If there’s been a recurring theme of Republican strategists heading into November, it’s this: flip the script. From the Senate and House fundraising arms to consultants and the RNC, the experts agree — silence on abortion is a political death sentence.
“If you’re just hiding under your desk, hoping the shrapnel won’t hit you,” GOP pollster and former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway said recently, “you’re not listening to [reason]. … If it took 50 years to overturn Roe v. Wade,” she insisted, “it’s going to take more than 50 minutes, 50 hours or 50 weeks to explain to people what that means — and, more importantly, what it doesn’t mean — and to move hearts and minds.”
If she’s counseling a client, Conway is frank. “I just believe these candidates should be forward-facing, tell you what they believe, why they believe that, and stick with it.” Just as important, she and other prominent Republicans say, is making sure conservatives tell voters what Democrats believe. Accuse them of extremism, she urges, because they’re actually guilty of it. “They don’t seem to have any exceptions,” Conway argued, in a country where most Americans would draw the line for abortion somewhere early in the second trimester.
Joe Biden’s party is shockingly vulnerable here, and they know it. Asked if the president supported any restrictions on abortion last month, his campaign staff deflected. Does he have a preferred “cutoff” like 24 weeks, the reporter asked? “The president believes that we should restore the protections of Roe,” the spokesman replied, which allowed abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. “He’s been pretty clear, pretty consistent on that,” the official insisted. “So we aren’t going to fall on any traps that Republicans may want to lay ....”
It’s only a trap because most Americans won’t like the answer — which is no, Democrats and their president don’t believe in abortion limits. Dr. Ben Carson, another part of former President Trump’s inner circle, agreed that it’s time to play offense on the Left’s extremism. “I think it’s very important in this argument to be vocal and to ask questions of those on the other side, like, ‘Well, what is unacceptable to you in terms of abortion?’” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch.” “They have a hard time answering that question because they’re actually willing to kill babies that are viable outside of the womb — from six months on of gestation.”
Right now, that puts them wildly out of step with most of the country, 73% of whom would outlaw abortion after 15 weeks. Only 10% agree with Biden and his party that abortion should be allowed for all nine months.
On Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.) leaned into the view that Democrats — not Republicans — are the fanatical ones. “The fact of the matter is that every single Democrat in the Senate and in the House have voted for abortion up until the day of birth,” Scott pointed out. “The former governor of Virginia [Ralph Northam] has said — he was a pediatrician — even infanticide [is okay].”
NBC’s Kristen Welker pushed back, “Democrats don’t support — that’s false, senator. Democrats don’t support infanticide.” “Kristen, they’ve already voted for it,” Scott reiterated.
After another back and forth, Scott pressed in. “Kristen, you cannot deny the fact that the Democrats have voted — not talked about, but voted — for abortions until the day of birth. That is a fact,” Scott said. “You can look that up in the records of Congress. So, I’m not talking about hypotheticals. You continue to bring me hypotheticals. The truth is, and I got to say, this is kind of — kind of interesting, the truth is simple. The Democrats are radical. Ninety percent of Americans don’t agree with them.”
As Dr. Carson explained, we’re advanced enough with technology these days that “if [a] baby could be living outside of the womb, [the question is]: why do you have the right to kill the baby?” “Because it’s inside the womb? … As I frequently say in our laws, if you murder a woman who’s pregnant, you get charged with two counts of homicide. Why is that? Obviously, our legal system recognizes that life.”
The soft-spoken doctor who spent most of his professional career as a pediatric neurosurgeon operated on plenty of unborn babies, “trying to save lives frequently.” “They were premature babies, 26-, 27-, 28-weeks gestation, sometimes [I was] operating all night, sometimes even operating on babies before they were born. I can assure you that they’re very much alive. Just because they’re in the uterus, that does not mean that they’re not a living human being. And they can feel pain, [so] we have to advocate for them.”
And yes, Carson acknowledged, Republicans are “in a little bit of a tough situation politically, if we don’t navigate it the right way. You know,” he pointed out, “there are those, like myself, who believe that life begins at conception. There are those who say six weeks, there are those who say 15 weeks. What we need to do is stop fighting amongst ourselves, recognize we’re all under the [pro-life] umbrella, and we need to continue the fight.”
But to put Democrats on the defensive, Perkins insisted, “you’ve got to be willing to talk about it.” Like Carson, he believes “we should be protecting life from the moment of conception on. That’s when life begins. But I also know that in a republic we have to build consensus. So we just take a page out of the book in terms of how we got to a point where Roe was overturned: We educate, we teach, we show the humanity of the unborn, and we move the public to the right spot. And we keep moving, as we’re seeing across the country today. But you have to be willing to engage in the conversation, defend your position, and not be in retreat.” And unfortunately, Perkins lamented, “many Republicans have lost their footing on this issue. I still believe that if we’re willing to talk about it, we are where the majority of the American people are at.”
Another piece of the fight, Carson urged, is making sure people are aware of the barbarity of the abortion process. “You know, when you allow people to find out what an abortion actually is, particularly in the second and third trimester, where you actually put the forceps into the uterus, grab whatever it can grab, twist and pull, and out comes an arm or a leg. … Most people are kind of put off by that, and we need to let them know what’s going on. You can’t just sugarcoat this. This is murder of a human being who has feelings. And as we make that more apparent to people, I think we will move more toward a culture of life.”
The facts are Republicans’ friends, Carson pointed out. “You know, for me, as a neuroscientist, I look at that baby from the moment of conception, that brain starts to develop. I mean, we’re talking millions of neurons every day within a very short period of time. That baby is much more neurologically sophisticated than a snail darter. And yet, look, of all these environmentalists running around saying, ‘We’ve got to save the snail darter!’ How come they’re not concerned about the baby?”
Part of that, Perkins insisted, is because conservatives and the church have lacked courage. “We’ve got to be bold as believers,” he urged. “We’ve got to know what we believe and be bold enough to speak it. … There is hope, but we have to realize we are a part of the answer. God has placed us here, entrusted us with this moment in time. We have to be faithful to our calling.”
This article appeared originally here.
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