Amidst all the talk about the impact of a likely reversal of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, I thought a history lesson was in order, so I wrote one at New York:
Last week, the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have codified abortion rights, died in in the Senate by a vote of 51 to 49. All 210 House Republicans and all 50 Senate Republicans voted against the legislation. This surprised no one, but it’s actually odd in several ways. While Republican elected officials are almost monolithically opposed to abortion rights, pro-choice Republican voters didn’t entirely cease to exist, and this could become a problem for the party if, as expected, the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down the right to abortion at the end of this term.
Though polling on the issue is notoriously slippery, our best guess is that a little over a third of Republicans disagree with their party on whether to outlaw abortion (while about one-quarter of Democrats disagree with their party on the topic). These Americans have virtually no representation in Congress with the limited exceptions of Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski (both GOP senators support some abortion rights, but they are still opposed the WHPA and are against dropping the filibuster to preserve abortion rights).
Ironically, abortion rights as we know them are, to a considerable extent, the product of Republican lawmaking at every level of government. The most obvious examples are the two Supreme Court decisions that established and reaffirmed a constitutional right to abortion. Of the seven justices who supported
Roe v.
Wade, the 1973 decision that
struck down pre-viability-abortion bans, five were appointed by Republican presidents, including the author of the majority opinion, Harry Blackmun, and then–Chief Justice Warren Burger. All five justices who voted to confirm the constitutional right to pre-viability abortions in 1992’s
Planned Parenthood v. Casey were appointed by Republican presidents as well.
These pro-choice Republicans weren’t just rogue jurists (though their alleged perfidy has become a deep grievance in the anti-abortion movement). Today’s lock-step opposition to abortion rights among GOP elected officials took a long time to develop. Indeed, before Roe, Republicans were more likely to favor legal abortion than Democrats. In New York and Washington, two of the four states that fully legalized pre-viability abortions in 1970, Republican governors Nelson Rockefeller and Daniel Evans were at the forefront of abortion-rights efforts. They weren’t fringe figures; Rockefeller went on to become vice-president of the United States under Gerald Ford. Pre-Roe, various other Republican officials supported more modest efforts to ease abortion bans; among them was then–California governor Ronald Reagan, who signed a bill significantly liberalizing exceptions to an abortion ban in 1967.
The anti-abortion movement’s strength in the Republican Party grew steadily after Roe in part because of a more general ideological sorting out of the two major parties as liberals drifted into the Democratic Party and conservatives were drawn into the GOP. To put it another way, there has always been ideological polarization in American politics, but only in recent decades has it been reflected in parallel party polarization. But that doesn’t fully explain the GOP’s shift on abortion policy.
Beginning in 1972 with Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign, Republicans began actively trying to recruit historically Democratic Roman Catholic voters. Soon thereafter, they started working to mobilize conservative Evangelical voters. This effort coincided with the Evangelicals’ conversion into strident abortion opponents, though they were generally in favor of the modest liberalization of abortion laws until the late 1970s. All these trends culminated in the adoption of a militantly anti-abortion platform plank in the 1980 Republican National Convention that nominated Reagan for president. The Gipper said he regretted his earlier openness to relaxed abortion laws. Reagan’s strongest intraparty rival was George H.W. Bush, the scion of a family with a powerful multigenerational connection to Planned Parenthood. He found it expedient to renounce any support for abortion rights before launching his campaign.
Still, there remained a significant pro-choice faction among Republican elected officials until quite recently. In 1992, the year Republican Supreme Court appointees saved abortion rights in Casey, there was a healthy number of pro-choice Republicans serving in the Senate: Ted Stevens of Alaska, John Seymour of California, Nancy Kassebaum of Kansas, William Cohen of Maine, Bob Packwood of Oregon, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, John Chafee of Rhode Island, Jim Jeffords of Vermont, John Warner of Virginia, and Alan Simpson and Malcolm Wallop of Wyoming. Another, John Heinz of Pennsylvania, had recently died.
Partisan polarization on abortion (which, of course, was taking place among Democrats as well) has been slow but steady, as Aaron Blake of the Washington Post recently observed:
“In a 1997 study, Carnegie Mellon University professor Greg D. Adams sought to track abortion votes in Congress over time. His finding: In the Senate, there was almost no daylight between the two parties in 1973, with both parties voting for ‘pro-choice’ positions about 40 percent of the time.
“But that quickly changed.
“There was more of a difference in the House in 1973, with Republicans significantly more opposed to abortion rights than both House Democrats and senators of both parties. But there, too, the gap soon widened.
“Including votes in both chambers, Adams found that a 22 percentage- point gap between the two parties’ votes in 1973 expanded to nearly 65 points two decades later, after Casey was decided.”
