The Republican National Committee is shifting its strategy heading into the 2024 elections, advising GOP candidates to “go on offense” when it comes to abortion and to pass more anti-abortion legislation in Congress.
Committee members passed a resolution on Friday during the RNC winter meeting that urged GOP candidates to focus on abortion issues during the 2024 cycle by using Democrats’ positions against them. Going further, the committee called on current GOP Congress members to pass the “strongest pro-life legislation possible” over the next two years.
RNC CHAIR SAYS GOP MUST ‘FIGHT BACK’ ON ABORTION
“The Republican National Committee urges all Republican pro-life candidates, consultants, and other national Republican Political Action Committees to remember this proud heritage, go on offense in the 2024 election cycle, and expose the Democrats’ extreme position of supporting abortion on-demand up until the moment of birth, paid for by the taxpayers,” the resolution reads. “Republican lawmakers in state legislatures and in Congress [should] pass the strongest pro-life legislation possible — such as laws that acknowledge the beating hearts and experiences of pain in the unborn — underscoring the new relics of barbarism the Democratic Party represents as we approach the 2024 cycle.”
The newly adopted resolution comes after months of discussion among Republican leaders on how to approach abortion in the upcoming election cycle. The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization over the summer competed with inflation as one of the top issues in the midterm elections, helping to galvanize Democratic turnout and limit Republican gains in what had previously been expected to be a “red wave.”
In response, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel acknowledged the GOP would not be able to ignore the issue in the next election cycle, noting the GOP must “fight back.”
“We can’t afford to say, ‘We’re not going to talk about this issue.’ We have to become conversant,” McDaniel, who won reelection to a fourth term during the committee’s winter meeting, said earlier this month. “The Democrats are going to continue to use this issue.”
The resolution reiterated the party’s commitment to protecting the rights of unborn children and implementing legislation that limits abortion rights nationwide. However, RNC members lamented the party’s failure to remind voters of its “proud heritage” seeking to protect “the sanctity of life,” the resolution states.
As a result, Democrats were able to rewrite the Republican Party’s position on abortion by painting the GOP as extreme, party leaders wrote. Now, the RNC is calling on candidates to use Democrats’ own viewpoints against them.
Anti-abortion groups lauded the RNC’s resolution, praising the party for committing to expose “Democratic extremism.”
“In 2022, too many GOP candidates used the ‘Ostrich Strategy’ in which they put their heads in the sand, pretended the issue of abortion didn’t exist, and let Democrats spend hundreds of millions of dollars distorting their pro-life positions and defining them as extremists,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, in a statement. “We are grateful to RNC Committeewoman Tamara Scott for sponsoring this important resolution that will put pro-life candidates on the path to victory in 2024.”
However, Democrats criticized the strategy, denouncing it as “extreme” and “out of touch” with voters’ priorities.
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“Every single House Republican will be held accountable for the extreme, out-of-touch, anti-choice agenda that the Republican party remains committed to,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokeswoman Nebeyatt Betre said in a statement. “The Republican party’s renewed vows to destroy reproductive freedom and threaten women’s livelihoods just raised the stakes for voters in 2024, and made every vulnerable House Republican more at risk of losing.”
Abortion is expected to remain a top issue in the 2024 elections as Republicans and Democrats battle for control over the House, Senate, and White House.
