Radio Free Newsom

On Monday, as opponents of abortion marched for life around the state Capitol, numerous news outlets reported that Newsom’s PAC, the Campaign for Democracy, was funding a television advertisement in Alabama warning of the dangers of new state laws to restrict abortion.  A similar ad ran in Tennessee.

Like Radio Free Europe or the Voice of America, Gov. Newsom is transmitting his message of freedom and democracy (at least his warped version of them) behind enemy lines—the Abortion Curtain, if you will.

At the same time, Newsom announced that California is working on emergency legislation that would allow doctors from Arizona to come to California to provide abortions.

Now, such efforts make sense in a state like Arizona, which has drifted left and is poised to go even further in that direction, in part due to the abortion issue. A presidential hopeful would be justified in spending to prep the field for an eventual run.

But just as California will never vote for a Republican president in my lifetime (20 years, if I’m lucky), Alabama is never going to vote for a Democratic president, especially a pro-life one (is there any other kind?) from California.

So what gives?

Gavin Newsom is on a mission.  Not just to be president, but to be seen as the greatest champion of civil rights in American history.  He wants to be included in the pantheon of civil rights leaders along with (or perhaps even above) LBJ, MLK, and his hero, RFK.

Never mind that Newsom’s initials, GCN, sound more like a nondescript insurance company than a paragon of statesmanship; in time it will echo through the ages like a bell pealing on a cold morning–in time.

In this he is like Joe Biden (all aspiring “great men” really):  gnawed by insecurity, they dream and scheme of proving to the world that they’re better than everyone else, even the other great men.  

For Biden it was his Senate colleagues—Ted Kennedy, Chris Dodd, Jay Rockefeller (especially Kennedy).  Sure they came from storied families and wealth, but little old Joe from Scranton with the stammer would show them one day.  You just wait and see!  He, not they, would defend the legacy of FDR.

So too Newsom—the kid raised by a single mom, abandoned by his father, with a reading disability to boot.  What of the Browns (both Jerry and Willie), and the Pelosis, and the Feinsteins?  Sure, they held high office, but what exactly have they done?

But Gavin Newsom has something Joe Biden doesn’t—youth. He’s Joe Biden with verve.

Should he ever become president, Gavin Newsom will not be content to just maintain the expansive, intrusive federal government left to him by Roosevelt, and Johnson, and Obama.  He wants to strike the fatal blow against what he sees as the vestiges of intolerance and the forces of darkness.

Those ads in Alabama are Newsom’s way of telling every MAGA backwater that they are on notice; their time is running out, just as it ran out on slavery and segregation (both of which required significant federal intervention to end).  Only this time it will not be for equality of all under the Constitution, but the killing of children in the womb and the mutilation of children outside of it.

This all has echoes of Newsom’s cry announcing the coming of same-sex marriage “whether ya like it or not” in 2008.  Advocates thought he had doomed gay marriage.  Seven years later it was found to be protected by the U.S. Constitution.

And if a Governor Newsom is not content to let poor, old Alabama to its own preferences, what would a President Newsom do to all those who dare stand in the way of “progress”?

For anyone able to pick up the reception from the “Free” World, the message on Radio Free Newsom should be coming in loud and clear.