By 2018, every pro-choice House Republican had been defeated or had retired. The rigidity of the party line on abortion was perhaps best reflected in late 2019, when a House Democrat with a record of strong support for abortion rights, Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, switched parties. Almost instantly, Van Drew switched sides on reproductive rights and was hailed by the hard-core anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List for voting “consistently to defend the lives of the unborn and infants.”
With the 2020 primary loss by Illinois Democratic representative Dan Lipinski, a staunch opponent of abortion rights, there’s now just one House member whose abortion stance is out of step with his party: Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar, who is very vulnerable to defeat in a May 24 runoff.
If the Supreme Court does fully reverse Roe in the coming weeks, making abortion a more highly salient 2022 campaign issue, the one-third of pro-choice Republican voters may take issue with their lack of congressional representation. Will the first big threat to abortion rights in nearly a half-century make them change their priorities? Or will they still care more about party loyalty and issues like inflation? Perhaps nothing will change for most of these voters. But in close races, the abandoned tradition of pro-choice Republicanism could make a comeback to the detriment of the GOP’s ambitious plans for major midterm gains.
Like Melior and Billmon, I read the muck-dog’s “strongest economy in 20 years” line, and nearly laughed out loud. It’s almost too ludicrous a statement to need response, but, for the record, as Billmon says, the quote refers to one brief three-month period. It’s like an isolated day of thundershowers in the midst of a three-year drought — any public official who went around saying “We now have our best water situation in 20 years” would be strung up.
The economy over the Bush term has been clearly poor. The recent (undeniable) job gains held promise of at least reversing the public verdict on current conditions. But now signs are suggesting that what recovery there was is about done: the job numbers took a sudden dip, GDP for even Q1 were revised down, all other reports suggest even weaker activity in Q2 and Q3…and the oil price situation grows ominously bad (the Yukos problem may push it into crisis). At best, the economy will be a semi-negative factor for Bush, since many never bought into the recovery idea to begin with (particularly in swing states). But much worse is possible: a near-downturn prior to the election, and (as I’ve heard predicted by reputable sources) a sharp market drop. If that should come about, Bush will long for the days when he could hope for 47-49% of the vote.
Ron,
I understand that there are senarios that don’t include winning Ohio or Florida. I’m not so confident about Arizona. And, Missouri will also be very tough.
A poll out last week in Nevada has Kerry up by 4 points. Plus, I’ll bet that New Hampshire goes for Kerry. Southern NH is the high growth area and is filled with Massachusetts Democrats moving over the boarder. He’s 2 points up in a poll from July 21.
Unfortunately, combined with Nevada that stills comes up 1 short. So, you’ll still need West Virginia or possibly Arkansas. But, let’s face it, if places like Nevada, NH, and W. Virginia fall to Kerry, then we’re talking decisve win, because that trend will pull, at the very least, Ohio and possibly Florida with it.
Bush has to be VERY concerned right now. There are no states that went for Gore in 2000 where he realistically has a chance. There are a number of states that went for Bush, where Kerry is either slightly ahead, or in a statistical tie.
Hold onto your hat for the October surprise. This group will not go down easy. They will beg, borrow, cheat and steal to stay in power.
“Well, the economy is the strongest in 20 years…”
If the Republican chowder heads want to run on that message in Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin, I think that’s just dandy.
(That “strongest economy in 20 years” talking point, BTW, applies to the GDP growth rate in exactly one one quarter – the third quarter of last year. And, of course, it doesn’t apply at all to employment and wage growth.)
But like I said, if that’s how the Bush-Cheney campaign wants to commit suicide, it’s fine with me.
Good point, Ron. I’m actually feeling very optimistic about our chances of taking Arizona, more so than Missouri this time.
“Well, the economy is the strongest in 20 years…”
Keep whistling. You must have missed the announcement this week of the return of record budget deficits, the looming spikes in oil prices, and “unexpectedly” more billions to feed the Iraq war. There is little confidence in the fundamentals by investors (who don’t just listen to Greenspan) right now, despite record valuations.
Keith,
I don’t think we’re necessarily screwed if we lose Ohio and Florida. I think Kerry will win both, but if he carries all of Gore’s states, he only needs 10 additional electoral votes, and he could get those in Missouri, or Arizona, or by winning West Virginia and Nevada.
as a side note, here’s a link that ought to settle the debate re kerry’s anticipated convention bounce:
http://salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?wire=D843KIN80.html
despite ed gillespie’s purposefully wrong take on the size of convention bounces historically enjoyed by candidates (he says 15 points), the truth is
“[t]he average bounce for a convention like the current Democratic convention is 5 to 7 percentage points, said Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll.”
now, why has the 5-7 points number been so hard to verify? I know what gillespie’s motives are but why can’t the major media outlets simply use past poll data to debunk GOP claims ?
the answer for me is incredibly lazy journalists who are quite content to mechanically structure articles around point/counterpoint, instead of doing a little background work to verify the factual allegations they so blindly print. I guess it’s easier to parrot GOP talking points than take the few minutes to run a NEXIS search or call a polling organization to get a definitive answer.
really, in the information age, not bothering to verify your source’s statements is unforgivable.
