Among their advice: "Stop talking."
The New York Times
takes us behind closed doors to show how a group of conservatives are training Republicans to talk about their support for banning abortion by offering tips like this:
Keep remarks as short as possible. “Two sentences is really the goal,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B. Anthony List, the anti-abortion group that hosts the boot camps. “Then stop talking.”
Genius! Explain in two sentences why abortion should be banned and then shut up. Actually, it's kind of appropriate, given that they think the law should say pretty much the same thing to women who want to make decisions about their reproductive health.
But if push comes to shove, and you're a Republican candidate who needs to offer more than two sentences explaining why you're anti-choice, these conservatives have got you covered, or at least they think they do:
“Don’t let them corner you,” said Marilyn Musgrave, a former Republican congresswoman from Colorado who is a longtime anti-abortion activist. [...] “Put them on their heels,” Ms. Musgrave added. “Ask them: ‘Exactly when in a pregnancy do you think abortion should be banned?' ”
Again, genius! Except for the fact that you could also turn the question around and ask them the same thing, except slightly rephrased, perhaps like this: "Exactly when is it that you think the government should start deciding whether or not a woman should become a mother?" Their answer, obviously, is that they think the government should decide from the moment a sperm fertilizes an egg—if not sooner.
No amount of spin can change the fact that most people don't think the government should be making that decision. The fact that this isn't spin is something that these conservatives simply do not understand:
“That was one of the top five public relations coups of all time: making their movement pro-choice and purging the ugly word abortion from the lexicon for decades,” said Kellyanne Conway, a Republican pollster who has conducted research on women’s issues for anti-abortion groups and the Republican National Committee.
That's complete bull. The reason the pro-choice position resonates isn't that pro-choicers are better at P.R., it's that people don't want a bunch of right-wing zealots controlling their lives.