It’s one thing they’re good at
Republicans — well, not as a group — gave Democrats a gift Tuesday when Sen. Lindsey Graham’s announcment “underscored the determination of Republicans to enact a regime of forced birth throughout the United States,” writes Jennifer Rubin:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) tried to minimize the damage. “I think most of the members of my conference prefer that this be dealt with at the state level,” he weakly told reporters. Now, the Republican leader faces a dilemma: He cannot deny Republicans’ intentions without infuriating the right-wing base, and he cannot encourage Graham without driving Democrats to vote.
Reactionaries believe abortion is murder, but the GOP (except for Graham) thinks states should decide if that’s a crime. That should cause heads to explode. But it won’t because cognitive dissonance is by now muscle memory for the Trumpish base.
Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) went to the Senate floor on Tuesday to knock MAGA Republicanism farther back on its heels. “Proposals like the one today send a clear message from MAGA Republicans to women across the country: your body, our choice.”
Rubin adds:
Graham has provided a real service to the electorate. No voter need be confused about the two parties’ position on women’s autonomy, health care and constitutional rights. When Republicans tout a national abortion ban — or denounce the FBI or downplay Jan. 6 or oppose a slew of popular bills — they are telling us precisely what they stand for. Voters should listen.
But voters have an annoying habit of hearing what they want to hear. MAGA Republicans will not stand silently as opponents and reality reveal them for who they are.
Dan Pfeiffer this morning ponders the coming GOP counter-offensive:
The Republicans have an intractable political problem borne of reality — the public is focused on abortion AND they absolutely abhor the Republican position. The good news for Republicans (but not democracy) is that they have a propaganda and disinformation machine with the power to bend reality to their political whims. Step one in their plan is to erase the radical positions they adopted earlier this year. As Axios recently reported:
In battlegrounds in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Colorado, Arizona and North Carolina, GOP candidates are scrubbing abortion language from campaign websites and adjusting rhetoric on the trail.
Step two: Stare into the camera and repeatedly lie about their position.
Lying into cameras is right in the GOP’s wheelhouse. They likely teach it during media training at the Leadership Institute if not to Young Republicans even earlier.
“Lying through their teeth in soft-focused direct-to-camera ads is the same tactic the Republicans used in 2018. Remember Josh Hawley and others blatantly lying about their support for removing the Affordable Care Act’s protections for people with preexisting conditions?” Pfeiffer asks.
Graham has made that a more of a problem for his colleagues. But it’s not an insurmountable one for a party led by a man who believes there’s a sucker born every minute.
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