The Vance-Walz Debate

The debate in New York between J. D. Vance and Tim Walz and hosted by two CBS journalists is now over. A few brief reflections are in order. What can be said at the outset are a few things that most folks would acknowledge, except for hardcore lefty ideologues and Dembots. Four things stand out:

1. Vance was the clear winner of the debate. All up, what the Daily Telegraph said in part was a good description of the debate and how Vance winged it:

His answers on policy issues were detailed, and he spoke repeatedly about children and families in a way that was designed to appeal to the female voters who are driving Ms Harris’s poll lead. It was Mr Walz, the man picked by Ms Harris for his folksy Midwestern charm, who came unstuck in front of the cameras.

Stuttering over his words, getting agitated and failing to pick up on some of the most obvious attack lines to use against Mr Vance, he looked out of his depth on the stage. At one point, he mistakenly said he had become “friends with school shooters”, while apparently referring to their parents. Perhaps the worst moment of his night came when he was challenged about his claim that he was in China at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.

2. This was another three-against-one debate, with the two CBS News women mainly ganging up on Vance. As Rod Dreher noted: “No Ukraine questions. No DEI questions. No trans rights vs women’s rights questions. No China questions. But we sure got climate change and Jan 6 questions. It’s like the CBS moderators decided to protect Walz’s weak flanks.”

3. The ‘moderators’ said there would be no fact-checking, but they did some anyway. As to fact-checking being ruled out, one writeup said this:

The moderators of CBS News’ vice presidential debate, Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan, became the story when they decided to first fact-check JD Vance (R-OH) live during the debate and then cut his mic when he tried to respond….

[W]the issue of immigration and the border crisis was brought up, Brennan broke the rule CBS had agreed to with both candidates and decided to live fact-check Vance on his comment about the migrant crisis in Springfield, Ohio. Brennan said, “And just to clarify to our viewers, Springfield, Ohio, does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status. Temporary protected status.” Vance then attempted to respond, and said as long as they are going to “fact check him.”

“Margaret, the rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check. And since you are fact-checking me, I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on,” Vance said as he attempted to talk about how under the Biden-Harris administration, some illegal aliens can get “legal status” through the CBP One App. He also pointed out how that’s not the same as a person applying for a green card and waiting for ten years. Brennan then said, “thank you, senator, for explaining the legal process,” and when Vance tried to respond, the network cut both of the candidates’ microphones.

4. Walz told a number of porkies. In the debate, various issues were covered. Abortion of course was one of them. Walz used a few stories to make the Democrat case for abortion on demand. But using the story of Amber Nicole Thurman dying because she had to leave her home state of Georgia was clearly fake news. As Liz Wheeler replied to his use of her story:

“Amber Thurman died because she aborted her twin babies with the abortion pill & subsequently got sepsis, a side effect listed on the abortion drug box. Then, Amber didn’t go to the hospital. When she did, doctors negligently didn’t do a D&C to save her. She was killed by abortion.”

Or as Allie Beth Stuckey had said about this sad case:

Malicious disinformation. This woman died from her abortion. She tragically tried to abort her twins via a medication abortion. As is too often the case, parts of the baby were left inside her, which caused her to suffer from fatal sepsis. Yes, she should have received a D&C and antibiotics. But that is not the fault of any Georgia law, which fully permits a D&C when the baby has already passed. She died because of the abortion pills and because of the negligence of doctors. She did not die because of any pro-life law.

Sadly some great prolifers had made somewhat unhelpful comments on the Trump/Vance team. Lila Rose for example tweeted this: “JD Vance is so talented. It is extremely tragic that he is now defending abortion. This is the Trump influence. It is destroying the Republican Party.”

But Rod Dreher was correct to quickly reply: “No. Vance made it clear that the American people are not where prolifers are. He’s a politician in a democracy. Politicians have to respond to the world as it is, not as we wish it were. We prolifers can’t let the perfect become the enemy of the achievable good.”

Indeed, the two camps are quite different on this. As Robert A. J. Gagnon wrote yesterday on Facebook:

Christians who say that they can’t vote for Trump because he is pro-abortion and there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between Harris and him on that issue drive me nuts.

Just listen to the Harris campaign ads. More than half of them are about Trump’s anti-abortion actions and views. How can anyone compare the candidate who nominated 3 SCOTUS justices that made it possible to overturn Roe and Doe with a candidate who has promised to restore “reproductive freedom” nationally to a position more radical than Roe and Doe, and even to weaponize the “Justice” Department to go after states that pass legislation putting any curbs on abortion during 9 months of pregnancy.

