What Trump got wrong — and right — about abortion’s effect on the GOP’s midterm loss: Straight Up with Tiana Lowe
Tiana Lowe
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Eager to yet again deflect blame for costing the Republican Party control of the Senate in last year’s midterm elections, Donald Trump took to Truth Social to scapegoat pro-life conservatives. Ignoring the fact that it was indeed the former president who hand-picked the three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade, Trump claimed that “it was the ‘abortion issue,’ poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters.”
Contrary to Trump’s claim here, plenty of ardent pro-life Republicans overshot expectations, with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who passed a 15-week abortion ban in Florida, winning reelection by nearly 20 points, and Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH), who passed a 6-week abortion ban in Ohio, winning reelection by almost 26 points.
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It is true that some candidates engaged in extreme messaging, costing Republicans crucial elections, but those included Trump’s endorsed candidates like Herschel Walker, whose campaign collapsed when the former football player faced allegations that he had urged multiple mistresses to get abortions.
The majority American position on abortion lies with neither the Left nor Right wings in the Beltway. While only 1 in 3 people believe second-trimester abortion should remain legal and 1 in 5 believe third-trimester abortion should be illegal, about 3 in 5, however much they disagree about the morality of the issue, believe that first-trimester abortion should remain legal.
It’s important to put these gestational periods into context. DeSantis’s 15-week ban is slightly more liberal than median American opinion, while third-trimester abortion protection voted on by 46 Democrats in the last Senate term is astoundingly too liberal for 4 in 5 people.
Especially in the era of medication abortion, which uses widely prescribed medications to terminate a pregnancy up until 10 or so weeks of pregnancy, pro-life politicians must attempt to pass workable abortion law. A total abortion ban would be as unpopular as it would be impossible to enforce. After all, if we cannot stop deadly synthetic fentanyl from flooding the country, what would stop abortion medications, which are legitimately prescribed by doctors for unrelated purposes?
But the abortion issue itself, when conveyed with effective messaging, didn’t cost Republicans the midterm elections. Poor candidate quality did.
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