They're Hanging Swing District Republicans Out To Dry
On Thursday we saw how the GOP doubling down on anti-Choice extremism is killing the party’s candidates in swing districts. But nothing will stop the extremists from pushing their anti-Choice psychosis down everyone’s throats. It doesn’t matter in backward red areas of Mississippi, Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Arkansas, etc. But go anyplace normal and the issue is murder for Republican candidates. (And by the way, a judge in Wyoming just blocked that state legislature’s first-in-the-nation attempt to ban abortion pills.)
The extremists in the GOP conference clearly don’t care about their brethren in mainstream districts. Yesterday Axios reported that their right Republican Study Group is pushing McCarthy and Scalise for a vote to codify the anti-Choice Hyde Amendment by passing the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act (H.R. 7) because, they say, “sidelining the legislation would be hypocritical to the messaging they ran on.” Members in swing districts are wringing their hands, hypocrites like Nancy Mace whining that she believes the party will "lose huge" if they don't find a "middle ground" on abortion.
None of that is slowing down anti-Choice fanatic Mike Pence, whose whole campaign is based on narrow-minded religionist bigotry. Yesterday, Politico reported that Pence is urging Republicans to push the losing message even further. The other presidential candidates try to avoid the topic of abortion. “Trump,” wrote Eli Okun and Garrett Ross, “avoids talking about the matter almost entirely. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a six-week abortion ban in the middle of the night in April and has barely spoken about it since. Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) originally waffled on whether he’d support a nationwide abortion ban. And former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has been vague about how she’d handle the issue as president… Then there’s Mike Pence.
More than any other Republican candidate, the former VP has staked his pitch to voters on his unabashed restrictionist stance.
While some Republicans— including Trump and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie— say that in a post-Roe America, abortion policy should be left up to the states, Pence has endorsed a nationwide ban on the medical procedure at 15 weeks of gestation.
While some Republicans say the party shouldn’t weigh in on banning widely used abortion drugs, Pence’s 501(c)(4) group Advancing American Freedom has filed an amicus brief supporting a challenge to the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, the most widely used abortion pill.
And this weekend, while Pence will be among a parade of 2024 hopefuls addressing evangelical conservatives at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Conference in Washington, he is the only candidate who’ll also speak at the Students for Life rally on the National Mall, in addition to being the only candidate invited to address a nationwide Susan B. Anthony List call for activists commemorating the end of Roe.
Yesterday, we caught up with Pence to talk about the one-year anniversary of the Dobbs ruling. We wanted to know how he squares his own position with the political reality that abortion restrictions are consistently unpopular in polls and whether he’s worried that opposition will blow back on him and the GOP at the ballot box.
The upshot: not a bit. And he thinks Republican candidates need to stop running scared from the issue and embrace it head on.
How Pence Sees It: The GOP, Pence said, faces a choice, “whether or not we’re going to continue to be a party grounded in the conservative principles that have won not only the White House, but won majorities over the last 50 years again and again— or whether our party is going to shy away from those core traditional principles.”
As for him? “For me, for our campaign, we’re going to stand where we’ve always stood, and that is stand without apology for the right to life,” he said.
In our interview, Pence flatly rejected the conventional wisdom in Washington that Republicans suffered in the midterms because of Dobbs blowback. Those who lost, he said, had a “common denominator” that “has not to do with the issue of abortion.”
“Rather, where candidates were focused on the past— focused on relitigating the past— we did not fare well,” Pence said, a veiled reference to Republicans parroting the false claim that Trump won the 2020 election.
Pence vs The Field: His unabashed stance on abortion is one way Pence differentiates himself from the rest of the GOP’s 2024 field. And he’s certainly not shy about drawing that contrast, particularly vis-a-vis Trump.
In our conversation, Pence brought up Trump several times unprompted— though never by name— arguing that Trump’s suggestion that the Dobbs ruling undercut the GOP in 2022 was “wrong,” and hitting back at Trump for criticizing DeSantis’ six-week ban as “too harsh.”
“In my announcement speech, I articulated my concern that my former running mate and other candidates in the field are backing away from an unwavering commitment to the right to life,” Pence said. “It’s not consistent with the kind of principled leadership that I believe Republicans are looking for in the cause of life.”
Asked if there should be a litmus test for Republicans to carry the “pro-life” label, Pence suggested they should all be supporting a nationwide abortion ban: “I would expect that pro-life voters around the country would … be looking for men and women willing to stand unambiguously for advancing the cause of the right to life at every level— at the state and federal level.”
He also vowed to do “everything in my power” to reverse approval of mifepristone if elected: “I do not support mail-order abortion,” he said.
Pence’s Strategy: As the Republican Party struggles to make inroads with suburban women, Pence’s stances are politically risky for the GOP. But Pence said he has a prescription to help Republicans embrace this issue:
First, articulate Democrats’ support for late-term abortions, which polling shows many Americans are wary of. “There’s no question that the Democrat Party’s position on abortion is out of step with 90% of the country,” Pence said.
Second, pair abortion restrictions with what he called policies of “compassion.” That means, for instance, passing funding for anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers” that offer services to pregnant women and enacting reforms to make adoption more affordable, he said.
Even if the polls don’t change, Pence won’t be reassessing his stance.
“I knew that the cause of life would have to be my cause … and we’ve never wavered,” he said. “I’ve always stood for life. And whatever the future holds for me and my family, I always will.”
Meanwhile, Biden just signed an executive order designed to protect and expand access to contraception, directing federal departments to consider requiring private insurers to offer expanded contraception options under the Affordable Care Act such as by covering more than one product and streamlining the process for obtaining care.