Realizing the danger of this emerging posture, true abortion supporters have begun to argue that the party can still run and win through staunch opposition to abortion.
This is an increasingly difficult argument to make.
Former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) crystallized this argument Monday evening.
“Every pro-life governor re-elected in the last two years has won big! he wrote in response to the Biden campaign, saying this issue would hurt Trump in the election.
Others also pointed to big 2022 victories for Republican governors like Ron DeSantis of Florida, Kim Reynolds of Iowa, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Kristi L. Noem of South Dakota and Brian Kemp of Georgia — who all signed or advocated for a six-week ban on abortion.
“Republicans win on life when we boldly speak the truth and hold to the principle we all know to be true: human life begins at conception and must be defended from the womb to the grave,” said former Vice President Mike Pence. said. Pence was critical of Trump’s position of leaving the issue up to the states and not supporting a specific timetable for abortions.
It is true that staunchly anti-abortion Republicans with strong brands have won, even since the Supreme Court overturned the decision. Roe v. Wade in mid-2022 and rephrase the question in favor of the Democrats. But the overall picture is unequivocal: abortion is indeed the disability that Trump and Republicans now recognize.
It’s worth pointing out that four of the governors Walker mentioned were running in red states. Their margins remain impressive, even taking this into account, but their electorate leans to the right.
Additionally, the number of sitting governors was historically strong in 2022, with only one governor losing. (All incumbent senators seeking re-election also won.)
Only two of the governors mentioned signed a six-week abortion ban before the election, and Kemp and DeWine did so well before — in 2019. Both also handled the issue cautiously on the campaign trail. Kemp downplayed the issue compared to others and indicated he did not want new restrictions on abortion. DeWine has been widely attacked for his ban, but has not addressed the subject much, although he previously promised to “go as far as possible” to ban abortions.
Noem advocated for a six-week ban in early 2022, but the effort failed. (The state’s highly restrictive ban on abortion, a “trigger” law that took effect when Roe deer was overturned, was originally passed in 2005.)
And both DeSantis and Reynolds signed six-week bans, but only after winning re-election in 2022.
DeSantis has notably been reluctant to promote the ban he signed last year as he signed it, and he and Reynolds have seen their approval numbers decline lately, with voters roughly evenly divided on them. A recent survey testing governors across the country found that they both had the highest disapproval ratings of any governor.
In short, it’s not really an issue that most of these Republicans have campaigned hard on, and it’s hard to frame most of their victories as resounding affirmations in favor of banning abortion.
Which brings us to non-incumbents, i.e. those without an integrated brand. And when these Republicans shifted to the right on this issue in 2022, the results were terrible for them.
Some of the GOP’s most underperforming candidates in 2022 were those who marginalized themselves on abortion — often before attempting to reverse their old positions. Some of these positions:
- Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters had supported a fetal personhood law (banning abortion) before removing the proposal from his website.
- Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake had called for a six-week ban and called Arizona’s near-total abortion ban “brilliant.”
- Michigan gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon said she wouldn’t even support an abortion exception for a 14-year-old rape victim, saying “a life is a life.”
- Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano said in 2019 that women who have illegal abortions should be charged with murder.
- Pennsylvania Senate candidate Mehmet Oz said abortion is “murder” at any time.
- Now-Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) said in 2021 that he did not support rape and incest exceptions because “two wrongs don’t make a right.” Although Vance won, he far underperformed other statewide Republican candidates, such as DeWine.
There is a credible argument that Republicans can oppose abortion and still win, provided they are otherwise good candidates and don’t go so far as to support things like prohibition without exception or imprisonment of women. Perhaps the hard-line stances of some of these candidates on abortion were less cause of their defeats as symptomatic of their faults as candidates. (Many, for example, have also marginalized themselves on issues such as refusing elections.)
But with polls showing that more than 6 in 10 Americans say abortion should be legal for most and that pro-abortion rights measures are winning on the ballot, even in red states, it’s pretty clear which way the political wind is blowing. And that’s without mentioning things like the six-week ban on abortion.
“It is the ‘abortion issue,’ mishandled by many Republicans…that has lost large numbers of voters,” Trump wrote on his social media platform after the 2022 election.
Republicans who care deeply about this issue can surely try to handle it better, and they can still win when they do and when the electorate is right. But for those who are obsessed with winning, like Trump, the easiest thing to do is try to avoid a risky topic.
Whether true believers will be willing to stray from their principles is one of the most important questions in the Republican Party today.
washingtonpost
