Unprincipled Biden Plays Hyde and Seek

Could Joe Biden be the Ron Burgundy of politics, a campaign version of the empty suit TV anchor portrayed in the movies by Will Ferrell whose undoing is his tendency to read anything put in front of him on a teleprompter, including the line penned in by a vengeful competitor.  “Go **** yourself, San Diego.”

Or could Joe Biden by the real-life equivalent the character Chauncey Gardiner, played by Peter Sellers in the 1979 movie Being There? He played a clueless gardener mistaken for a Washington poobah whose simplemindedness and lack of protocol is mistaken for deep wisdom. In this case we have the crazy uncle from Thanksgiving being mistaken for a commander-in-chief.

How else to explain the “triple-Axelrod” awarded by veteran operative David Axelrod to the serial groper who would only have a grasp on reality if it were female for blindly agreeing to a rope-line question about past support for the Hyde Amendment blocking federal funding of abortion? Axelrod discussed Biden’s remarks with Alisyn Camerota on CNN:”

Former Obama campaign manager David Axelrod weighed in on Joe Biden's position reversal on the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal funding for most abortions, saying it is a "flip flop flip" which highlights some of the larger problems with his candidacy:

DAVID AXELROD: I think that this was a parable about Biden that goes to question marks about his candidacy… the virtue of having a long record and comforting people and being a figure of stability has the flip side that you have to defend positions that you've had over the course of 45 years in politics, some of which may have been acceptable in the day and not acceptable now. We see that on this issue of the Hyde Amendment… Joe Biden was out on the campaign, and he's not been out that much and a voter challenged him on the question of Hyde, video was rolling, and he said he would reverse this policy… Then the next day when it came to light the campaign put out a statement and said, no, he still believes in the Hyde amendment. Then there was a furor and last night he flipped again. So that was a flip, flop, flip, which is never a good thing in politics and it raises questions about his own performance and his own steadiness and his campaign's performance. So this was not a good -- you know, beyond the issue itself, this was not a reassuring episode for the Biden campaign.

 ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN: A flip-flop flip, also known as a triple Axelrod.

The third flip doomed his candidacy, a gaffe of Chernobyl proportions.  It blew his street credit with independents as a “moderate” who could at least be the adult in the room who could beat Trump. And it does not impress those who believe that infanticide is a human right. Joe Biden is a political shape-shifter with a spine of gelatin whose triple-Axelrod was performed to pass muster with the new Democratic dogma to get him past the Lilliputian-elimination primaries to become the Democratic nominee.

The Democrats have moved from “the right to choose” to the obligation to kill up to the moment of birth, sometimes even afterward. Dr. Kermit Gosnell, the baby butcher of Philadelphia, is suddenly the patron saint of the full-blown abortion Democrat Party. Joe Biden didn’t want to suffer the plight of pro-life-Illinois Dem. Cong. Dan Lipinski, fighting attempts from the national Democrats to purge him.

Those who believe life begins at conception and ends at natural death are not welcome in the Democratic Party, neither are those who  believe, okay, you can have your “right” to an abortion, just don’t ask taxpayers to pay for it. As John Bowden writes in The Hill:

A Democratic lawmaker argued Friday that her party needed to take a strong stance against efforts to restrict abortion rights, telling reporters that it was impossible to be a Democrat and not support the right to an abortion.

At a press conference Friday, Rep. Pramila Jayapal  (D-Wash.) told reporters that the party should only support members who agree to a core set of party principles including support for LGBTQ Americans and immigrants.

"I think the party's response will be strong, and hopefully you've seen [that] it's been strong across the board," Jayapal said to a reporter who asked how the party should respond to recent efforts in Georgia and Alabama to restrict abortion rights.

"Personally, I do think there should be a core set of Democratic ideals that we all agree to," she added. "That you can't say you're a Democrat if you're against immigrants, if you're against abortion, if you're against gay marriage, LGBTQ rights."

Such intolerance, particularly on abortion, was a prime factor in Trump’s win. Trump took Hillary Clinton apart when in the final presidential debate she defended the right to end unborn lives in the womb using the barbaric procedure known as partial birth abortion, which involves the physical dismemberment of nearly born infants. As the Washington Times noted, Donald Trump objected to doing to the preborn what you are not allowed to do to dogs and cats:

Hillary Clinton defended the practice of partial-birth abortion in the final presidential debate on Wednesday, obscuring her belief that abortion should be legal at any point during a pregnancy by appealing to the “health” of the mother.

Asked to defend her vote in the Senate against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, which was ultimately enacted, Mrs. Clinton said she was not convinced the legislation did enough to protect the “life and health of the mother.”…

“Well, I think it’s terrible,” Mr. Trump said. “If you go with what Hillary is saying, in the ninth month [of pregnancy], you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby.”

Yet such barbarism is now a plank in the Democrat Platform. Biden’s explanation for supporting such barbarism is nonsensical:

"If I believe health care is a right, as I do, I can no longer support an amendment that makes that right dependent on someone's ZIP code," he said. "I can't justify leaving millions of women without the access to care they need, and the ability to exercise their constitutionally protected right."

Abortion is not health care. As the recent birth and survival of an 8-ounce baby, dubbed “Saybie” by attending nurses, shows, it is never necessary to kill the baby to save the mother. Never. Although one of Joe Biden’s key advisers in his flip-flop-flip, actress Alyssa Milano, might disagree:

Actress Alyssa Milano, an outspoken women's rights advocate and friend of Joe Biden, reportedly urged the former vice president to reverse his stance on the Hyde Amendment after he reaffirmed his decades-long support for the ban on federal funding for abortions.

The Atlantic reported Friday that Milano spoke with campaign manager Greg Schultz over the phone on Wednesday, telling him that Biden needed to change his stance on the controversial amendment.

CNN reported Friday that Biden heard directly from Milano encouraging him to reverse his position on the issue.

No wonder Biden is hidin’ from voter and reporters. He holds no principled positions that he can coherently defend.and is reliant on former child stars for strategic campaign advice.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.               

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