A Pyrrhic Victory

I never thought I would view Justice Alito’s deeply dishonest opinion in Dobbs as a gift, but I’ve come to that conclusion. 

Whatever one’s position on abortion, it is impossible to ignore the political effect of that Supreme Court decision. Some (male) strategists insist that Democrats’ continued emphasis on the issue is risky or misplaced, but I respectfully disagree. Absent the presence of some other massively salient issue, GOP candidates now look a whole lot like the dog that caught the car. (Furthermore, two of the most salient issues these days are gun control and democracy–both of which also favor Team Blue.)

As Michelle Goldberg recently wrote in the New York Times, 

Having made the criminalization of abortion a central axis of their political project for decades, Republicans have no obvious way out of their electoral predicament. A decisive majority of Americans — 64 percent, according to a recent Public Religion Research Institute survey — believe that abortion should be legal in most cases. A decisive majority of Republicans — 63 percent, according to the same survey — believe that it should not. When abortion bans were merely theoretical, anti-abortion passion was often a boon to Republicans, powering the grass-roots organizing of the religious right. Now that the end of Roe has awakened a previously complacent pro-choice majority, anti-abortion passion has become a liability, but the Republican Party can’t jettison it without tearing itself apart.

Back in September of 2021, I wrote:

This year, the Supreme Court will review Mississippi’s ban on virtually all abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy. A Court created by Donald Trump is likely to overrule–or eviscerate–Roe v. Wade. If it does so, Republicans may come to rue the day.

Without Roe, the single-issue anti-choice voters that have been a mainstay of the GOP will be considerably less motivated. Pro-choice voters, however, will be newly energized–and polling suggests they significantly  outnumber “pro-life” activists.

The de-nationalization of Roe wouldn’t just mobilize pro-choice voters who’ve relied on Roe to protect their rights. It would redirect liberal and pro-choice energies from national to state-level political action. And that could be a huge game-changer….

As I have repeatedly noted, the current dominance of the Republican Party doesn’t reflect  American majority sentiments–far from it. GOP membership has been shrinking steadily; some 24% of voters self-identify as Republican (and thanks to vaccine resistance, those numbers are dwindling…) GOP gerrymandering and vote suppression tactics are artifacts of state-level control. With Roe gone, purple states–including Texas–will more quickly turn blue.

If Roe goes, the game changes. File under: be careful what you wish for.

In her Times column, Goldberg enumerated the the multiple, continuing GOP assaults on abortion rights at both the state and federal levels, including but not limited to the following:

In the last Congress, 167 House Republicans co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, conferring full personhood rights on fertilized eggs. In state after state, lawmakers are doing just what the R.N.C. suggested and using every means at their disposal to force people to continue unwanted or unviable pregnancies. Idaho, where almost all abortions are illegal, just passed an “abortion trafficking” law that would make helping a minor leave the state to get an abortion without parental consent punishable by five years in prison. The Texas Senate just passed a bill that, among other things, is intended to force prosecutors in left-leaning cities to pursue abortion law violations. South Carolina Republicans have proposed a law defining abortion as murder, making it punishable by the death penalty.

Goldberg’s column preceded the decision by the Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas, suspending FDA approval of mifepristone, one of the two drugs commonly used for medication abortions, despite its demonstrated safety over the past 20 years–a decision certain to raise the stakes–and the immediacy– of the abortion debate.

I agree with Goldberg that Republicans “are adopting a self-soothing tactic sometimes seen on the left”–blaming messaging. They insist they’re losing elections because they’ve failed to communicate clearly, not because their position is unpopular.

“When you’re losing by 10 points, there is a messaging issue,” the Republican Party chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, said on Fox News, explaining the loss in Wisconsin.

But you can’t message away forced birth. Republicans’ political problem is twofold. Their supporters take the party’s position on abortion seriously, and now, post-Roe, so does everyone else.

As Alex Shepard wrote in The New Republic, the problem Republicans face is both simple and unsolvable, because an idealized middle ground that would be palatable to the diehards in the GOP base simply doesn’t exist.

In Dobbs, Justice Alito gave the Republicans something they had long claimed to want–a complete victory on an issue that the GOP had used for fifty years to motivate its base and generate turnout.

Sometimes, victories are pyrrhic.

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