It’s not hard to find instances of the Republican commitment to extremism, but the way they’ve dug in on abortion is something special. Here’s an issue that demonstrably hurt Republicans at the polls in 2022 and is poised to do so again in 2024—and they’re using the same failing message and teeing up candidates with the positions voters already rejected.
Democrats were expected to face apocalypse in 2022, but instead picked up a seat in the Senate as Republicans nominated anti-abortion extremists and voters went to the polls to express their fury at the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which was decided a year ago this week. Republicans thought they could tough it out by trying to paint Democrats as the true extremists on the issue at the same time they were passing harsh abortion bans in state after state, but it turns out that repeating “the Democrats’ extreme position of allowing abortions up to the moment of birth” ad nauseam doesn’t convince voters. But that’s still the message, as spouted recently by National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Steve Daines of Montana, who added, “We just have to take a position here of protecting life and that’s a winning issue for us.”
Oh, do you, Steve? How did that work out for Senate Republicans last year? He makes it sound so simple, too, with that “we just have to” business. No word on how they’re going to do that differently from 2022 in a way that works out better for them—aside from having a target-rich Senate map.
Republicans look poised to run Senate candidates in 2024 who are just as extreme on abortion as the 2022 crop were. HuffPost’s Liz Skalka and Igor Bobic round up some of the likely candidates in states that could determine the composition of the Senate:
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The two likely high-profile candidates seeking to challenge Montana Sen. Jon Tester are Rep. Matt Rosendale and businessman Tim Sheehy. Rosendale has repeatedly claimed that abortion and emergency contraception are the same thing, and has tried to get emergency contraception banned. In April, Sheehy told a radio interviewer, “we have one party in this country that seems to be bent on murdering our unborn children.” Last November, Montana voters rejected a ballot measure that would have forced medical providers, under threat of criminal charges, to try to save the life of an infant born alive, including after abortion. Poll after poll after poll finds majority support for abortion rights in Montana.
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In Ohio, the Senate candidate endorsed by Sen. J.D. Vance has tweeted, “Conservative Republicans should never back down from their belief that life begins at conception and that abortion is the murder of an innocent baby.” An October 2022 poll found that 59% of Ohio registered voters would support amending the state constitution to protect the right to abortion—and Republicans have set up a low-turnout August vote to raise the threshold for amending the state constitution to 60%.
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Dave McCormick, the hedge fund executive who just barely lost the 2022 Senate primary to Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, might run again. He’s presented as a moderate, establishment kind of Republican—but he opposes rape and incest exceptions in abortion bans. Pennsylvania voters elected Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. John Fetterman in 2022 in elections in which abortion was a prominent issue.
It goes on. At the same time, Republicans are continuing to push ever-harsher abortion bans in the states and are opposing some very modest bills to protect reproductive freedom being brought up by Democrats in the U.S. Senate, and House Republicans are forcing their most vulnerable members into one unpopular, extreme vote after another.
In 2022, voters in red states like Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana turned back ballot measures intended to restrict abortion. Voters in Michigan put abortion and other reproductive rights protections into the state constitution. In 2023, voters in Wisconsin elected a pro-choice state Supreme Court justice, and it wasn’t particularly close. Michigan, Wisconsin, and Montana, by the way, are all states where Republicans will be targeting seats currently held by Democrats.
Elections since Dobbs was decided show that abortion is a bad, bad issue for Republicans, and one that voters care deeply about. Yet Republicans aren’t backing down from their extremism on the issue, insistent that repeating the claim that it’s Democrats who are truly extreme will eventually prove a winning message. Please proceed, guys.
We are joined by Christina Reynolds of Emily’s List. Reynolds is the Senior Vice President of Communications and Content at the progressive organization that works on getting women elected to office. Reynolds talks about what she is seeing up and down the ballot this election cycle on the anniversary of the outrageous Supreme Court Decision to take away the reproductive protections of Roe v. Wade.