Congressional Republicans and candidates are running for the hills away from the carnage of the end of Roe, suddenly removing their complete and total support for reducing women to second-class citizens whose reproductive systems belong to the state, and pretending they've never heard of Dobbs, abortion, or the Supreme Court.
Yesli Vega, a Republican running for the U.S. House in a competitive Virginia district, no longer mentions her connection to former president Donald Trump in the bio section at the top of her Twitter page.
Colorado state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, also running in a battleground House race, has stopped promoting language defending “The Sanctity of Life” on her campaign website. Now, there is no mention of abortion at all, a review of the website showed.
And the campaign of Blake Masters, Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Arizona, has removed from his campaign website references to strict antiabortion positions he once championed, along with references to false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
At least nine Republican congressional candidates have scrubbed or amended references to Trump or abortion from their online profiles in recent months, distancing themselves from divisive subjects that some GOP strategists say are two of the biggest liabilities for the party ahead of the post-Labor Day sprint to Election Day.
“The Dobbs decision has clearly energized Democratic voters to the point where they have closed the enthusiasm gap with Republicans,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime GOP pollster, referencing the Supreme Court ruling that ended the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. Asked whether it hurts the GOP to have Trump back in the news, Ayres replied, “The best case for Republican candidates in the midterms is making the upcoming election a referendum on the Biden administration.”
He added: “Anything that distracts from that focus weakens the Republican position.”
Tracking back to the political middle after a primary is common practice long used by candidates of both parties. But the attempts by Republicans in competitive contests to pivot away from abortion and Trump have emboldened Democrats to mount an aggressive offense on those issues, which they see as key to their efforts to outperform once dim expectations in congressional races.
A Pew Research Center survey earlier this summer found 57 percent of Americans disapproved of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, while a Washington Post-Schar School poll found 65 percent saying the court’s decision represents a major loss of rights for women in America. Some states do not allow abortion when the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest; a Washington Post-ABC News poll this spring found 79 percent of Americans said abortion should be legal in such cases, a consistent finding in polls for more than three decades.
Both President Biden and Trump, who has received renewed attention recently after the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago estate, are unpopular, making them targets for the opposing party in the midterms. Trump’s favorability rating was just 38 percent and Biden’s was just 43 percent, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.
But during the primaries, Trump was a big draw, as he remains popular among many Republicans. Many Republicans ran as candidates aligned with him, a dynamic that has caused some discomfort as the pivot to the general election started.
Vega, who is trying to unseat Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) in one of the key seats Republicans hope to flip to win back control of the House, used to say in her Twitter bio that she was a “Pres. Trump appointee,” a reference to her appointment in December 2020 to the President’s Advisory Commission on Hispanic Prosperity. Several weeks ago, after Vega secured the GOP nomination, it disappeared.
Asked about the change, Vega’s campaign consultant Sean Brown ignored the question and responded with an apparent reference to Biden’s recent announcement that he would cancel a portion of student loan debt held by many Americans. “Safe to say the story of Democrat candidates refusing to say whether they support Biden’s blatantly political tuition giveaway next?” Brown wrote.
I guess Republicans figure if enough doctors are imprisoned and enough women die from ectopic and other unviable pregnancies, there won't be anyone left to vote against them on Dobbs.
Vote like your country depends on it, because it does.
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