Will Donald Trump's Hoof 'n Mouth Disease Finally Catch Up to Him on the Abortion Issue?

Donald Trump had a bad week. His campaign manager was arrested for battery. His mouth blew the abortion question, He’s expected to lose Wisconsin next week, perhaps by double digits. The media is proclaiming his end and piling on. Every major campaign has a bad week or two, but overcomes it. Don’t sell the Donald short yet! Donald Trump has triumphed so far by trashing everything in his way. I understand his appeal, but it is radioactive. He has alienated women, Muslims, Mexicans, Mormons, POW’s, FoxNews. He is doing a better job than Secretary Clinton in reassembling the Obama Coalition. He is trying to win Wisconsin after trashing Governor Walker, who is popular with Wisconsin conservatives. Hi is boorish. His presence is an affront to the image of the United States. He is gauche. He’s been a misogynist to Carly Fiorina and Heidi Cruz. He is an uncontrolled, undisciplined, unprepared, arrogant loose cannon. He wings it, phones it in, speaks off the cuff, shoots from the hip, often thoughtlessly. Yet, he has prevailed to date in the Republican race. Dr. Ben Carson is a great person. He was rising in the polls earlier in the race. He dropped out though when it became clear that he was not yet ready for prime time as well as being too nice. Donald Trump is the opposite of nice, but he is totally not ready for prime time. His base has stuck with him so far. His abortion comment yesterday crosses the pale. Chris Matthews set him up by asking if women having abortions should be prosecuted if abortions are illegal. There’s no way, absent a revolutionary change in the Supreme Court, that Roe v. Wade will be reversed. He should have refused to answer the absurd hypothetical. Instead, he said they should face some punishment. He later retracted, but he said it. His statement’s on video. It will be merciless campaign fodder against him in the general election. He validates the otherwise specious Democratic claims of a Republican War on Women. He falls into the public den of infamy with Congressman Todd Akin of Missouri in 2012 and Indiana’s State Treasurer Richard Murdock, both of whom said incredibly insulting statements about rape. They cost the Republicans two Senate seats which were winnable. Incumbent Democratic Senator Claire McGaskill of Missouri was highly vulnerable in her reelection campaign. She won in a landslide because Congressman Akin uttered a statement that was insulting to the intelligence of the American people. He was asked about abortions for women who were raped. He said: “Well, you know, people always want to try to make that as one of those things, well how do you, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question. First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down..” In other words, if it is a real rape, a “legitimate rape,” the woman will not get pregnant. He proved he was an educated ignoramus. Richard Murdock had knocked off the incumbent Senator Richard Lugar in the Indiana Republican primary. He was favored to win, but he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory with his statement of fetuses conceived by rape: “Life is the gift from God that I think even if life begins in this horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” Don’t Republican candidates understand that if they utter a statement that is incredibly stupid or outrageous, then the media will use it to destroy them politically. Donald Trump suffers from Hoof ‘n Mouth Disease. Sooner or later, he will run off at the mouth, espousing some half-baked statement that offends almost everyone. Maybe he feels emboldened because he got away with several outrageous statements this election cycle. He did it with the abortion answer. Pro-Life and Pro-Choice partisans are equally offended. There is no excuse for stupidity.