Brooks and Tumulty on Roe v. Wade, culture wars and Trump’s impact on the midterms

Read the Full Transcript

• Judy Woodruff:

  And now to the analysis of Brooks and Tumulty. That is New York Times columnist David Brooks, and Karen Tumulty, columnist for The Washington Post. Jonathan Capehart is away this week.

  Hello to both of you. There is a lot that's gone on in the last few days that we are here to talk about.

  David, we're now, what, four days out from this leak from the Supreme Court. We heard a little bit tonight what Hillary Clinton had to say. We just saw the history from John Yang. What are your thoughts right now?

• David Brooks:

  Well, first, I'm humbled. A lot of people are reading about what's going to happen in the future.

  I would be a little humbled about that. When the Supreme Court made the Roe v. Wade decision, we didn't have a culture war yet. I looked at the resolutions the Southern Baptist Convention was passing around then about abortion. They were pretty moderate. They were allowing a lot of loopholes for people to have abortions. They were supporting abortions.

  So, all the culture war that we had, that was really partly kicked off by Roe v. Wade. And then you had the pro-life movement, which shifted over onto the Republican side. And, in my view, Ronald Reagan would not have been elected without pro-life voters. Donald Trump would not have been elected without pro-life voters.

• Karen Tumulty:

  Although Ronald Reagan, in 1967, did sign the law legalizing abortion in California.

• David Brooks:

  Right. No, and he shifted over because, in those — it hadn't become the culture war landscape that we now are familiar with.

  So — but if you had asked people like me in 1973, what's going to be the effect of Roe v. Wade, a big culture war, Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, believe me, that would not have occurred to us.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Yes.

• David Brooks:

  And so, the effects of this, I don't — don't think it'll be huge in the midterms, but I think it could be — potentially be very huge five years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, in ways that are really hard to see.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Fifty years on, the country has changed a lot, Karen.

  Does this change us yet again?

• Karen Tumulty:

  Even as the culture wars have raged around this issue, public opinion about abortion, and specifically about Roe v. Wade, has been very, very stable over the years, over the decades.

  People generally support the decision. We at The Post had a poll just a few days ago, where it was 54 percent in favor of Roe v. Wade vs. 27 percent against. So I think, by and large, people do generally want abortion to be available in the early part of pregnancy.

  And that, I do think, is potentially kind of light a fire under people who support abortion rights. We have to remember, what, two-thirds of the country wasn't even born in 1973.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Right.

• Karen Tumulty:

  For them, legalized abortion has been a given for their entire lifetimes.

• Judy Woodruff:

  So, light a fire, David, but does that translate into something? I mean…

• David Brooks:

  It's hard to know, because, while clear majority support Roe, a clear majority oppose abortions — or support abortion restrictions after the first trimester, and a really large majority oppose — or support restrictions in the second trimester.

  And there's no gender gap particularly on this issue. Women and men are more or less in the same camp. And so you could say, should we support Roe, but then, if it goes back to the voters in the state legislatures, and they start acting, in theory, in my ideal world, in PBS world, it goes back to the voters, and the majority is sort of in the middle there.

  They want some restrictions, but not all the way through. And so, in our ideal world, we have a debate. And I happen to think this is an issue on which both sides have extremely powerful arguments.

  And in…

• Judy Woodruff:

  Both sides.

• David Brooks:

  Both — I think the — what Hillary Clinton said about what happens to women, and they're dangerous, that's a very powerful argument.

  What the pro-life people say, in my view, after about the 22nd week, if you look at the science of what a fetus is doing, it's a lot of humanlike activity. It's dreaming. It's feeling pain. It's moving. It's hearing the voice of the mother. And so both sides have powerful arguments.

  And so, if we had a good democracy, we would wind up where Europe is, where they say, there are strong arguments here. Let's try to find some way to reconcile. And I'm not sure we live in that world anymore. And so I think the most likely outcome is that the red states go radically one way and the blue states go radically the other way.

  And then what's interesting in Washington is, we really could see, when parties get control over Congress, and they decide to throw out the filibuster, we could see the federal government swinging wildly from one abortion regime to another.

• Karen Tumulty:

  Although I — in terms of the election that's right in front of us now, I do think that we love to fixate on whether Congress, the control of Congress, is going to shift.

  I think a lot of the most interesting political dynamics are going to be out in the states, and especially, say, in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, where you have a Democratic governor and a Republican legislature, and just a few votes in that legislature is — it's going to make the difference of whether the governor can veto these anti-abortion bills that are coming through.

  I mean, Louisiana is talking about criminalizing it for the pregnant woman. That's somewhere the pro-life movement has never really gone before.

• Judy Woodruff:

  But, I mean, to David's point, Karen, the country is already so deeply divided, polarized. This makes it worse, doesn't it? I mean, does this — doesn't this punctuate what the differences are?

• Karen Tumulty:

  I do think that, in terms of, is it going to make the Republican base more energized, it would be really hard for the Republican base to be any more energized than it is.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Any more, yes.

• Karen Tumulty:

  The real question is whether this again, lights a fire under Democrats, and particularly the ones who are really hard to get to the polls in a midterm, young voters, single women.

  I don't know the answer to that.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And it might make a difference, but we don't know.

