Trump stumps for pro-life Marsha Blackburn, says Democrats need to get ‘the hell out of office’
NASHVILLE, Tennessee, May 30, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – President Donald Trump appeared onstage with pro-life Rep. Marsha Blackburn Tuesday night, hoping to mobilize turnout to protect a crucial Senate seat targeted by Democrats.
“We need Republicans and we need to get out and vote for Marsha,” Trump declared, according to Politico. “If you want your communities to be safe, if you want your schools to be safe, if you want your country to be safe, then you have to go out and get the Democrats the hell out of office.”
The president’s words echoed his message at the annual Susan B. Anthony List gala last week, arguing that Democrats were united in obstructing the values he was elected to implement, and that electing more Republicans was necessary to deliver pro-life results.
“The first vote that Phil Bredesen will take will be to empower Chuck Schumer, will be to scuttle any Donald Trump Supreme Court nominee,” Tennessee Republican Party chair Scott Golden added.
Blackburn is currently a member of the House of Representatives, and is running to fill the Senate seat being vacated by retiring liberal Republican Bob Corker.
Her opponent, former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, has campaigned as a centrist in hopes of attracting moderate and independent voters, an image the president hoped to undermine by describing him as a “very liberal Democrat” and an “absolute tool of Chuck [Schumer].”
Democrats are “bad at everything, but they’re good at sticking together,” Trump continued. “It’s the only thing they’re good at.”
The GOP currently holds a thin 51-49 Senate majority over Democrats, a margin that has approved many pro-life nominees yet proven largely insufficient to enact pro-life legislation, thanks to a combination of liberal Republicans and rules requiring a supermajority to pass ordinary bills. Democrats must defend 26 Senate seats this fall while Republicans have only nine up for election, but Tennessee is among the races currently considered a toss-up by analysts.
Throughout her House tenure, Blackburn has consistently earned 100% scores from the National Right to Life Committee and Family Policy Alliance, and 0% scores from Planned Parenthood and NARAL. She has been one of Congress’ more high-profile pro-lifers, thanks in large part to her leadership role on the House Select Panel on Infant Lives which investigated Planned Parenthood’s sale of, and alleged profit from, aborted babies’ body parts.
Blackburn also found herself thrust into the debate on social media censorship of conservative voices when Twitter blocked a campaign ad highlighting her work on the panel (a decision the company reversed after public backlash). She went on to cross-examine Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on his website’s censorship of conservatives, and testify on whether the problem requires new government regulations.
“The intervention would have to be done very carefully,” she advised in April. “You do not want to keep innovation and the next generation of innovation out.”
Bredesen, meanwhile, does not mention abortion on his website, and has made avoiding hot-button “social” issues part of his sales pitch. But Marie Claire reportsthat he is “pro-choice” and it is unlikely Democratic Senate leaders would tolerate one of their members voting against their interests, given the chamber’s narrow margin.
In 2010, Bredesen declined to either sign or veto a measure opting Tennessee out of Obamacare’s abortion coverage mandate, allowing it to take effect with the knowledge that the legislature had the votes to override any veto he would make anyway.
Polls currently show that Bredesen has a higher favorability rating among the state’s voters than Blackburn, though the former governor also has higher name recognition. Trump remains popular in Tennessee, which hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1990, and Blackburn remains optimistic the pattern will hold this fall.
“We are a red state, and when that blue wave comes to Tennessee this year — if there is a blue wave — then it is going to run into what I call the great red wall,” she toldFox News Tuesday.
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