The culture wars have long been a useful tool in electoral politics.
They can help turn out a party’s base, and the right issue messaged properly can even attract crossover voters.
CALLS FOR REPUBLICAN ALSO-RANS TO DROP OUT OF 2024 RACE FALL ON DEAF EARS
For decades, abortion did the former for Republicans, who courted evangelicals with their push to build a Supreme Court that would overturn Roe v. Wade.
Yet, in a post-Roe landscape, abortion has become the electoral anvil of the culture wars, weighing down a party that would like to litigate just about anything else.
Conservatives became victims of their own success last year when the high court invalidated the national right to an abortion. Even as activists prevailed in imposing new restrictions, particularly across the South, a backlash to the ruling all but wiped out an expected red wave in the midterm elections.
Tuesday’s off-year elections provided yet another test case, as Democrats reclaimed the Virginia House on the strength of abortion access, while voters in red Ohio enshrined it as a right in their state Constitution.
It’s rare for a social issue to become such a liability for Republicans. President George W. Bush used opposition to gay marriage to buoy his reelection bid in 2004 as activists organized state ballot measures that boosted turnout. Yet the party ultimately dropped the issue as shifting public opinion, plus the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell, made it a political loser, or at least of limited utility.
Some Republicans would surely like to do the same on abortion but, caught between the activists pursuing further restrictions and Democrats’ relentless attacks, have instead been forced to find a new balance, both on policy and messaging.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA), whose legislative agenda hung in the balance on Tuesday, advocated more modest restrictions at 15 weeks with exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. In Ohio, conservatives framed the abortion ballot measure as a backdoor for gender transitions without parental consent.
Neither proved persuasive on Election Day.
Abortion was not the only setback for Republicans. The party failed to unseat Andy Beshear, the popular Democratic governor of Kentucky, despite his vulnerability on the issue of transgender surgeries for minors. Beshear had vetoed legislation to ban the practice, something Republicans spent millions highlighting on television.
The question becomes whether Republicans can similarly overcome Democratic messaging on abortion, which has resonated with independent and even GOP voters. Presidential candidate Nikki Haley has called for more sensitivity when discussing the issue, while others warn the party needs to drop simple labels like “pro-life” for an issue on which the electorate holds nuanced views.
“The challenge is it’s an easy issue to demagogue; it’s a hard issue to defend,” Saul Anuzis, the former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, told the Washington Examiner.
The optics of men legislating a women’s issue, he said, makes that task all the more difficult.
Much has been made of the seeming durability of the backlash, but it’s entirely possible Republicans will find political cover over time as ballot measures guarantee access in states where voters are most sensitive to it. The country is still finding a new equilibrium.
Two states — Maryland and New York — will vote on constitutional amendments next year, while more are possible in swing states such as Arizona.
Of course, abortion, a mainstay in national politics for decades, will not go away. The specter of a federal ban, the next frontier for anti-abortion activists, alone guarantees that.
For now, Republicans hope to use crime, immigration, and the economy to blunt its effect.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The culture wars will continue to play a role as Republicans appeal to independents with a focus on “parental rights,” a term that gained currency with the school closures of the coronavirus pandemic but today encompasses topics such as critical race theory.
Those issues will resonate most heavily in GOP primaries, however, where candidates serve up red meat on topics from drag queen story hours to so-called “woke-ism.”
