Evan McMullin's Betrayal of Pro-Life Voters Illustrates Why Many Turned to Trump
McMullin's Flip-Flop on Roe v. Wade Feeds the Voter Cynicism That Gave us Donald Trump
Evan McMullin’s 2016 Campaign was extraordinary in its achievements.
Those who don’t know what they’re talking about would scoff at 731,000 and 0.5% of the vote. But it’s a remarkable score on several points. Just as a matter of pure politics, in the prior four elections only Ralph Nader achieved a higher percentage of the vote for an Independent/Third Party candidate. McMullin’s numbers were remarkable because he was only on the ballot in eleven states and began his campaign a mere three months before the election.
The number was due in part to the unacceptability of the two major-party nominees, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Trump University Founder Donald Trump. But that wasn't all. It was the unacceptability of other alternatives.
In theory, Republican-turned Libertarian former Governor Gary Johnson (NM) should have drawn disgruntled GOP support, but he seemed determined to repel it. He and Vice-Presidential Candidate Bill Weld were not only vocal abortion rights proponents but also suggested that Stephen Breyer was an ideal Supreme Court Justice. Libertarians had opportunities in other ways.
In the wake of the Obergfell decision legalizing same-sex marriage, traditionalist Americans would have loved to have a candidate who embraced the traditional libertarian understanding of religious freedom. Instead, the Libertarians nominated someone who had no interest in protecting it and also turned off LDS voters with a very unfortunate analogy and hurt himself in Utah, the state an anti-Trump candidate would do best in.
Ente McMullin, a 40-year-old former CIA operative and House Republican staffer who entered the campaign in August. He got votes and endorsements from people like Erick Erickson and David French. Why? Because he was pro-life.
If Evan McMullin had been pro-choice and socially liberal, there’s no way he would have gotten a third of the support he did.
However, since the 2016 election, he’s lost a lot of support from those who prominently voted for him. There were legitimate complaints against McMullin who went off a bit too far into the weeds on Russia. In addition, while he promised supporters to start a “new conservative movement” during the campaign after the election, these plans were scrapped in order for him to work on pressing Congress’ support of the Mueller Investigation and voting reforms.
He didn’t abandon the pro-life movement. He went to March for Life in 2017. But then he got attacked with mean tweets afterward from outraged leftists who were scandalized and he never returned, or if he did, never shared about it on Twitter.
He didn’t make any official retreat from the pro-life movement until recently. McMullin issued a statement announcing that he opposed overturning Roe v. Wade. John McCormack of National Review screencapped McMullin tweets from 2016 supporting overturning Roe v. Wade and as McCormack stated McMullin offered no explanation for the change of opinion.
The obvious reason is this…McMullin received the endorsement of the Utah Democratic Party at their state convention and wants to hold together his cross-partisan coalition. If he were to still support overturning Roe v. Wade, he’d risk losing that support. It’s even possible that there were backroom assurances given. I don’t know.
Perhaps McMullin can personal justify his stance because it’s irrelevant. Yes, he’s pleasing his Democratic coalition members by being against overturning Roe v. Wade, but it doesn’t matter what a Senate candidate from Utah thinks, the Supreme Court will rule how it will rule.
Or perhaps McMullin, if elected, can counted as a “yes” vote for the Democrats radical to codify Roe v. Wade, or the slightly less radical bill advocated by Senators Susan Collins (R-ME.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). Is that the “reasonable legislation” he pledged to support in a Tweet that recycled far left talking point about pro-life laws criminalizing women?
I don’t know and regardless of what McMullin says about abortion now, who knows what position he’ll actually take if he were to be elected to the Senate.
All I know is that I’m out.
To be sure, I’ve not been that far “in” with McMullin, but have avoided the genre of kiss-off posts and “regretting” voting for Evan McMullin. Truth be told, I do not regret my vote because it was the best decision I could have made with the information I had at the time.
Nor do I hate or revile Mr. McMullin. I think people suggesting McMullin is a “grifter” are unjust. There’s no indication Mister McMullin has personally profited from his activism. He’s not only a CIA operative, but former Goldmann Sachs Employee and could be making a fortune on the open market. The path he has taken is probably the least profitable to him personally and please don’t talk to me about the fleeting fame of being Twitter famous or appearing on MSNBC. There’s so much more money, fame, and power in being on the side of the likes of Steve Bannon.
I don’t even think he’s generally unprincipled. He was an undercover CIA operative who put his life on the line for his country in the way most of his critics have not. He has seen the dangers of authoritarian states and fears them coming to America. He has one core principle that has driven his activism and political career…the defense of democracy and the American Republic.
I agree with him that Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) has become a menace to the Republic. Lee’s behind-the-scenes advocacy for Mister Trump’s efforts to overturn the election by perusading states to appoint alternate sales of electors show someone who is willing to upend the republic for partisan means. His vote against overturning the result of the election when his efforts failed only shows his duplicity.
McMullin might not be loyal to the pro-life cause, but he’d insist along that if anyone found him disloyal, they could consider himself, “loyal to nothing except the dream,” as Captain America once said.
He also claims to still be pro-life. He’s just not pro-life in the sense that the movement has defined itself for near on fifty years, but he’s pro-life as he defines the term. Being pro-life is more than supporting overturning Roe v. Wade, but it’s not less than that.
Yet, what we see is the profound way that McMullin and many conservative and formerly conservative folks…the sort of people who write for and read the Bulwark, for instance. They are for democracy but as a general principle, not as a practical form of government to address teh concerns of voters.
