Republican strategists are exploring a shift away from āpro-lifeā messaging on abortion after consistent Election Day losses for the GOP when reproductive rights were on the ballot.
At a closed-door meeting of Senate Republicans this week, the head of a super PAC closely aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., presented poll results that suggested voters are reacting differently to commonly used terms like āpro-lifeā and āpro-choiceā in the wake of last yearās Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, said several senators who were in the room.
The polling, which NBC News has not independently reviewed, was made available to senators Wednesday by former McConnell aide Steven Law and showed that āpro-lifeā no longer resonated with voters.
āWhat intrigued me the most about the results was that āpro-choiceā and āpro-lifeā means something different now, that people see being pro-life as being against all abortions ā¦ at all levels,ā Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said in an interview Thursday.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said the polling made it clear to him that more specificity is needed in talking about abortion.
āMany voters think [āpro-lifeā] means youāre for no exceptions in favor of abortion ever, ever, and āpro-choiceā now can mean any number of things. So the conversation was mostly oriented around how voters think of those labels, that theyāve shifted. So if youāre going to talk about the issue, you need to be specific,ā Hawley said Thursday.
The disconnect is that Republicans with a National profile totally misunderstood how much simply overturning Roe would backfire on them. They wanted to give more power back to states, so that each state would define its own policy but in reality it is the most restrictive statesā legislation that ends up getting stuck in votersā minds as the default Republican position now. This is extremely unpopular nationwide, but has broad support in the party, to the point that if any of these Republicans with a National profile tries to fix it, theyāll be run out of the party. So that bipartisan bill simply canāt happen.
This is a big reason why so many Republicans are pushing the lie that Democrats support abortion āright up to birthā. Since they know they canāt fix it, all they can do is try and convince people that Democrats are just as extreme in the other direction, which of course isnāt true.
I grew up a Catholic Republican and I can assure you it was never about giving power back to the states. It was always about banning abortion, period.
The āpower back to the statesā line is what the Supreme Court said with its ruling, but that was never the end game of the Republican party. Search ārepublicans national abortion banā in the engine of your choice: youāll see that there are already talks of pushing national abortion ban legislation.
The end game is and always has been to make the entire USā laws like Texas.
Right, but the distinction Iām making is that the āpower back to the Statesā bit is the legal fig leaf they thought they could take advantage of, to say the most restrictive laws are only in some states, at first, and based on the will of the people in those states. But the rest of the country is (justifiably) seeing through that.