Charlie Sykes (subs. only) wonders if the Republican Party is heading toward extinction:
The key to survival of any species is its ability to adapt.
That’s as true of politics as it is of biology. Political parties must learn when to fight or flee, or risk being mauled by some rough beast, whose hour has come round at last.
So students of history will fascinated by the torpor of the GOP circa 2023. Republicans were, after all, warned. Again and again. On Trump and abortion, but also on guns, moral Grundyism, and their addiction to the crazy.
Yet despite all the red blinking lights— and they are flashing everywhere — the GOP simply smacks its lips and says, ‘This is fine.” More, please.
The latest flare comes from my home state, Wisconsin. As Bill Lueders writes in today’s Bulwark, the race for Supreme Court here was the most expensive judicial race in American history. But, ultimately, the election was decided not by money, but by issues, especially abortion. And it was a landslide in a crucial swing state.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board is reaching for the panic button.
Republicans had better get their abortion position straight, and more in line with where voters are or they will face another disappointment in 2024. A total ban is a loser in swing states. Republicans who insist on that position could soon find that electoral defeats will lead to even more liberal state abortion laws than under Roe. That’s where Michigan is now after last year’s rout.
But there are few signs that Republicans will pivot. As The Journal notes, Wisconsin’s 1849 law bans abortion in nearly all cases. Republicans who control the legislature actually contributed to Janet Protasiewicz’s victory by failing to amend the law, even though they “had ample warning from results last year in Michigan and Kentucky, where abortion drove Democratic turnout.”
I especially appreciated the shout-out to my hometown of Mequon here:
The Wisconsin results show abortion is still politically potent. In a special election for the state Senate on Tuesday, the Republican candidate barely won in a longtime GOP stronghold in the northern Milwaukee suburbs. If Republicans can’t win in Mequon, their legislative majorities will soon be imperiled, and you can move Wisconsin out of the swing-state column for the Presidency in 2024.
Welcome to our world. Democrats compromised and negotiated and “pivoted” for 50 years and these people were unmovable. They do not believe there can be a compromise — they think abortion is genocide. And, by the way, Republicans were happy to benefit from that extreme position as long as the constitutional right to abortion was secure — they knew the other side was unlikely to mobilize on the issue. Now that the court gave them what they wanted it’s blowing back on them. But they should have anticipated it. The anti-abortion extremists never hid the fact that they wanted a total ban. “Returning it to the states” was always just a slogan. They want it all.