Who didn't see this coming?
People who know me know I’m not one for kumbaya. I don’t believe we’re all in this together. I don’t really believe unity can be accomplished. But yesterday’s development could be triggering a backlash everyone but the GOP saw coming.
“This is not a conversation we want to have,” said John Thomas, a Republican strategist who works on House campaigns across the country. “We want to have a conversation about the economy. We want to have a conversation about Joe Biden, about pretty much anything else besides Roe … This is a losing issue for Republicans.”
You think? It turns out that despite the decades of pushing for this, they underestimated the backlash to yesterday’s ruling.
In Republican circles, a consensus has been forming for weeks that the court’s overturning of a significant — and highly popular — precedent on a deeply felt issue will be a liability for the party in the midterms and beyond, undercutting Republicans to at least some degree with moderates and suburban women.
And now Injustice Thomas is coming for gay rights, contraception, and who knows what else.
They just gave the Democrats a new wedge issue. Several new wedge issues. That can be used to put the GOP on the defensive.
This is another development unheard of until yesterday.
“This is bigger than gas prices now. This is bigger than inflation,” said Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas), whose home state now has an almost total abortion ban. He offered a preview of Democrats’ midterm message: “You’re going to see them go after contraception now. You’re going to see them go after basic fundamental rights.”
If the sane people in this country turn out and vote en masse, yesterday’s ruling can be a Pyrrhic victory for the conservative movement. They finally overreached. Gas prices go up and down. Inflation ends. But when you lose fundamental rights, that’s...tougher to get back. Also? How many red staters really wanted yesterday’s decision?
Maybe it will be too late to save the dissolution of this country, but in the meantime, I’d like to think the conservatives won the battle and will lose the war.
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