Republicans are out of touch on the abortion issue.
They are stuck with their primary election voters. Some Republicans are in denial.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court election on Tuesday laid bare the reality that the Wisconsin Court is political and partisan. It is divided 4-3, with "Republican" judges having the majority. It is the state court that came closest to bowing to GOP pressure to overturn the 2020 election to allow a GOP-majority legislature substitute Trump electors. It is the court that permits the nation's most partisan gerrymandering, which turns a 50-50 electorate into a Republican super-majority in the legislature. Most salient in last Tuesday's election was the issue of abortion. The current court is letting stand a 1849 law that places a near-total ban on abortion in Wisconsin, including in cases of rape and incest. The battle-lines were clear. One candidate, openly supported by Democrats and abortion-rights groups, would vote to restore abortion rights in Wisconsin. The other candidate, openly supported by Republicans and anti-abortion groups, would maintain the 1849 law. The voters supported Janet Protasiewicz, the Democrat.
This is taking place in a national environment. States with GOP majorities are ending abortions in their state and trying to reach across state lines to criminalize it for citizens of other states. The Texas law authorizes a civil bounty on anyone who enables an abortion for a Texan. Idaho women seeking abortions had access to them in Oregon and Washington, but this week Idaho passed a law prohibiting travel by minors for that purpose. All this keeps the issue top of mind for people in every state. The two maps below are from the New York Times, and were updated through March 23, 2023.
The laws being passed by red states often trigger issues which cause those laws to be suspended, and therefore kept in the news as a matter of controversy.
The issue won't go away. A key constituency group of Republicans demand abortion laws that a majority of Americans oppose.
None are so blind as those who will not see. Former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker doesn't blame the abortion issue. That would admit that the GOP's own abortion policy is the problem. He blames college. He says young people are indoctrinated.
Dane County, which is where the University of Wisconsin's flagship campus is at, about 50,000 students are enrolled there. And in Dane County, 82% of those votes went for the radical. This is years of liberal indoctrination coming home to roost.
He tweeted a chart, proving the problem was young voters:
He had a solution: Stop some of them from voting. He tweeted: "The voting age should be the same as the drinking age. Certainly not younger."
Ann Coulter is not a politician. She is a conservative provocateur, which allows her to tell fellow-Republicans what they don't want to confront. Her profession is saying things people don't like to hear. She says the problem isn't that the voters aren't voting their interests. The problem is that they are doing so. She tweeted:
Republicans are teaching a new generation of voters that Republicans are out of touch with the realities of life for young adults. It isn't that college students hear about Marxism in an economic class. It isn't that they meet people from other ethnicities and backgrounds and become infected with dangerous ideas. Or it isn't simply that. A better explanation is that GOP policies on climate, on minimum wages, on student loans, and especially on reproductive rights are losers for them. Young people care about access to abortion. They grew up with contraception being freely available. Abortion was a safety net that would be there in the case of mishap. And now it is gone or at risk. Of course, they notice and care.
Republicans will lose general elections they could win until they figure out that "It's the abortion, stupid."
Yes. You nailed it. See also Goldberg: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/07/opinion/abortion-rights-wisconsin-elections-republicans.html
Republicans' only path to power is relentless gerrymandering, expulsion of Democrats from legislatures, impeachment of just-elected, not-yet-serving justices, as in Wisconsin, voter suppression, election nullification, and every other anti-democratic trick they can come up with.
They cannot win on issues.
Doesn't mean they cannot win.