In the wake of another bad Election Day, Republicans are once again lamenting that they just haven’t found the right message on abortion while they continue to push unpopular policies on abortion. They remain convinced there’s some secret sauce that will allow them to ban abortion without a public backlash, perhaps by talking up how they’re going to add some exceptions to their abortion bans.
Are they ever going to learn? I'm starting to think they're never going to learn. Faced with a choice between “keep in place harsh abortion bans and push for more of them while trying to win voters by accusing Democrats of extremism” and “back off the unpopular policies,” Republicans go with Door A every time. Voters, however, can tell who the extremists are.
“The people aren’t with us,” Sen. Kevin Cramer told The Washington Post. “We don’t win the debate very well publicly because we’ve sort of boiled it down to pro-life or pro-choice, as opposed to the nuance of it. … How you talk about it matters. We do have to learn how to talk about that.” Cramer’s state, North Dakota, bans abortion except to prevent death or a serious health risk to the pregnant person. In cases of rape or incest, abortion is legal up to six weeks’ gestation, a time when many people—let alone ones dealing with trauma—don’t even know they’re pregnant yet. What exactly is the nuance Cramer wants to talk about there?