If you’re someone who is conservative and you balk at the idea of voting for Democrats (perhaps after voting Democrat in 2018 or 2020) by saying that you disagree with Democrats and want a government that is responsive to your values and concerns as a citizen, you’ll be told, “You’re wrong! You need to vote for democracy.”
For a democratic government to actually survive, it has to address people’s concerns. If you look at the era after the American Revolution, there was a mass loss of faith in free government. Some wanted government that was practically anarchy. Other were open to a limited monarchy.
Rather than lecturing their fellow citizens ad nauseum about the virtues of republican government, the Constitutional Constitution came up with a plan to make freedom work to solve problems. McMullin chose another course.
What McMullin has done is re-enact the sort of political behavior that brought Donald Trump. The word games where he gets to redefine words to suit his own meaning, the gaslighting about his past position on the issue, and his refusal to own the change all screams cynical politics as usual that have disgusted voters.
High minded people think voters should really study issues and not look at personality, celebrity, or campaign yard signs, Then you have someone McMullin who builds his entire brand by playing to the deepest and most sincerely held constitutional and moral beliefs of a group of voters…and then just tosses those core values aside so he can pursue another group of voters.
Whatever side of the abortion debate, you come down on, it’s an issue of life and death, one that McMullin is more than happy to play cynical games with.
How can we expect voters to take this process seriously when candidates like McMullin treat it like a game?
In many ways, this illustrates why voters turn to someone like Mister Trump. Trump claimed to be many things, but none of them was principled. He’s a pure transactional politician. He didn’t do “everything” he promised like his fanatical cultish supporters claim. I almost pity those folks who thought there would be a literal wall built on the border that Mexico would pay for.
However, for those who supported him and were willing to play the game got the keys to the kingdom: court appointments, key jobs in the administration, and policies that were in favor. Yes, there was a cost: Loss of integrity, loss of credibility on issues of ethics and honesty in government and support for constitutional norms, and the slow death of character that comes from showering constant flattery of a toxic narcissist.
It also requires ignoring all the people Trump’s actions hurt including the persecuted but well-vettted Refugees Trump turned from our shores, the numerous Trump sexually harassed or assaulted, or the Kurdish allies Trump abandonned to a cruel fate in order to please the government of Turkey where he had personal business interests. The most you can say about anyone victimized by Mister Trump and remain a supporter in good standing is, “Sucks to be them.”
Many activists considered the alternatives of watching politicians like Evan McMullin or former Pro-Life Democrat turned advocate for abortion in the birth canal Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) embrace their values to gain their support and then abandon them when it’s politically convenient and decided the compromises their integrity was worth the price.
I don’t, but I also don’t feel any compunction to back someone whose cynical actions on the sanctity of human life make the election of people like Trump more popular. I don’t live in Utah, but if I did, I’d skip the Senate race this fall. I donated a negligble amount of money to McMullin’s campaign in October because I believe we do need Independent conservative campaigns and a new political party. As he didn’t advertise that he was going to reverse course on Roe and attack the pro-life movement, I feel those funds were obtained under false pretenses and I asked for a refund.*
Analsyis
Since I’m writing about McMullin’s campaign, I’ll go ahead and analyze the Senate race in Utah.
It’ll probably be the closest general election Utah has had in decades. But given these are election are often 30-40 point blowouts for the GOP, that doesn’t say much.
Senator Lee is relatively unpopular with higher disapprova with him having around 40% positive ratings. However 2022 looks to be a very partisan year and Utah is a very Republican state. That alone should save him. He deserves to lose but 2022 is a good year for GOP incumbents who probably deserve to lose. (see also Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI)
Yet, I do think many analysts outside of the the State of Utah are counting McMullin out entirely because of a faulty view of the citizens of Utah. It’s true that Utahans are majority LDS and have many traditional values. The assumption is that your average traditionalist LDS voter is like your average traditionalist Evangelical voter and so Utah is thought to be similar in thought to Alabama.
Not really. In fact, Utah has been more socially moderate in many key ways. For example, Utah passed a compromise bill on discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Many politicians in Utah have more socially moderate leanings.
The state elected Governor Spencer Cox (R-UT) in the last election. Cox vetoed a bill forbidding biological males from competing in girls sports and has used the nauseatingly PC term latinx. He won the primary narrowly over former Governor Jon Huntsman (R-UT) who was the furthest left competitor in the 2012 Presidential campaign. Huntsman ran a campaign that was so anti-conservative, it made John Kasich look like Jesse Helms.
Indeed, most statewide Utah elected pols over the years have been less than pure on cultural issues. Even the late Orrin Hatch (R-UT) was an advocate of expanding embryonic stem cell research and the chief Republican sponsor of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entraces Act and was co-sponsor of federal anti-discrimination legislation on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Lee is a bit of an outlier in how socially conservative he is. It’s something I’d admire if not for the whole betraying his integrity and trying to overturn the election and effectively destroy the Republic.
Regardless, analysts who say things like voters need to replace Governor Cox with someone who shares their conservative value may be less in touch with the values of the average Utahan than Governor Cox.
I would not say there’s a zero percent chance of McMullin winning, but I wouldn’t bet any money on it. I think McMullin has over-valued the support of Utah Democrats and made moves that will make it harder for him to appeal to socially conservative Independents and Republicans who are discontented with Lee’s actions. He’s instead given Lee a grand opportunity to paint him as a tool of toxically unpopular Democrats whose assurances can’t be trusted. If Lee can do that, McMullin will lose handily.
*Update: McMullin’s campaign to come across with a refund, so good on them.