Returning the decision to the states is infinitely better than SCOTUS continuing to impose virtually unlimited abortion on the nation or a federal law imposing the same.

Remember, too, what Trump did as President in addition to making it possible for the Dobbs decision to happen. While Trump could never ensure an end to Planned Parenthood’s budget during his presidency (because the power of the purse belongs to the legislative branch, not the executive), he did do the following:

*Deny Coronavirus funds to Planned Parenthood

*Prohibit family planning clinics from referring women to abortion providers if they received Title X family planning grants

*Sign into law a bill that allowed states to block funds to PP

*Reinstate the Mexico City Policy that required foreign nongovernmental organizations to promise not to “perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning” using U.S. taxpayer dollars

Yes, he has backtracked some. He is concerned that adopting a rigorous pro-life position will cost him the election, leading him to oppose bans on abortion prior to 20 (?) weeks and saying that he will not sign a national abortion ban (which isn’t like to pass Congress anyway). I’m not happy with that, but he is not trying to pass a national pro-abortion bill or bring the Justice Department down on states that seek to curb abortion.

Harris/Walz view abortion as an idol for all 9 months of pregnancy. They want to pass a national, unlimited “reproductive freedom” bill that will also go after Crisis Pregnancy Centers. They are even against protecting an infant born after a botched abortion (literal infanticide). They want to weaponize the Justice Department both to attack any state that does not affirm a virtually unlimited “right” to abortion and to imprison peaceful, praying pro-life protestors. To assert that Trump/Vance are little different from them is absurd in the extreme.

And Walz lied about his support of abortion in all nine months. He said of the bill that he signed into law that it did not go this far. However, the January 2023 bill clearly stated that there were no limitations on when a woman could end the life of her unborn baby.

In fact, a detailed fact-check of the debate found many dodgy things that Walz had said. Here are a few of them:

Project 2025’s Registry of Pregnancy

Walz said that Project 2025, the presidential transition plan developed by The Heritage Foundation and 100 coalition partners, calls for a national registry to monitor women’s pregnancies.  However, legacy media outlets including CBS News fact-checked this claim as false.

Project 2025’s 900-page “Mandate for Leadership” does call for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to collect certain information from states—namely information on the number and method of abortions, the reason for an abortion, how far along in pregnancy each abortion was, and the pregnant woman’s state of residence. However, there is no evidence that Project 2025 ever called for a federal registry of pregnancies. Trump also has repeatedly stated that he has not read “Mandate for Leadership” and has not endorsed Project 2025.

And this:

Has Harris Demonstrated How to Curb Gun Violence Constitutionally?

There are ways to remedy mass shootings and other gun violence without threatening Second Amendment rights, Walz argued.  “It’s not infringing on your Second Amendment [rights], and the idea to have some of these weapons out there, it just doesn’t make any sense,” Walz said. “Kamala Harris, as an attorney general, worked on this issue.”

However, as San Francisco’s district attorney before she was attorney general of California, Harris said authorities could “walk into” legal gun owners’ homes to inspect whether they were storing their firearms properly. “We’re going to require responsible behaviors among everybody in the community, and just because you legally possess a gun in the sanctity of your locked home doesn’t mean that we’re not going to walk into that home and check to see if you’re being responsible and safe in the way you conduct your affairs,” Harris said in May 2007.

Still, Walz said during the debate: “No one’s trying to scaremonger and say, ‘We’re taking your guns.’” In 2019, running for president before she dropped out ahead of the Iowa caucuses, Harris also said she supported a mandatory gun-buyback program. “I do believe that we need to do buyback,” Harris said. “A buyback program is a good idea,” she said. “Now we need to do it the right way. And part of that has to be, you know, buy back [guns] and give people their value, the financial value.”

And various claims made by Vance were shown to be correct – for example:

Solar Panels Made in China, Vance Say

Vance criticized the Harris-Walz plan for remedying climate change with solar panels. “The issue is that if you’re spending hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars of American taxpayer money on solar panels that are made in China,” Vance said, “number one, you’re going to make the economy dirtier.”

Vance said we should be making more solar panels in the United States, noting that the components are made overseas in China. Vance is correct, according to Erin Walsh, senior research fellow for international affairs in The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center.

The development of solar energy began in America, then the Chinese developed it further, and now China controls the “entire supply chain, so you can’t be involved unless you’re purchasing some goods from China to make your solar panels,” Walsh said.  China has “taken advantage of the United States, because we’ve had this very driven climate agenda,” she said.

While Vance was the clear victor in this debate, the question arises as to how much of an impact it will have in next month’s election. Normally these VP debates do not have that much influence, but time will tell if independent voters especially were impacted by it.