With the Iowa caucuses just days away, the Republican presidential candidates were back in the state yesterday making their pitches to the voters.
Donald Trump held a town hall event with Fox News in Des Moines last night, just two miles from where Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley were participating in a CNN debate.
Lots of issues were discussed during Trump's town hall, but what really stood out to me was his response to a pro-life Iowa voter.
Trump has come under fire from some who are suggesting that he is abandoning the pro-life cause. I have met with him many times, and he is not abandoning this issue.
And it was striking last night that instead of running away from the overturn of Roe v. Wade, Trump strongly embraced it. He began by talking about a person who thanked him backstage before the town hall event started for being a solid pro-life president who saved so many innocent lives by overturning Roe v. Wade.
Even elected officials with long pro-life records try to avoid talking about the overturn of Roe. Unfortunately, that was not a politically popular decision. That's a fact the pro-life movement has to contend with. But Trump did not run from it.
He also reminded the audience about the left's extremism on this issue. That was never effectively done by previous GOP candidates until Trump rhetorically hung Hillary Clinton's pro-abortion extremism around her neck like an albatross. That exchange stunned her and, I believe, mightily contributed to his victory.
Trump said he supported the three main "exceptions" – life of the mother, rape and incest. That was the same position that Ronald Reagan held, and Reagan was the most pro-life president we ever had until the election of Donald Trump.
But even Reagan blew it with his Supreme Court appointments of Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy. Trump had three Supreme Court appointments, and he got them all right on this issue.
Finally, Trump made it clear that if conservatives impose a purity test that makes the perfect the enemy of the good, and which also allows the left to paint us as extremists, they're not going to win, and will end up with abortion on demand back in the Constitution.
Biden's Priority
Not only was Donald Trump's response on the life issue noteworthy, but so too was a recent comment by Quentin Fulks, Joe Biden's deputy campaign manager.
Fulks appeared on "Meet The Press" this past Sunday and was asked what Joe Biden's top priority would be for his second term. He replied, "First of all, Roe. The president has been adamant that we need to restore [Roe v. Wade]."
There you go. Abortion on demand is the top priority for Biden's second term.
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