Inspired by an article about the recent elections in Virginia, it occurred to me that the same criticism could be made about the New Hampshire elections of 2022 or the recent special election loss in Rockingham County.
One local Virginia race, in particular, appeared to be typical of the Virginia Republican approach.
Gibson was flooding the airwaves (and YouTube and social media) with ads that emphasized three things: abortion, abortion, and abortion. She took the approach favored by extreme Democrats: “MAGA Republicans” wanted a 100% ban on abortions, “a total abortion ban, no exceptions,” “women and doctors in jail,” even “women [are] facing the death penalty for having an abortion.”
Owen’s response? Crickets. His ads can best be described as pablum for the masses. He assured us that he was for bringing us together and better-paying jobs. He wants better education and an end to divisive politics. No doubt he also supports motherhood and apple pie. His ads gave no details of how he would achieve these general goals and nary a word in response to the tsunami of fear-mongering abortion ads that Gibson was running, including on Fox News during prime-time morning hours.
Neither Owen nor anyone in his campaign gave any indication that they had the slightest inkling that abortion might be a key issue for thousands of suburban women who were being bombarded with Gibson’s ads. So, to my knowledge, he never responded to them or even attempted to discuss the issue.
That same “pablum for the masses” approach is what we saw three months ago in the Rockingham special election here in New Hampshire. The GOP had no message. The Democrats had a message. We can’t fight something with nothing.
In politics, if we don’t define ourselves, the Democrats will define us. If we don’t define the Democrats, they will define themselves.
And that is what happened in the 2022 State Rep races. The NH GOP advised our candidates to ignore all social issues and just keep talking about the bad economy. Democrats defined us as extremists. We didn’t even try to define them as the real extremists.
The truth is that the Republican position is much closer to the mainstream than the Democrats’ position. Overwhelming majorities (70%-22%) oppose third-trimester abortions. Strong majorities (55%-37%) oppose second-term abortions. The majority also oppose taxpayer funding of abortions.
Law professor Glenn Reynolds points out that European laws are similar to the Mississippi law that was upheld in the Dobbs Supreme Court case. “More than 20 European nations ban abortion after 12 weeks. In Britain, a woman named Carla Foster was recently sentenced to prison for procuring an abortion at 32-34 weeks.”
The Democrats’ support of abortion all the way to the moment of birth and their support of taxpayer funding of abortion are extremist positions. But do you hear Republicans campaigning on this issue?
Republicans need to:
1) Actually talk about abortion, not ignore it, and hope the issue goes away.
2) Attack the pro-abortion side as extreme, favoring abortion right up to the moment of birth (and even beyond), and favoring taxpayer funding of abortion.
3) Defend our position (e.g., a 15-week limit) as mainstream.
4) Not push for more restrictions on abortion – until the culture catches up. We risk all that we have gained if we try to go too far.
