Alternate headline: Catholic bishops to form a two-year study commission. But I digress …

The most amusing part of this Politico report — apart from the idea that this is somehow a surprise — is their headline:

Biden, once uncomfortable around abortion debates, set to make it a central part of his reelect

Has Biden ever been “uncomfortable” around abortion debates? Hardly. He’s been inconsistent and incoherent at times, but has shown no sign of “uncomfortable” at all. Here are just a few instances of Biden’s supposed reticence over the past year:

• New Biden EO to HHS: Cover interstate abortion expenses
• Biden: I may call a public-health emergency for abortion! WH: Well …
• Biden bribes voters with promise to codify Roe v Wade if Democrats hold control of Congress
• WaPo: Biden to hold EO signing event on abortion access, but …
• Biden: Change the filibuster to protect abortion and rebuke the SCOTUS that’s destabilizing the world, or something

And those are just a few examples since the Dobbs ruling officially dropped. He hasn’t even shied away from using his claimed Catholic identity to argue for abortion. Remember this from last September?

“Think about what these guys are talking about,” Biden told a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in New York this week. “No exceptions — rape, incest — no exceptions, regardless of age,” he said of the proposed ban.

“I happen to be a practicing Roman Catholic,” he added. “My church doesn’t even make that argument now.”

Two months earlier, Pope Francis had reminded Biden that, yes, the Catholic Church still does make those arguments. He recommended that Biden discuss his “incoherence” with his local pastor.

But his incoherence goes back a very long way. Joe Biden has adapted his position on abortion over the years to match whatever he thinks will benefit him the most. When the Catholic vote still mainly aligned with Democrats, Biden opposed abortion. In 1982, just as that segment had begun moving more into the Reagan coalition, Biden even voted in favor of a constitutional amendment to ban it as a means to ‘repeal’ Roe v Wade. Even then, Biden tried to have it both ways:

Hatch introduced the amendment in 1981, according to congress.gov. The amendment would have granted “concurrent power to Congress and the States to restrict and prohibit abortions” and “declares that the Constitution does not secure a right to abortion.”

Biden, then a senator and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, voted in favor of the amendment in committee in March 1982, according to the New York Times. He said the vote was “the most difficult one he had made as a senator and that, as a Roman Catholic, he was not sure that he had ‘a right to impose’ his views on an issue that would affect the entire nation,” the Times reported.

Biden then spent the rest of his time in the Senate supporting/not opposing the Hyde Amendment prohibition on federal funding of abortion. That was Biden’s position right up to the point when he sensed that he’d be better off opposing the Hyde Amendment (and then vacillating on it for a while) for the sake of his own political position.

The only thing coherent about Biden’s stand on abortion is that it has been entirely dependent on what it means for his own career. Biden isn’t reluctant or ‘uncomfortable’ with the issue; he’s just a lying dog-face pony soldier on it.

And that’s exactly why Biden wants to make it central to his campaign. What else can he run on? Not the economy, not crime, not foreign policy. All he has is abortion and MAGA, and that’s exactly how Team Biden will frame it as well:

Abortion rights are “going to be a major theme in the 2024 campaign,” predicted Ron Klain, Biden’s former White House chief of staff.

“You’re going to have a Democrat, Joe Biden, who has stood up for a woman’s right to choose and is pushing for federal legislation to restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land against a Republican who obviously has a very different point of view,” he said, adding that it would be part of a broader rubric of issues, including LGBTQ rights and not banning books, where Democrats will draw contrasts with “MAGA Republicans trying to roll back those freedoms.” …

There’s also an urgency to keep the issue in voters’ mind, to remind them of the significance of the ruling, particularly as more time passes from the high court’s decision.

Indeed. One has to wonder just how much this issue will help Biden and Democrats in the upcoming cycle, especially given how far to the Left Biden has gone. The latest Gallup survey on moral approval for various issues shows a significant shift toward conservatism on a number of social issues, and only stasis on abortion. Even then, only 52% think abortion is morally acceptable in general; as Biden’s new abortion-on-demand-until-birth position gets more exposed, that will likely lose allies — especially if Republicans actually engage in this debate rather than run away from it.

Michael J. New and I discuss the shifting ground around abortion in the latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast:

• Did the Dobbs decision doom conservatives in elections — or give them new strength?
• Fresh data from Gallup shows gains for pro-life and other social-conservative issues, notably on same-sex relationships.
• Has the radical Left soured the electoral marketplace for Democrats and any moderate pro-choice figures? And what are the next steps in the 2024 election cycle?

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!