In case you missed it, The Boston Globe published a must-read column from Yvonne Abraham on Don Bolduc’s blatant attempts to mislead voters about his extreme, anti-choice agenda.
Boston Globe Column: Get over it? Nope!
By Yvonne Abraham
I am admittedly at the straw-grasping stage here, but maybe it’s a good sign that Don Bolduc is desperately trying to avoid talking about abortion?
Now that the retired general has won the Republican primary for US senator in New Hampshire, he’s not so much pivoting to the center as performing inelegant somersaults in that direction, like a gymnast with the twisties.
Bolduc has spent the better part of two years parroting the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, doubling down on that falsehood in a primary debate: “I’m not switching horses, baby. This is it,” he said.
But now that he’s up against Democrat incumbent Maggie Hassan, Bolduc appears to have no further use for that old nag. Immediately after the primary, he proclaimed President Biden legitimately elected.
He must have thought — for this is clearly a thinking man — that we wouldn’t notice. His hope, apparently, is that the voters of the Granite State will believe he had a genuine change of heart.
They’d better be as dense as Bolduc thinks they are, or he’ll be in trouble come November.
He would probably love them to give him a pass on abortion, too, though Bolduc definitely doesn’t want to talk about that. Much of the country is apoplectic about the US Supreme Court Dobbs decision effectively ending abortion rights in half the states. Republicans in Congress and assorted state lawmakers across the country are proposing even more draconian restrictions that would also reach into places — like New Hampshire — where abortion is legal.
We are looking at a massive regression here. But Bolduc keeps saying abortion is just a distraction. He wants everybody to just “get over it,” and move on to discussing what he sees as more important things.
No wonder. Bolduc is on the record saying we should “rejoice” in the Dobbs decision. He is adamantly opposed to federal funding for Planned Parenthood, and said the group does not give pregnant women “the right choice.” During the primary, he vowed that, in the Senate, he would “always default for a system that protects lives from beginning to end,” even though he claims to oppose a proposal by South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham to make abortions after 15 weeks illegal everywhere.
I wanted to ask the candidate to explain these inconsistencies, but instead of making him available for an interview, a spokesman sent along a statement accusing Hassan of “misleading the voters of New Hampshire with her false attacks,” and restating Bolduc’s support for a New Hampshire law allowing abortion up to 24 weeks.
Voters can’t trust Bolduc’s word on abortion, or anything else. But at least the Republican still believes being antichoice in a swing state hurts him. It’s a position Graham doesn’t appear to share, given that he has doubled down on further restricting abortion right before the midterms, even though Democrats are seeing rising support in the wake of the Dobbs decision.
Maybe Graham handed Democrats a massive gift, or maybe he knows something the pollsters don’t. Or maybe these Republican men are so obsessed with controlling the rest of us that they simply don’t care how they look or what it costs them.
They’re the dog who caught the car, and they’re still not satisfied. They spent decades making a Supreme Court that would overturn Roe v. Wade, clearing the way for some 26 states to effectively outlaw abortion. Now they’re after the rest of us.
What they want will make this a country where people are forced to carry fetuses with fatal anomalies to births they would not survive, where ectopic pregnancies, maternal sepsis, or incomplete miscarriages are deadly for those without the resources to get around state restrictions.
They’re all for states’ autonomy, and freedom from government interference, until it comes to our bodies. And so far we’re only hearing from the ones who are confident or stupid enough to talk about it before the midterms.
This is a five-alarm fire for abortion rights. There’s no getting over it, as much as Bolduc might want to dismiss it.
But the fact that he doesn’t want to talk about it means he knows voters aren’t with him. It also means all is not lost — yet.