Horowitz: The problem with weak Republicans who happen to be anti-abortion

The Republican Party has been a controlled opposition for two generations, constantly helping the left strategically manage the decay and decline to avoid accountability. The one issue upon which Republicans floored the gas pedal (just to show some sort of contrast) was the abortion issue. Now, in a post-Dobbs world, Republicans are stuck with the imbalance of being a pale pastel version of the left but ardently anti-abortion. That mix, embodied in the hypocritical and undesirable image of the modern GOP, is tainting our ability to even win on that issue, much less every other.

The defeat of Issue 1 in Ohio this past Tuesday, which would have made it tougher to enshrine abortion in the state’s constitution, is the latest in a string of ballot successes for the pro-baby-killing industry. Whether it’s winning big in purple states or losing some ballot initiatives even in red states (Montana, Kansas, and Kentucky, for example), the abortion zealots have definitely been on a winning streak since Dobbs.

This has inevitably raised the question of whether the abortion issue is a drag on the right and how we should deal with it going forward. However, like everything in politics, abortion cannot be judged as a political issue in a vacuum. Politics is an art defined by an amalgamation of many disparate factors; it’s not a simple math that can be quantified in what percentage support a given outcome.

Most political issues are not absolute winners or losers with the electorate. It depends on the framing of the issue, who is doing the framing, and which extreme of the debate is better accentuated throughout the campaign. Unlike many other radical leftist initiatives these days, abortion is not one of the Democrats’ more losing issues, such as open borders, transgenderism, and affinity for criminals. At least half the country has always supported abortion, and in a post-Dobbs world, there is an anticipation of a complete ban on abortion, which gives the left a majority position in most states and a supermajority one in several critical states.

The anti-abortion movement, being trapped in the hypocritical GOP, will continue to lose absent a broader focus on “whole life” from conception to natural death. Ohio is the perfect state to illustrate this point. Gov. DeWine is a leftist on nearly every issue except for abortion. He locked down his state with more vigor than even some Democrats. Thus, Republicans ceded the opportunity to champion “my body, my choice,” in an appropriate setting. They ceded the issue of medical freedom and bodily autonomy. In fact, they ceded every single issue in that they elected a Republican in name only for speaker, thereby neutralizing the GOP supermajority. So they had no governing success story where they could point to standing for people’s liberties, livelihood, and prosperity as DeSantis did in Florida before signing his version of the heartbeat bill.

In other words, by offering the public nothing riveting that speaks to their angst on the issues of our time, but then going pedal to the metal on the abortion issue, Republicans are turning voters off. If Republicans consistently governed with empathy on food, fuel, crime, the border invasion, bodily autonomy, medical freedom, and right to privacy against the surveillance state, they’d champion the issues many of these middle-of-the-road voters care about.

Imagine if they all unified behind a comprehensive agenda to end the biomedical surveillance state and the general government obsession with spying on us. Then they’d have the moral clarity to demonstrate that abortion is different because you are killing a human life. But absent that built-up political capital, they have nothing to spend on reaching out to a super secular generation on the abortion issue.

Moreover, conservatives need to actually get boots on the ground and engage actual issues rather than just sitting back and hoping that elections and courts will solve everything for us. For years, Republicans focused exclusively on the Supreme Court overturning Roe. They did nothing to engage the issue on the ground and promote a culture of life to make it much easier to adopt children. Absent a ground game in the culture, when the dog met the car at the Supreme Court with the Dobbs opinion, they inevitably would be outgunned in the street fight over abortion – as one side felt like their work was done and the other side felt like they were fighting for survival and mobilized accordingly.

Another important lesson is the need for us to fortify our own red states with politicians who actually share our values across the spectrum of issues, properly live their lives in accordance with those values, and articulate them effectively. No red state other than Florida is leaning into the education curriculum to reverse the trend of brainwashing kids from conservative homes. We need to lean into the curriculum from our vantage point with the same energy the left does in blue states.

Finally, we need leaders who actually exemplify our values. How many Republican candidates have we seen in recent years who privately urged their concubines to get abortions after getting them pregnant? How many Republicans themselves engage in openly sinful lifestyles while claiming to speak for the religious right and pro-life community? Imagine if all our candidates actually were faithful spouses, fought hard on issues like privacy and bodily autonomy, and showed they cared about the hospital genocide during COVID by embracing health care reform? That would bleed over to the voters, who would get the message that they sincerely value all life.