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.”