The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to eliminate the right to an abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was the culmination of the Republican Party’s long and powerful partnership with the anti-abortion movement. This is key to understanding the potential impact of the Court’s ruling; now, that alliance will likely drive even more extreme efforts to eliminate abortion access across the country. For the anti-abortion movement, overturning Roe v. Wade was a starter’s gun, not the finish line.
Prior to 1973, Republicans were about as likely as Democrats to support the decriminalization of abortion. But within three years of the Roe v. Wade decision, both leading candidates for the GOP presidential nomination favored a constitutional amendment overturning Roe. There were a lot of reasons for this sudden change of direction, including the GOP’s effort to win over previously Democratic southern conservatives and Catholic voters, and the emergence of abortion bans as a top priority of conservative evangelical leaders. After 1980, the die was cast; while pro-choice politicians and voters lingered in the GOP for some time, the Republican Party as a whole never wavered from its anti-abortion stance.
Yet for decades, the GOP couldn’t deliver. By the time the profoundly irreligious and previously pro-choice Donald Trump won the GOP presidential nomination, simmering resentment toward Republicans for failing to produce a reversal of Roe was close to boiling over; the marriage between party and movement had become loveless. So in a great irony, the unprincipled Trump made a straight transactional offer to get ’er done if the anti-abortion movement supported his candidacy. They took the deal.
As Trump’s Supreme Court appointments cleared the path for the reversal of Roe, GOP governors and state legislators went into an anticipatory frenzy. Twenty-six states passed abortion bans with provisions violating Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, ranging from laws hassling providers to pre-viability abortion bans, like the 15-week Mississippi standard that led to Dobbs. When the ruling came down on Friday, 13 states had “trigger” laws designed to take effect the minute Roe died.
For decades, Republican politics have been about working with anti-abortion constituencies to set the table for the end of abortion rights in America, but now GOP politicians face a very different situation. As far as what they’ll do next, here are three things to keep in mind.
You might think that having won this huge victory in the Supreme Court, Republican anti-abortion activists would give it a rest for a bit. But that isn’t happening.
Having been invited by the Supreme Court to set abortion policy without any inhibitions, the true goal of the anti-abortion movement — a ban on all abortions from the moment of conception, with few if any exceptions — will become an immediate priority for Republican lawmakers. Where there are 15-week bans like Mississippi’s, six-week bans like Georgia’s will likely emerge. Where there are six-week bans, total bans from conception like Louisiana’s and Oklahoma’s will be pursued and likely enacted. Rape and incest exceptions will be challenged. The pressure on GOP lawmakers to grow more radical will go up, not down. This isn’t a political game anymore. Republican lawmakers have been handed the power to force every pregnancy to full term, and their most powerful religious constituencies expect them to use it.
For most anti-abortion activists and their Republican vassals, overturning Roe was never anything more than an interim step toward a total abortion ban. Now they can publicly advance more audacious goals and impose new litmus tests on GOP politicians.
The states-rights and pro-democracy rhetoric that anti-abortion activists routinely deployed to challenge what they deemed federal judicial tyranny over abortion policy will instantly vanish. Republican elected officials and candidates will begin calling for a national abortion ban by congressional statute. It won’t happen so long as there is either a Democratic president or a Senate filibuster, but Republicans with aspirations for high office will line up to pledge to make it happen someday. Mike Pence took the vow minutes after Dobbs was announced:
“Now that Roe v. Wade has been consigned to the ash heap of history, a new arena in the cause of life has emerged, and it is incumbent on all who cherish the sanctity of life to resolve that we will take the defense of the unborn and the support for women in crisis pregnancy centers to every state in America,” Pence told Breitbart News. “Having been given this second chance for Life, we must not rest and must not relent until the sanctity of life is restored to the center of American law in every state in the land.”
Meanwhile, at the state level, Republicans will do whatever they can to interfere with actions by citizens in blue states to aid people in red states. Even though Justice Brett Kavanaugh warned in his Dobbs concurrence that bans on travel to secure an abortion would represent an unconstitutional restriction on interstate commerce, that won’t keep those determined to “save all the babies” from trying to do so by hook or crook.
Most of all, you will hear more and more talk about the goal the GOP first formally embraced in its 1980 platform: an effort to convince the Supreme Court to recognize fetal personhood as a constitutional right, or to pass a fetal personhood constitutional amendment in Congress.
Ice-cold Republican tacticians looking no further than the 2022 midterm elections or the next presidential contest will welcome the new climate as a base-energizing tonic for the troops. After all, the GOP kept its promises to its culture-war wing, and there will be much MAGA/Christian right excitement about acting on the new freedom to impose forced birth. State legislative and gubernatorial elections in November and beyond are going to be lit.
But as it happens, Republicans were already cruising toward major midterm gains thanks to economic worries, Democratic discouragement, the GOP turnout advantage in non-presidential elections, and the historical pattern of midterm losses by the party controlling the White House. All things considered, they want voters to go to the polls thinking about inflation, not abortion; about their grievances with Joe Biden, not their grievances with Samuel Alito.
