Now and then I read the National Review to find out how our good friends who write for William Buckley’s journal founded to stop history and support segregation view the world.
There are two articles today on the Kansas vote. I will not link to them, but they are instructive on how badly they misrepresent what Kansans rejected and why “pro-lifers” should not be discouraged.
First is Ramesh Ponnuru’s The Pro-Life Defeat in Kansas.
The result is bad news, but supporters of the abortion license are giddily overreading it. The instant line is that the result shows that a backlash to Dobbs will be powerful this November. And it’s true that the referendum appears to have driven turnout in the state. . . . [Pro-choice advocates] can do very well in places where a pro-life referendum is on the ballot, especially one that can be presented as effectively banning abortion without exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape; and maybe also in some places where legislators are on the verge of enacting such bans . . . .
Will they be as successful in turning out their vote in the many places where those conditions are not present?
From Alexandra DeSanctis.
It’s fair to say that the question of what the amendment actually would’ve done was somewhat murky for many observers and voters.
But in that paragraph she notes:
In reality, the amendment would’ve taken Kansas back to abortion neutrality, allowing lawmakers to legislate on the issue — though it’s likely that the legislature’s slant would’ve quickly resulted in a much more pro-life status quo than is currently permitted.
It wasn’t murky for her. Her recommendation for true believers:
The first: Don’t allow Republican politicians to consider the outcome in Kansas evidence that being pro-life is electorally toxic. . . . And the second: Remember that the Democratic Party is deeply out of step with Americans, and its own voters, on abortion.
I live in Kansas City, Missouri less than a mile from Johnson County, Kansas. Countless support pieces and pro-Amendment 2 opinion pieces in the Kansas City Star argued Amendment 2 would allow the legislature to decide how access to abortion would be determined. Passing it would not ban anything. In other words, it was exactly the kind of initiative both Ponnuru and DeSanctis claimed should have been on the ballot and such an initiative will win in the future.
If these two pieces become the conventional wisdom within the Republican Party on why Amendment 2 failed so spectacularly, they will have learned nothing making them easier to defeat in November.