  The last thing I want to ask the two of you is the court itself. I mean, we have — we have seen Justice Breyer and others out there making speeches about the legitimacy of the court. They don't want the court to be seen as political.

  David, does this make — and, by the way, we should say, Clarence Thomas, Justice Thomas, gave — spoke today at a judicial conference, in which he said the court is not going to be bullied, no matter what people think about what was leaked this week.

• David Brooks:

  Yes. Well, you see the fury. It's similar to the fury you saw in Bush v. Gore.

  And so I would say it becomes a bit delegitimized, when every Republican appointee votes one way and every Democratic appointee votes the other way. It just looks political.

  I think the — but you — conservatives think that it was delegitimized when Roe v. Wade happened. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg made this point back in 1992. That decision was so big, she said it's fragile. It's — and then law professors, even very pro-choice law professors, have always said, we're worried about this decision. It's not a great decision.

  They like the outcome. They are worried about decision. So it was fragile. And so hanging all that on that decision was always going to be — it was — it was waiting to go off. And then Alito just ran through it.

  And I — personally, there are two separate issues here. Should abortion be a right that people get to enjoy? Should — does the Constitution guarantee that right? And it's important to separate those two things. And you can think the Constitution doesn't guarantee it, but people should have it.

  And that, in an ideal world, is what happens if it goes back to the state legislatures.

• Karen Tumulty:

  But I do think the court as an institution suffered a very serious blow this week by the leaking of this draft opinion.

  Yes, we have gotten leaks of which way a decision is going to go in the past, including Roe v. Wade. But the kind of norm-breaking ideological warfare that it took for somebody to actually leak the draft of an opinion written back in February, I think it just shows that the court has become yet another political branch of government.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Well, a lot — and a lot of investigative work being done right now to figure out how it leaked.

  We talked a little bit about the midterms, but let's talk about, in the run-up to the midterms, David, in Ohio, you're seeing the primary elections take place, President Trump, former President Trump, weighing in.

  His candidate in Ohio, J.D. Vance, did come out on top. It wasn't a majority, but he did win the Republican nomination for the Senate. What does that say, if anything, about the former president's ability to sway these races coming up?

• David Brooks:

  Well, Trump's guy won. So he gets to crow about that.

  But it's limited. So, J.D. Vance was at about 23 percent support before the endorsement. What did he finish? With like 32.

• Karen Tumulty:

  Around 30, yes.

• David Brooks:

  Yes, maybe an eight-point jump. And so that means 70 or 68 percent of Republicans in Ohio voted against the Trump candidate.

  And Mike DeWine, the governor, who Trump really dislikes, he cruises to victory. This guy Matt Dolan, who sort of ran against — is sort of a non-Trumpy, he did — he certainly did very well.

• Karen Tumulty:

  Although the — most of the other candidates were very much fashioning themselves in Trump's image. So, to — they really weren't voting against a Trumpist-like candidate.

• David Brooks:

  That's fair.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Except for the one candidate.

  (CROSSTALK)

• Karen Tumulty:

  Except for the one.

  But — so I think they just had different flavors of Trumpism mostly on the…

  (CROSSTALK)

• Judy Woodruff:

  But do you see, Karen, this — what does it say? We know Trump is putting his weight heavily on one of the candidates, Mehmet Oz, in Pennsylvania, on his favorite candidate, Perdue, in Georgia.

  I mean, does it look like he's going to be able to get who he wants?

• Karen Tumulty:

  Those are going to be the more interesting primaries, I think.

  And especially it is going to be — it is going to be Georgia, where the governor is on the ballot. He is public enemy number one, as far as Donald Trump is concerned. And sort of seeing how those races play out, where you have a Trump contender and a vigorously anti-Trump contender, or at least one that the president believes — the former president believes is anti-Trump on the ballot, next to each other, those are going to be, I think, better tests.

  But it is Donald Trump's party. I think that is pretty clear.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Last quick question for both of you. And it's not a small subject. It's Ukraine.

  We heard, David, Hillary Clinton, focus on Vladimir Putin and say he's been humiliated. We — it looks like he's going to have to find some graceful exit. I mean, how much should we be worried about what Putin's reaction is going to be if he loses?

• David Brooks:

  Yes, I agreed with Hillary Clinton's sentiments on that, though, a graceful exit, I'm not sure I see coming.

  But it's just been another week of slow, grinding, but somewhat progress for the Ukrainian side. We have seen them go on the offensive. We see the Europeans go even harder on getting rid of Russian oil. I was at a Freedom House dinner with a Ukrainian activist, and just the conviction and fervor, that she said: "We're not here to negotiate. We're here for victory."

  And so I just think that there's a sense that he really is being pushed back. And I have asked experts about, should we really worried about getting nuked? And they said, we have got a long way to go before that — we — that's a big concern.

• Karen Tumulty:

  I think it's still an open question whether Vladimir Putin in a corner is less or more dangerous.

  I think Vladimir Putin, when he feels like he has nothing to lose, could be very dangerous still.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And then the question is, what does the U.S., what does NATO do in response if he does something unthinkable?

  Karen Tumulty, David Brooks, so much going on right now. Thank you both.

• Karen Tumulty:

  Thank you.