Democrats have been thinking that Roe’s demise could change the dynamics of the midterms by encouraging high turnout from young voters and suburban women and giving Democratic voters something to feel more passionate about than a bipartisan infrastructure bill. Many Republicans may fear that outcome too, but they are in no position to tell their own base to stop thinking about abortion policy, which in turn means GOP candidates won’t stop talking about it. And that could complicate the anticipated GOP midterm victory, while also changing the landscape going into 2024. Potential Republican presidential candidates could go into a competitive frenzy of anti-abortion extremism, and that’s exactly what Democrats need to hang onto swing voters.
Yes, there may be something Kerry can say before the Election to help himself even more on national security–give either a major address as a couple of others have suggested, or insert as a lead for his stump speech every day until it gets reported, Bush’s debate 3 bin laden screwup, and hammer him on it.
They might want to keep that one in their back pocket to save for the day when we get the next terrorist attack alert. One line of attack could be along the lines of “The President can’t make up his mind. He says he’s not worried about bin laden, and he outsourced the job of capturing bin laden when our troops had him cornered in Afghanistan. But then the Administration issues terror attack alerts whenever it most wants to change the subject. The President seems confused. He seems to think issuing terror attack alerts, instead of isolating and destroying those who have attacked us, is the way to make us safer. Meanwhile, aided by this Administration’s inept foreign policy, al qaeda has many more members now than before 9/11. My Administration will never take its eye off the national security ball.”
I’ve seen a number of posters lament how the B/C spin machine has managed to deflect a fair amount of media attention after the third debate from Bush’s loss to the flap about Cheney’s daughter.
Just where is it written that if our side is unable to whack them hard in the first day or two of coverage after a major event that we have lost our one and only chance? The closer to the election we hammer Bush on his bin laden misstatement the better. There’s no statute of limitations on when we can use an opponent’s most eggregious mistakes against him. The same comment applies to Bush’s remarks several weeks ago saying we cannot win the war on terror. That gives K/E and the rest of us another fat target to shoot at.
Another “theme for the day” K/E might use is stem cell research. I thought the stances of the candidates came out fuzzy in the second debate, which might explain why a far smaller percentage of voters say Kerry’s position is closer to their own than is actually the case. K/E could clarify what the difference in the positions of the candidates is on this issue and what the consequences are for the possibilities of curing many serious diseases, as well as generating good jobs in an emerging market. This issue from what I’ve seen plays extremely well for us with independents the more people get to know about it. And it can split off or help neutralize that portion of the business community which understands and covets the potential that stem cell research represents.
Of late it looks as though K/E’s strategy is to slam Bush hard on a different, politically sensitive issue each day, to keep them on the defensive and nip in the bud their efforts to frame the story line of the day. Obviously it is not wholly succeeding but K/E clearly are on the offensive.
By all means take up Michael Kazin’s suggestion to give us as much state-by-state data as possible. That’s what counts now.
JY
the new cnn/usat/gallup has bush up 52 to 44. i have to wonder if thats with a rupublican slant in the percentages taken. seems like in the past couple of polls that they put out, they had more or less equaled to numbers of dems and repubs. a few weeks ago when they were taking samples with large repubs slants they were giving bush double diget leads.
sorry about the grammatical errors in my last comment — was very tired when I typed it.
The polls at RealClear politics, not just the NEWSWEEK poll but the Gallup also, and others, show Kerry tanking badly over the past few days.
I am certain that this is due to the much exploited Bai article and its fallout NOT Mary Cheney. There have been columns throughout the press about how Kerry is soft on terror, and Kerry has failed to respond just like his campaign did for the longest time to the flipflop spin. Then everyone else goes around pretending that there’s nothing odd going on and just justifying the lying.
Drudge is trumpeting the latest Gallup farce that shows Bush leading by 8% in LV and 3-4% in RV.
Ruy,
As we wind down to Nov 2, if you can get us some respectable state polls — FL, PA, OH, NM, NV —
it would be appreciated.
As a campaign nears its end, I always look at crowd size and enthusiasm as an awfully good indicator of how the race is going. Not prescreeened crowds, that is.
Does anyone have some descriptions of the relative size and nature of recent campaign events?
A.
Very good news. But I’m looking forward to your analysis of the new CNN/USA TODAY/GALLUP POLL that has Bush ahead with likely voters by 8 points, 52 to 44. I sure hope they oversampled Republicans.
Oops… I meant “extremely unlikely”, not “extremely likely”.
The sort of mistake that happens when you are in a hurry… as pollsters are these days.
They favor stricter control laws by 49 to 8? Is that a typo?
More of a question than a comment. Any recent polling on environmental isues? This was not touched at all at the last debates, and only casually discussed at the first two debates. But it is a critical issue for many voters, particularly voters in some swing areas, e.g. Colorado. I know this issue is defining for me. I’m a one-issue voter on this issue, and you know who I’ll be voting for (and against).
Thanks,
Barry
Ruy- Good news about the Time poll, of course. But then there’s the Newsweek poll– and the continuing gap in the tracking polls.
I think it’s about time to do a state-by-state analysis rather than taking comfort in the issue breakdown, no? After all, Americans agreed with Dukakis on most of the issues as well– but that didn’t help him at all!
