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It’s choice or consequences for Republicans in 2024

by Brad Bannon, opinion contributor - 03/29/24 10:15 AM ET

Demonstrators march toward the Capitol carrying a large sign. — Jemal Countess, Getty Images
Demonstrators march toward the Capitol and the Supreme Court during the “Bans Off Our Mifepristone” action organized by the Woman’s March on March 26, 2024, in Washington, D.C.

Abortion is back in the news. That’s great for Democrats and terrible for Republicans.

Media coverage of any attempt to restrict reproductive rights sends deep blue shock waves through the suburbs in battleground states that will determine control of the White House and Congress this November.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments for a ban on the abortion pill mifepristone. Demand for the medication surged after the court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, which overturned Roe v. Wade.

Also on Tuesday, Marilyn Lands, a Democratic candidate for a special election in the Alabama Legislature, won a resounding victory running on the issue and against the Alabama Supreme Court’s ill-conceived ruling that frozen embryos are children.

The stunning local Democratic victory in Alabama should serve as a serious wake-up call for the GOP that abortion-rights supporters triumphed in ballot battles in crimson-red states such as Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio.

A Supreme Court decision to ban mifepristone would send shock waves through the system, similar to the blue wave after the Dobbs decision ruined Republican hopes of winning both houses of Congress in the 2022 midterm elections. A new national survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation indicates less than 50 percent of voters believe the right to contraception is secure and likely to remain in place.

The most striking data in the 2022 Election Day exit poll was the damage done by the high court’s abortion ruling to the GOP campaign to gain control of Congress. Abortion was almost as decisive an issue as the economy in the midterms. And voters who picked abortion as their primary concern voted overwhelmingly for Democrats. In Pennsylvania where Democrat John Fetterman won a tough race to guarantee his party’s Senate majority, abortion trumped the economy as the deciding factor.

The impact of the aboriton-rights vote left Democrats in control of the Senate and handed Republicans only a razor-thin majority in the House. This after polling before the Dobbs decision showed a cresting red wave that would have surfed the GOP to the beach with a commanding win.

In 2023, abortion-rights voters returned to the scene of Republican political crimes.

Ohio voters enshrined choice into the state Constitution. Abortion-rights Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) won reelection in a bright-red state. Voters in Virginia rejected the attempts of GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin to create an abortion ban majority in the state Legislature. Will Republicans ever learn?

They say an elephant never forgets. Yet the party has forgotten key political lessons from the 2022 and 2023 campaigns that could aid it in 2024.

Former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel urged her party to keep up the fruitless fight against abortion rights. The Republican Supreme Court majority poked the bear when it decided to hear the mifepristone case. The Republican Study Committee in the House chose to touch the third and fourth rails in American politics when it proposed restrictions on abortions and cuts to future Social Security benefits.

Abortion-rights power puts former President Trump in a pickle. He has taken a hard-right line on immigration and crime but he has pulled his punches on abortion. His hard-line stances indicate his intention to run a campaign focused on the kind of big right-wing turnout that helped him win in 2016.

But Trump has been strangely silent on abortion, which is a clear indication of the problem he has on his hands. Advocacy for a national abortion ban would thrill the MAGA base but alienate women in the suburbs who have abortion-rights views but have questions about President Biden’s economic performance.

There was a time before Dobbs when the most steadfast abortion voters were opposed to it. But the worm has turned since that dreadful high court ruling. The Kaiser survey showed that the two-thirds of voters most concerned about abortion now favor legalization in all or most cases.

Biden’s steadfast support for abortion rights provides him an effective method of smoking Trump out. Either way the former president chooses, he loses.

A call for restrictions on abortion is a stone-cold loser for Republicans, it’s choice or consequences for Republicans.

Brad Bannon is a Democratic pollster, CEO of Bannon Communications Research and the host of the progressive podcast on power, politics and policy, Deadline D.C. with Brad Bannon.