In the world of political commentary there are few national contributors that elicit the laughter and snickers like the Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin. Her painfully awkward dismantling at the hands of former Fox News opinion host Bill O'Reilly is still a thing of legend:
The common explanation typically associated with former conservatives who have turned unquestionably leftward in recent years is to say that Trump "broke" them. But I don't really think that's fair or accurate in this case. Trump didn't "break" Rubin. In many ways, Trump "made" Rubin.
Prior to the ascension of Donald Trump, most of us had no idea who Jennifer Rubin was, and if we had encountered her work at the Washington Post or elsewhere, did not consider it memorable enough to place her. But now, that is certainly not the case.
The nomination and election of Donald Trump introduced Rubin to a level of profit and prestige she was not likely to achieve otherwise. Her incendiary anti-Trumpism made her a darling of not just her Washington Post employer, but virtually every other progressive media outlet desperate to show how even "conservative insiders" were admitting the liberals were right.
In fact, Rubin was part of a much larger industry that emerged of ex-Republicans who garnered big checks and lofty profiles by their simple willingness to throw conservative causes under the bus by claiming their "principles" forced them to endorse Democrats. That's how a group of shysters and hucksters like the Lincoln Project boys found themselves raking in six-figure donations and booked for countless cable news interviews rather than standing sheepishly in the unemployment line. Theirs, like Rubin's, was a conversion where cash and convenience overrode conservatism.
After all, in 2013, Rubin was opining in the pages of the Washington Post for a so-called "Gosnell Amendment," to enact strict, new regulations and limitations on abortion in the wake of partial-birth abortionist Kermit Gosnell being exposed as America's most notorious serial killer in history. And Gosnell wasn't her only target. Rubin complained how then-President Barack Obama proudly addressed a Planned Parenthood conference but refused to be honest about the issue.
"I find his language so telling," Rubin wrote. "He won't even use the word ‘abortion.' He says ‘women's health.' Can he not bring himself to say that we're talking about terminating pregnancies?"
Eight years and a Trump presidency later, here's that same Jen Rubin joining in with former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards on the same topic:
Never mind the fact that somehow the Washington Post employs a political commentator who seems unfamiliar with Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and the philosophy of natural rights – also known as the entire backbone of Western Civilization. Three days earlier, Rubin was singing the praises of one of the most buffoonish Supreme Court decisions in history.
In her column, Rubin praised the moral relativistic claptrap penned by Justice Anthony Kennedy in the 1992 Planned Parenthood v Casey decision that was pilloried in oral arguments just last week:
"At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State."
Say what? A person has the right to determine for themselves whether another individual fits within their definition of existence? It would seem that many white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and other terrorists would be fascinated to know they have the Court's blessing to determine for themselves which of their fellow citizens are entitled to personhood rights.
In order to preserve legal abortion, Kennedy was fleeing from the natural rights concept of self-evident truth, and appealing to the unsustainable relativism of some individualistic, self-determined truth. Remarkably, the Kennedy court and its fangirl Jen Rubin, appealed to the 14th Amendment's protection of an individual's right to life, liberty, and property to make their case.
"The controlling word in the cases before us is ‘liberty.'"
Of course that's only true if you willfully overlook the more fundamental right of life, which is exactly what Kennedy and his cohorts did in 1992, reinforcing the fatal flaw of Roe's moral and legal reasoning that outrageously suggested,
"We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins."
Any civilization, any society, any community, any court, any person that recognizes the primacy of human rights knows that is in fact the one question, perhaps the only question, that actually matters.
The fact that Jennifer Rubin pretends otherwise is more discrediting to her public character than any Bill O'Reilly smackdown could ever accomplish.