Michael Kazin
There are some strange things in this poll.
For one thing, there are errors in the tables. The number of LVs in the most recent poll exceeds the number of RVs; the numbers seem to be transposed. And in the income breakdown (and much credit to Time for giving us these numbers!) the total for the most recent poll adds up to only 92%.
The horse race numbers for likely voters with Nader are also strange. The result is given as 45-45-3 with 1% for others, 3% undecided, and 3% refused. But the same result, with refuseds taken out, are 48 Bush, 46 Kerry, 3 Nader, with 0% others and 3% undecided. Some changes can occur as a result of rounding when you take out the refuseds, but not these. A change from 0% difference to 2% difference is extremely likely. (It should not occur unless before removing the refuseds the unrounded difference was between 0.97% and 1.0% AND the exact Kerry percentage was between 44.50% and 44.53%.) And I don’t see at all how the “others” could go from 1% to 0% as when the refuseds are removed.
Another discrepancy is not an obvious error, but cast doubt on the results. There is a 5% Dem advantage in party identification among RVs, but only 1% among LVs. Yet the Bush-Kerry result is essentially the same among both populations.
Here’s another way to look at it. Assume the RV/LV numbers were simply transposed and the poll had 131 “unlikely voters”. We can compute approximately that the unlikely voters consisted of 9 Republicans, 47 Democrats, and 75 independent/refused/other. (This is a pretty rough calculation because rounding errors are significant, but it should not be not wildly off.)This distribution seems unlikely. And it seems even more unlikely that such a group of voters would break evenly in the presidential race, or only slightly for Kerry, which is what the comparison of poll numbers between likely and registered voters seems to say.
Several possible explanations occur to me. First, more errors in the tables. Second, the registered and likely voter numbers are separately weighted, and the changes are artifacts of the weighting process. (The weighting coefficients will have random fluctuations caused both by statistical fluctuations in the sample and numerical errors in the estimation process.) Third, but unlikely, the “unlikely voter” sample is a statistical outlier.
I would like to know more.
I continue to be amazed by the “Commander and Chief” and “War on Terror” numbers. A majority of the public finally sees that Iraq had no connection to 9/11 and sees the invasion and occupation as a mistake, but many are still more comfortable with Bush. At this late date, is Kerry better off changing the subject to domestic issues, or is their anything he can say that will drive down Bush’s advantage on the security issues?
On another issue: the most recent Newsweek poll shows a reverse gender gap (more men for Kerry, more women for Bush). Is this an anomoly? If not, what gives? Has anyone seen any good explanations?
Isn’t it likely that the two day blip Zogby saw was just reflecting the Lesbian flap that was boosted by CNN, et. al.? Claire Shipman argued on ABC that it meant Bush had “won” the third debate, despite all polls to contrary.
This Time poll is good news. But on ABC “This Week” W/George S they (George will, Ron Suskind Bill Kaschich (Fox News) and Claire Shipman) paint a different picture Ms. Shipman said “Contrary tp the snap polls after the last debate” she thinks more Americans thought George Bush won. Because he had more clear answers to the questions??????!!!!! Its a GOP “LoveFest”. How can Kerrry win when corporate media is so increasingly biased. I could not believe it!!!!!
One set of numbers is wrong (“leadership in difficult times”): 52 – 40 isn’t an 8-point spread.
“By 69-22 voter favor using discarded embryos to conduct stem cell research; by 49-34 they say Kerry is closer to their position on this issue than Bush.”
So, this discrepancy means that either 1. people are stupid and can’t connect the dots or 2. some hate Kerry so much that they can’t say anything positive about him even when he share their positions.
That poll is indeed very good news.
It suggests that Kerry needs to act both defensively and offensively. Since terrorism is his weak point — he MUST act quickly in the ways described in other posts with an NYU length speech etc. to counter the Bai spin, and slam into Bush on the Osama lie and his failure on terrorism policy. Silence will only leave voters with same impression. Although not as slimy as the Swift Boat Veterans for Slime, attacking at strong suit is important to do.
Then there is the issues where Bush is most vulnerable domestically — jobs/economy and the deficit. The way the strategic deficit is designed to be used as a lever against social security Cost of Living Adjustments, “diet COLA” they call it, is good to raise. And Kerry was right to raise the draft and can come back with “they doth protest overmuch”
(a good line to use now in the draft context, given its myriad resonances).
With a big enough GOTV (not simply doing what has been done in the past only bigger but something qualitatively on a whole new scale). If it is possible to confound the agenda in this election by the Democrats really pursuing it, that could make a big difference. Broadside ads against voting Repub for Congress would be good in the final stretch — something Gore never bothered to do.
Two things from looking at poll:
a) they didn’t ask about ‘just says what thinks people want to hear’ or ‘wishywashy’ or other character type issues
b) heavily skewed in favor of Democrats, moreso than previous polls, but with 4-5% edge for Democrats in line with 2000 vote. With all new registrations, might be right
I really appreciate your postings. It helps me to fathom what is happening in the world of polls.