CLAY: Right now, the Senate is attempting to codify Roe v. Wade, except Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has actually drafted a bill that is far more expansive in terms of what it says about abortion than what Roe v. Wade itself said, including going all the way up to nine months of a pregnancy and allowing abortions to take place. It’s not just me saying this, by the way.

It is Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia who has now announced that he will be a “no” vote on this attempt to codify Roe v. Wade by the Democrats in the Senate. And Manchin was pretty direct in explaining why he would be voting “no.” Let’s listen to what he had to say. And, by the way, a point that Buck made the other day is Joe Manchin is saving, in many ways, the Democrats from some of the worst versions of what they would put out.

Remember he was the only real guy who was standing up and saying, “I can’t get to ‘yes’ on Build Back Better” when Joe Biden wanted to pour another $5 trillion plus into this economy, which would have made inflation even worse. But listen to Manchin explain why he is a “no” vote. And, by the way, West Virginia, there may well be a strong Republican challenger coming out of West Virginia based on how that Republican-versus-Republican primary challenge went. And don’t think he’s not looking over his shoulder thinking already about 2024. But listen to Manchin here.

MANCHIN: “Make no mistake. It is not Roe v. Wade codification. It’s an expansion. It wipes 500 state laws off the books. It expands abortion.” pic.twitter.com/yfj6w3gTXU

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) May 11, 2022

CLAY: To credit Joe Manchin here, Buck, he’s actually acting like Biden said he was going to act when he was president of the United States. Now, you probably, a lot of people out there are not gonna agree with everything Joe Manchin says and does. People of West Virginia, he’s had the biggest increase in his overall support of any senator — I was looking at polling — in the last year.

Even though West Virginia is the number one state in the union in terms of voting for Donald Trump. I think he got 69% of the vote in the 2020 presidential election. He won that state about you more than any other state, I believe, and this is what Joe Biden claimed that he was going to do, what Joe Manchin actually has.

BUCK: It is remarkable the Democrats keep talking about the need to protect our sacred democracy by preventing people from voting democratically on very important, very intensely believed and central issues in this country. But they just “normalize” that, to borrow a term from them. It’s, “Oh, yeah, we have to defend our democracy by preventing people from being able to vote on important issues.”

They really think that that’s normal. “We have to protect free speech by censoring people and shutting down what they can say.” Democrats, the old thing about how you don’t want to protect a village by burning it down, don’t burn the village down to save it? That is their approach to the institutions of our government. And that is their approach to our democratic processes. If they can’t have it their way, nobody can have it any way. And you see this with abortion. Joe Manchin is saving them from the excesses of their party with spending and on abortion.

CLAY: No doubt. And I think that’s an important clip there that Republicans should use — and that rationale, sane people across the country should pay attention to.