discernable job.) Talking about being in the House of Representatives, she admitted: “It’s a horrible job. . . . It really is a bad job. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Ron DeSantis showed up somewhere (presumably hurricane-related) the other day sporting a pair of knee-high white boots. Twitter had fun.