Well, the economy is the strongest in 20 years and Greenspan is already tapping on the brakes. It makes sense that folks would give Bush a good mark on the economy. It’s done really well rebounding from the 2000-2001 recession.
Polls, polls, polls… I study them till my head spins. Am I wrong in sensing that this whole race will be decided by two states.. Ohio and Florida. If Kerry wins one of them, game is over. If he loses both, four more long years!!
Net-net (if you can excuse the expression), the polls show K/E about two points ahead, and leading in the electoral college. That is, if there are ten polls in any given two week period, and eight of them show K/E ahead, that ought to be a pretty good measurement. Obviously, any one poll has a much larger margin of error.
Remember the under-measurement of Reagan votes in 1980. And given the enthusiasm this year, I’m hoping for a good, un-measured, turnout effect.
I agree that it’s got to be a party ID thing with the Post poll. It just just such an outlier in so many ways that it’s not a reasonable poll. The deltas, even with it’s own poll the previous month, is just too severe for any reasonable explanation. 10 point shifts are all over the place when not that much happened in the last month to favor bush. Also, the Post polls have always given bush much larger job approval ratings than other polls. It’s been the Post polls with the Fox ‘polls’ that are way outside the norm. I’m not sure what the Post is doing (I know what Fox is doing!), but they have consistenly produced out of the mainstream poll numbers. These latest are just another example.
I think the Post/ABC poll is having some problems with sample quality – first there was the huge swing towards Kerry on the terrorism issue back in June (which the Post played up a big story) then the big swing back towards Bush in the two July polls. I don’t think anybody really believes that Kerry closed to even with Bush on the GOP signature issue – and certainly none of the other polls ever showed it.
Something else I noticed (somewhere) about the Post/ABC poll was that their latest sample was 33% Republican, which seemed awfully high to me. I don’t think Post/ABC controls for party identification, so what we’re seeing may just be some random noise – or an exaggeration of a real trend, which the Gallup poll would seem to suggest.
Given the incredible partisan polarization on just about every issue, it seems logical to me that even a minor shift in party ID within the samples could have a big impact on the results.
Of course, controlling for party ID has its own problems – what’s the “right” split? And I’m not going to argue that it’s the better way to do things. But the media, as usual, is doing an awful job of explaining the limitations of polling, and the fact that many of the “trends” that people think they see in the numbers are in fact just noise.
You could make a case that the concentration on first the Edwards selection, then the 9/11 Commission, and now the convention has been marginally beneficial for Bush, as it has kept the chief source of his weakness — Iraq — from holding the center ring. It’s not like nothing’s going on over there: we’re still losing 1-2 military per day, with countless more wounded, but it’s not leading the evening news. Fiascos like today’s might reverse that, especially once we’re past the conventions. I also think (and have heard from sources) that the round number “1000 dead” will get alot of attention from the press. It’s only a number, but those things register (As analogy: Carter had the horrible break of the first anniversary of the hostage-taking occurring right before Election Day 1980. It amounted to a media-sponsored tough negative ad right before voting).
68 people blew up today in Iraq. Yeah, no drama there.
Bush isn’t quite as vulnerable as he once was, now that there isn’t as much drama going on in Iraq. As for people talking about Kerry not re-defining himself, I don’t see why not. Gore wasn’t defining himself in the 2000 convention we he said “I want to show you who I truly am”–he was redefining himself, after everyone saying he was a dull robot. Kerry could actually give a speech as good as Edwards, provided that Edwards wrote it for him.
One or the other is outside the 95% confidence band
Here’s a data point for you: watching the network news, all that my wife heard about the convention was that Teresa Kerry-Heinz told a reporter to “shove it”.
Great coverage, eh?
Are you implying something? Do you think these results are not honest somehow, or simply that
this must be an outlier poll?
MSNBC reported the WAPO poll results because it builds viewer interest based on tension, because it is seen by conservatives as a liberal cable outlet and must therefore throw them bones and because MSNBC is tied in with Newsweek, which is also tied in with WAPO.
and why did msnbc decide to run with the poll showing kerry behind at the start of the DNC…not only did they hype the wapo poll on their site as the main headline but they wouldn’t shutup about it on TV either