Source: Politics<\/p>\n
The drubbing Republicans took in Wisconsin this week revealed how harmful the issue of abortion still is to the party \u2014 and will likely remain through 2024.<\/p>\n
But following a state Supreme Court race that largely turned into a wholesale rebuke of GOP efforts to restrict abortion rights, Republicans in states across the country are plowing ahead with new restrictions anyway.<\/p>\n
Hours after the vote in Wisconsin, Idaho\u2019s Republican governor, Brad Little signed legislation prohibiting<\/a> traveling with a minor out of state for an abortion without parental consent. That same day, a Democratic lawmaker in North Carolina announced she was switching parties, giving Republicans a veto-proof majority<\/a> and raising the prospect of further abortion restrictions in the state. And then there\u2019s Florida, where the legislature is soon expected to send a six-week abortion ban to the desk of Gov. Ron DeSantis.<\/p>\n DeSantis, Donald Trump\u2019s chief rival in the Republican presidential primary, has said he will sign the bill. Once he does \u2014 and if North Carolina Republicans act, too \u2014 abortion would be largely illegal throughout the South. It will all but guarantee that the topic will become a defining point in the 2024 campaign.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s obviously a bad issue for Republicans,\u201d said Sarah Longwell, a moderate Republican strategist who has conducted extensive focus groups with Republican voters.<\/p>\n Republicans know by now that the politics of abortion in the post-Roe v. Wade era are unfavorable to them. They have since seen the stunning defeat of an<\/a> anti-abortion measure in heavily-Republican Kansas last year, and continuing through a less-than-red-wave midterm<\/a>.<\/p>\n On the issue of abortion, \u201cwe are at a disadvantage, 100 percent,\u201d said Mark Graul, a Republican strategist in Wisconsin who oversaw George W. Bush\u2019s 2004 campaign in the state.<\/p>\n But even as Donald Trump himself has said the party went too far with abortion restrictions, there has been little appetite in the broader GOP for pulling back. Public opinion overall favors abortion rights, with even many Republicans and Republican-leaning independentssaying the procedure should be legal in most cases<\/a>. But among the activist base \u2014 including many Republicans who spent decades laboring to overturn Roe \u2014 the issue remains a litmus test that features prominently in GOP primaries. The 15-week bans that seemed extraordinarily aggressive just one year ago now are considered half-measures.<\/p>\n \u201cThe majority of [state] representatives are in safe seats, so they\u2019re more worried about primaries where social issues play to the base,\u201d said former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, who ran unsuccessfully for a U.S. Senate seat last year. “They\u2019re not really worried about those people running statewide.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a very selfish game,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n If Wisconsin is any indication, it may also prove to be enormously destructive to the GOP. In that swing state on Tuesday, liberals flipped the ideological balance of the Supreme Court with Janet Protasiewicz\u2019s lopsided victory over conservative former state Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly.<\/p>\n Abortion wasn\u2019t the whole story. Money and candidate quality may have mattered more, Graul said. But it was a big part of it \u2014 in a state that has a controversial, 19th-century abortion ban on the books, and where Protasiewicz campaigned heavily on abortion rights.<\/p>\n Some Republicans looking ahead to 2024 are already sounding the alarm.<\/p>\n Earlier this week, Jon Schweppe, policy director at the American Principles Project, a conservative think tank,warned on Twitter<\/a> that \u201cRepublicans need to figure out the abortion issue ASAP. We are getting killed by indie voters who think we support full bans with no exceptions.\u201d<\/p>\n He urged them to \u201csuck it up\u201d and unite behind Sen. Lindsey Graham\u2019s<\/a> proposed 15-week abortion ban<\/a>, hoping to blunt Democrats\u2019 criticisms of more restrictive measures.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to ban abortion,\u201d Schweppe said in an interview on Thursday. \u201cThat\u2019s a long-term goal. I think almost every pro-lifer will tell you that\u2019s the case. We believe it\u2019s murder. But you know, you\u2019re not going to get there overnight, and you\u2019re not going to get there by doing something that\u2019s against the will of the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cIf the pro-life movement doesn\u2019t get their shit together, ultimately, Republicans are going to say, \u2018Well, we have to get elected, and the pro-life movement is a liability.\u201d<\/p>\n Longwell\u2019s focus groups would appear to bear that out. Abortion, she said, is often the first example voters raise when explaining why they view a candidate as \u201cextreme.\u201d And as Donald Trump\u2019s loss in 2020 and the midterms laid bare, that designation is deadly in a general election.<\/p>\n \u201cThe gap between what base voters demand on abortion, on election denialism, on fidelity to Trump \u2014 the gap between that and what swing voters are up for has gotten very wide,\u201d Longwell said. \u201cYou always had to do a general election pivot, but it\u2019s turning from a pivot into a massive leap.\u201d<\/p>\n For Democrats, it\u2019s becoming an ongoing political gift \u2014 a cudgel they will use to hit Republicans in the run-up to 2024.<\/p>\n Citing what he called Wisconsin\u2019s experience with \u201cthe nightmare that Republicans want to inflict on the entire country,\u201d Ben Wikler, the state Democratic Party chair, said, \u201cthe political impact of it represents a tectonic shift.\u201d<\/p>\n