Last week, we covered abortion in this post , which offered qualified support for Senator Lindsey Graham’s newly introduced legislation. Many on the left attacked the bill as a “federal abortion ban,” suggesting it would criminalize all abortions nationwide. We explained why that’s misleading, and we also responded to some of the criticism from right-wing sources: Bad timing. Focus on inflation. Leave it to the states. Critics make some valid points—but overall, I think that as long as Democrats more or less concede ground in defining this debate, Republicans are making a costly mistake. As noted earlier, Democrats far exceeding the Republican Party’s spending in reference to anti-abortion ads that portray the Republican Party as wanting to ban the practice entirely, a highly unpopular position.
A vast majority of Americans support significant restrictions on abortion, but not an outright ban. If voters believe that the party divide is that Republicans will end all legal abortions while Democrats will oppose such efforts, voters are likely to side with the latter. An example would be up-to-date NBC News poll shows Democrats have a double-digit lead (though not a majority) on the overall question:
4. The Republican Party has a huge advantage in solving problems like the economy, crime, borders/immigration.
Democrats have a large advantage on abortion and health care.
Which party is doing better (among registered voters)… pic.twitter.com/cK8druPQHi
— Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) September 18, 2022
I’ll come back to the abortion issue in a moment, but note that the overall congressional ballot number is exactly the same in this data set, which roughly corresponds wider average on this metric. Democrats gained ground on that front over the summer and into September, but we’ve highlighted why a tie in the popular vote probably shouldn’t be seen as bad news for the GOP and why polls may be overestimating Democrats’ position in several key races. Indeed, the picture has seemed to brighten somewhat for Republican Senate hopes in recent weeks. Looking specifically at NBC’s numbers, I can totally see why many conservative pundits and GOP-affiliated strategists would want the party to stick to issues where they have clear advantages, from the economy (+19) to the cost of living (+14) to border control (+36) to immigration (+17) to crime (+23). And Republicans definitely should lean into those issues. They should also push on education, where they have been much closer in other polls; Democrats are vulnerable on that front, too.
Remember the vitriolic outburst over the Florida parenting law that opponents and the media called “don’t say gay”? The central argument in that controversy was a provision that I strongly supported, even while expressing concerns about other elements. And that provision has proven to be quite popular both in Florida and nationwide. Remember that Democrats and their journalistic allies spread lies (MSNBC viewers, for example, are amusing misinformed about this(according to up-to-date research) on the legislation, loudly and smugly adopting… the position of 27 percent on the issue:
NEW SURVEY: “Do you support or oppose allowing public school teachers to teach sexual orientation and gender identity to elementary school children in their classrooms?”
Support: 27%
Opposition: 70%New York Times/Siena Poll, September 2022
— Corey A. DeAngelis (@DeAngelisCorey) September 18, 2022
Between ideological indoctrination, devastating school closures, and damaging COVID restrictions, Republicans have a powerful case on schools and education, and they’d be crazy not to. November marks the first national election since teachers union bosses and their anti-science, resistance-minded Democratic Party clients have done so much harm to America’s children. It would be dishonest to let Democrats avoid accountability on these issues, even when NBC News polling shows Democrats leading on the overall issue. Back to the issue of abortion and related policies. I’m not saying Republicans would do well to try to make the election a referendum on it. There are other earnest issues driving the fundamentals of the cycle that work in their favor. But they need to counter the Democrats’ obsession with abortion. The party in power is working demanding to present Republicans with a broad, highly restrictive approach to abortion in a way that doesn’t reflect reality. Republicans have a wide range of views on abortion policy, from staunch pro-lifers to moderate pro-lifers to moderate pro-choicers.
The party that has really gone radical on this issue is the Democratic Party. They simply don’t want to talk about it, assuming that their similarly pro-abortion allies in the news media will cover for them. Almost every Democrat in Congress, with literally two exceptions, has supported legislation that would nationalize legal abortion on demand, for any reason, up to birth, funded by taxpayers. That is their actual a position they rarely want to mention or defend because it is so unpopular. The overwhelming majority of voters reject the extremism that Democrats have formally endorsed. Republicans would be remiss if they continued to silently endure unfair insults about their own alleged abortion extremism (which is sometimes justified but often vastly exaggerated) without aggressively exposing the real radicalism of the people launching these attacks. One way to make this point is to proactively favor major policies, both in terms of international norms and in terms of American public opinion. Graham’s 15-week restriction, with a handful of popular exceptions, is such a policy. Here is up-to-date national survey from Trafalgar:
New @trafalgar_group survey (September 16-17) on the topic #FederalAbortionLaw shows almost 60% #Americans support for the proposed 15-week federal restriction on abortion as opposed to a federal guarantee of unlimited access to abortion.
Report: https://t.co/BQpRHVvNrJ photo:twitter.com/42WeamGnXp
— Trafalgar Group (@trafalgar_group) September 18, 2022
That’s a score (+20) in favor of Graham’s bill, as opposed to the Democrats’ position. I would change the description of the exceptions to include earnest threats to “the life of the mother” (as opposed to “health”), but it’s a fairly right representation of the Republican consensus position (though many would go further). Another description might have been even more direct in summarizing the Democrats’ ridiculous abortion bill, which has been misrepresented as a “codification” Roe v. Wade. Add the word “selective,” note that such abortions could continue for all nine months, with taxpayers footing the bill, and I would bet the gulf between the two options would widen even further. Again, I am not arguing that the GOP should subordinate any issues that clearly benefit them electorally. Nor am I advocating trying to turn November into an abortion election. But to the extent that it is, in some miniature or moderate part, an abortion election, Republicans need to acknowledge that reality and respond effectively. Hope is not a strategy. I will leave you with this note from ohiowhich currently has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country – much more restrictive than what Graham proposed:
This caught my eye in the Ohio/Emerson poll. Ohio’s 6-week abortion ban is 50/50, suggesting that this may be why DeWine (and Vance) are not affected by it at all. pic.twitter.com/vkOjKPl6Mg
— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) September 16, 2022
…the one another reminder How far has Joe Biden gone on the abortion issue – from moderate to fanatic, as his party’s activists and donors demand:
The federal ban on partial-birth abortions “was a step toward ending late-term abortions,” Joe Biden said in 1997. “But … it did not, as I would have liked, ban all abortions after viability outside the womb.”https://t.co/fO7gwaaJ0K https://t.co/CunDOFQxOs photo:twitter.com/Cg3f1mDEIP
— John McCormack (@McCormackJohn) September 16, 2022
