“We can win on this message,” the party chair says. Voters seem to feel differently
Even after suffering multiple state-wide losses on the issue, the Republican Party is not backing down on abortion, party chair Ronna McDaniel said.
“I’m proud to be a pro-life party, but we can win on this message,” McDaniel said on Sunday’s Meet the Press. “The American people are where we are, and they want common sense limitations. They want more access to adoption. We want to make sure that there’s pregnancy crisis centers. These are things we can win on.”
When asked about the Senate Republican campaign arm telling candidates to oppose a national abortion ban, McDaniel said, “We’re going to let the legislators and the Senators and congressional members stake their lane out. The Democrats are going to make it a national issue, though. And I do think we have to talk about this issue, because the Democrats will say we’re going to take it to the Senate and codify it. And so I think there’s a lot of discussion to be had, but we can’t just say it’s a state’s issue and be done.”
But are voters really on Republicans’ side? Signs point to no. As of this past May, the majority of voters (63 percent) oppose the Dobbs decision that overturned federal abortion protections, according to Gallup. In fact, since the Dobbs opinion, Americans have become increasingly pro-choice, with 52 percent identifying as “pro-choice” compared to polling conducted between 2007 and 2021 when “no more than 50% of Americans identified as pro-choice,” per Gallup.
Despite what McDaniel says, Republicans have not been winning on these so-called “common sense limitations.” Repeatedly when abortion is on the ballot, voters choose to support the right to choose. Since Dobbs, states including Ohio, California, Michigan and Vermont have enshrined the right to abortion in their state constitutions. Elsewhere — in Kentucky, Montana and Kansas — voters have voted down efforts to restrict abortion access. And on the recent election day in Virginia, voters had an opportunity to keep a red state senate and flip the legislature, but instead Democrats won in both houses, creating a stopgap that will prevent GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin from pushing through anti-abortion legislation he hoped to pass.
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