DeSantis, Donald Trump’s main rival in the Republican presidential primary, has said he will sign the bill. Once he does, and if North Carolina Republicans act too, abortion would be largely illegal throughout the South. He will all but guarantee that the issue will become a defining point in the 2024 campaign.
“It’s obviously a bad issue for Republicans,” said Sarah Longwell, a moderate Republican strategist who has conducted extensive focus groups with Republican voters.
Republicans already know that abortion policy in the post-Roe vs. Wade times are unfavorable. Since then, they’ve seen the stunning defeat of an anti-abortion measure in heavily Republican Kansas last year, and have continued through a less-than-red midterm.
On the issue of abortion, «we’re at a disadvantage, 100 percent,» said Mark Graul, a Republican strategist in Wisconsin who oversaw George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign in the state.
But even as Donald Trump himself has said the party went too far with abortion restrictions, there has been little interest in the broader GOP to back down. Public opinion generally favors abortion rights, even with many Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. say that the procedure should be legal in most cases. But among the activist base, including many Republicans who have spent decades working to oust Roe — the issue remains a litmus test that ranks high in the Republican primary. The 15-week bans that seemed extraordinarily aggressive just a year ago are now seen as half measures.
«Most of [state] representatives are in safe seats, so they are more concerned about primaries where social issues play out at the bottom,” said former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, who ran unsuccessfully for a Senate seat in USA last year. «They’re really not worried about those people who are running all over the state.»
«It’s a very selfish game,» he added.
If Wisconsin is any indication, it can also prove hugely destructive to the Republican Party. In that swing state on Tuesday, liberals flipped the ideological balance on the Supreme Court with Janet Protasiewicz’s sweeping victory over former conservative state Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly.
Abortion was not the whole story. Money and the quality of candidates may have mattered more, Graul said. But it was a big part of it, in a state that has a controversial 19th-century abortion ban on the books, and where Protasiewicz campaigned heavily for abortion rights.
Some Republicans looking to 2024 are already sounding the alarm.
Earlier this week, Jon Schweppe, policy director at the Principles America Project, a conservative think tank, warned on twitter that “Republicans must solve the abortion problem as soon as possible. We are being killed by independent voters who think we support total bans with no exceptions.»
He urged them to «hang in there» and rally behind the Senator. lindsey graham He proposed a 15-week abortion ban, hoping to assuage Democratic criticism of more restrictive measures.
“I want to ban abortion,” Schweppe said in an interview on Thursday. “That is a long-term goal. I think almost all pro-lifers will tell you that’s the case. We think it’s a murder. But you know, you’re not going to get there overnight, and you’re not going to get there by doing something that’s against the will of the American people.»
He added: «If the pro-life movement doesn’t get itself together, ultimately, the Republicans are going to say, ‘Well, we have to get elected, and the pro-life movement is a drag.»
Longwell’s focus groups seem to confirm this. Abortion, she said, is often the first example voters bring up when explaining why they view a candidate as «extremist.» And as the defeat of Donald Trump in 2020 and the midterm elections exposed, that designation is deadly in a general election.
“The gap between what grassroots voters are demanding on abortion, election denial, allegiance to Trump, the gap between that and what swing voters expect has become very wide,” Longwell said. «You always had to pivot in the general election, but it’s turning from a pivot into a massive leap.»
For Democrats, it’s becoming an ongoing political gift: a club they’ll use to pummel Republicans in the run-up to 2024.
Citing what he called Wisconsin’s experience with «the nightmare that the Republicans want to inflict on the entire country,» Ben Wikler, chairman of the state’s Democratic Party, said that «the political shock represents a tectonic shift.»