Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.): “It was a quite a gut punch. [Kinda like an illegal abortion, Senator.] Yes, I’m shocked, absolutely shocked. [Guess you’re spending too much time in DC. Maybe you should visit your state occasionally and get to know the people who live there. Or maybe Kansans should vote for a Senator not liable to be totally shocked by lopsided electoral outcomes in the state.] But regardless, I respect the process. .. That’s not what I was expecting, not what I was told the polling showed, and I thought it was gonna be a tight race. But it is what it is. And, again, I respect the process. I don’t have an explanation. [What a telling confession. You really have no explanation at all for this result? … Let’s start real slow for you. Are you able to come up with any explanation at all for why a person might vote in favor of abortion rights? Take your time.]“
[I]f abortion supporters could fare as well as they did in Kansas, they would have a good chance to defend abortion rights almost anywhere in the country. The state may not be as conservative as Alabama, but it is much more conservative than the nation as a whole — and the result was not close. There are only seven states — in the Deep South and the Mountain West — where abortion rights supporters would be expected to fail in a hypothetically similar initiative.
At one level, the Republicans do realize that actually winning the culture war requires them to do what the white South did to post-Reconstruction Blacks: deny their critics the right to vote. That’s become the fundamental electoral strategy of a party that understands that they can’t hold power in an America based on majority rule. But it may be that their racism, sexism, homophobia, assault-weapon infatuation, and primitive religiosity targets so wide a spectrum of Americans that no campaign of voter suppression can encompass all the Americans they’ve threatened, or deter all the enemies they’ve made. It was the good Republican middle-class suburbs of Kansas City that doomed their anti-choice amendment last night. Does the GOP have to keep them away from the polls, too?
You take away Americans’ established rights at your own peril, as Kansans made very clear last night.
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Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect
In putting the issue before voters on a mid-summer primary day, conservatives in Kansas were banking on a low-turnout affair that would pave the way for an abortion ban in a reliably red state.
What they got instead was a lopsided loss that preserved the status quo yet also changed a whole swath of calculations about 2022.
The push to allow lawmakers to ban abortion in Kansas backfired spectacularly. It woke up suburban voters and even those in conservative parts of the state who didn’t want to pursue something that was practically invited by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
It also brought an explosion of activism that Democrats hope carries them through to the fall — in the few states where abortion will be directly on the ballot and the many more where the issue will be more indirectly at stake.
NARAL comments:
Kansans protect abortion access in the first public vote on reproductive freedom since #SCOTUS overturned Roe.
Voters are putting MAGA Republicans on notice: When you come for our rights, we’ll show up at the ballot box.
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“Staggering” turnout, and No to ending abortion rights wins by more than 60%. In some counties, the vote against ending the right to abortion was 95%.
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Oh, but authoritarian common good freaks know what’s best for America. You can’t just allow these… referendums to take place all over the country, since most (all?) of them will simply reveal that Americans don’t understand God’s will. As soon as Ginni Thomas and Adrian Vermeule take over, we’ll happily bow to their divinely-inspired wisdom.
… not one word. Vermeule, Dreher, Deneen…? Any interest in disavowing, or at least distancing?
Au contraire! Sing it!
1
Praise Him! Praise Him! Praise our Viktor!
He shall win the victory!
Freedom dead, old Europe finished,
Full redemption now we see!
Vanquished all the evil powers
Through the Cross triumphantly!
2
Praise Him! Hitler resurrected!
God hath raised him from the dead!
Liberty and reason swallowed,
We from life to death are led!
Shattered is the light of wisdom
And His pow’r exhibited!
3
Praise Him! Orban’s now ascended!
God hath raised Him to the throne!
Far above all rule and power,
He the highest Name doth own!
All authority receiving
Till democracy is done!
4
Hallelujah, praise our Viktor
Triumphed on Mt. Budapest!
Hallelujah, resurrected,
Rayed in fascist holiness.
Hallelujah, now ascended,
He shall reign eternally!
“We deserve a better class of bastards,”[said a British commentator about Boris Johnson].
We all do. Still, as an American, I have to say: Be thankful for what you’ve got.
Not that many. But the Clarence Clearance initiative is moving at an insane pace. We’re already on our way to 650,000, and new people are signing the petition every second.
Frenetic engineering on the part of the Dems pays off.
… in a staggeringly short period of time. Every second someone signs.
Be there or be square. The J6 committee just announced a surprise hearing scheduled for tomorrow.
It’s important to remind ourselves of these numbers, and to act – i.e., vote – so that the will of the minority is no longer able to tyrannize over the will of the majority.
And moving forward like a son of a bitch.